In many areas of research, the precise measurement of hypothesized processes or variables (theoretical constructs, latent variables) poses a challenge by itself. In social sciences, unreliable measurements of people’s beliefs or intentions obviously hamper efforts to predict their behavior. Each measurement (response to an item) reflects to some extent the true score for the intended concept an...

Identity is a critical developmental task during the transition to adulthood in Western societies. The purpose of the present study was to evaluate an empirically based, cluster-analytic identity status model, to examine whether all four of Marcia’s identity statuses (diffusion, foreclosure, moratorium, and achievement) would emerge empirically, and to identify different patterns of identity fo...

BACKGROUND Fundamental movement skills are a correlate of physical activity and weight status. Children who participated in a preschool intervention had greater movement skill proficiency and improved anthropometric measures (waist circumference and BMI z scores) post intervention. Three years later, intervention girls had retained their object control skill advantage. The study purpose was to ...

INTRODUCTION Previous studies suggest that the physical environment is associated with youth physical activity levels. OBJECTIVE The present study aimed at assessing the reliability and validity of an adapted version of the ALPHA environmental questionnaire (short version) to adults for application with Spanish youth. METHODS The reliability was evaluated in a sample (n = 190, 80 girls, 14....

OBJECTIVE To develop an index that assesses the degree of adherence to existing diet-lifestyle recommendations for preschoolers (Preschoolers Diet-Lifestyle Index (PDL-Index)) and to investigate its association with obesity. DESIGN The PDL-Index was constructed using eleven components (i.e. questions regarding the frequency of consumption of selected foods/food groups, time spent on televisio...