SEVERAL PSYCHOLOGICAL THEORIES ASSUME THAT THERE ARE TWO BASIC BRAIN MECHANISMS THAT GUIDE BEHAVIOR: an avoidance or inhibition system, which is responsive to signals of punishment, and an approach or activation system, which is sensitive to signals of reward. Several self-report scales have been developed to assess the sensitivity to punishment and reward, and these instruments have been shown...

The present study examines stress among parents of children with intellectual disability. 102 parents formed the sample of this study, 30 of whom had children without disability. A stress assessment test with internal validity of 0.608 was utilised. This test has two parts: physical and mental, former with 19 items and latter with 21 items. T test was applied to check differences in stress, gen...

UNLABELLED There is a need for tools to measure the information patients need in order for healthcare professionals in general, and particularly pharmacists, to communicate effectively and play an active part in the way patients manage their medicines. Previous research has developed and validated constructs to measure patients' desires for information and their perceptions of how useful their ...

We study how consumers’ information search for and purchase of new products are affected by structure of their personal network. We focus on two network characteristics namely homophily and balance, which are expected to moderate information diagnosticity and search discomfort. To address threats to internal validity common in network studies, we conduct a randomized experiment in which we mani...

OBJECTIVE To evaluate the validity and reliability of the Portuguese language version of a work ability index. METHODS Cross sectional survey of a sample of 475 workers from an electrical company in the state of Sao Paulo, Southeastern Brazil (spread across ten municipalities in the Campinas area), carried out in 2005. The following aspects of the Brazilian version of the Work Ability Index w...

The SCORE (Systemic Clinical Outcome and Routine Evaluation) is a 40-item questionnaire for completion by family members 12 years and older to assess outcome in systemic therapy. This study aimed to investigate psychometric properties of two short versions of the SCORE and their responsiveness to therapeutic change. Data were collected at 19 centers from 701 families at baseline and from 433 of...

This article discusses the application of Rasch analysis to assess the internal validity of a four sub-scale VARK (Visual, Auditory, Read/Write and Kinaesthetic) learning styles instrument. The results from the analysis show that the Rasch model fits the majority of the VARK questionnaire data and the sample data support the internal validity of the four sub-constructs at 1% level of significan...

The purpose of this study was to construct a reliable indicator of the 5 functions of identity proposed by Adams and Marshall (1996). Following Loevinger’s (1957) method of test construction, 2 related studies were completed to test the substantive, structural, and external validity of the Functions of Identity Scale. Study 1 provides support for the substantive validity (factor structure, inte...

BACKGROUND The quality of patients' recovery following surgery and anesthesia has been a matter of focus and concern over the past decade. The Quality of Recovery-40 (QoR-40) questionnaire was developed and validated for post-anesthesia patient evaluation. The QoR-40, however, is English-based and was tested and validated in Caucasian patients, a population that is culturally and behaviorally d...

BACKGROUND The COSMIN checklist (COnsensus-based Standards for the selection of health status Measurement INstruments) was developed in an international Delphi study to evaluate the methodological quality of studies on measurement properties of health-related patient reported outcomes (HR-PROs). In this paper, we explain our choices for the design requirements and preferred statistical methods ...