In social science research and clinical practice, and in educational settings, psychological tests/scales are being increasingly used because of their reliability and the ease and speed of gathering, comparing and differentiating data. A new scale is usually created when instruments or questionnaires to measure the construct of interest are not be readily available or if existing questionnaires do not fully satisfy requirements. Scales are also translated and revalidated if they are not in the language required. This article takes the reader through steps in developing, validating and translating tests in the field of social sciences.

This study is about the validity and item analysis for the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS), respectively through the Exploratory Factor Analysis (principal components method) and the Partial Credit Model (PCM). The scale has been largely used in areas ranging from clinical to social psychology since its release in 1988 by Watson, Clark, and Tellegen. In order to assess validity and item properties (Item Response Theory paradigm), this is study administered PANAS to 354 respondents, 115 male and 239 female subjects, with an average age of 29.5 (SD = 10,18). The results show PANAS’s excellent psychometric properties, with consistent dimensions and reliable item functioning, considering the Rasch measurement paradigm expressed in the PCM as an Item Response Theory model for polytomous data. The study considers important cultural issues and the results support more cautious translations for scales as well as further studies concerned with cross-cultural differences on the perception of affect states.

This research deals with assessing humor appreciation and highlights some of the strategies that can be used in two necessary stages in the construction of a test: the content validity study and the item analysis. First, we analyzed the content validity of a battery of 200 items developed to assess humor appreciation. Second, we analyzed the metric properties of the selected items by means of two studies. The first study was a pre-pilot analysis of the items in a sample of 212 participants, and the second study was a new item analysis in a sample of 344 Spanish people aged between 18 and 71 years. To determine content validity, we calculated interjudge agreement on item-facet theoretical match. Each item was assessed by seven judges, and the selection criterion used was a minimum agreement of 70%. This procedure led to eliminating 27 items.

Subsequent item analyses led to a preliminary proposal for a 40-item scale (Escala de Apreciación del Humor, EAHU [Humor Appreciation Scale]) with appropriate descriptive statistics as well as discrimination and homogeneity values. The internal empirical structure of the scale matched the operative definition of humor appreciation, and the Cronbach’s alpha of the EAHU scores ranged from .72 to .89.

A twin item factor analytic model was developed to test for the presence of noninvariant age, sex, and age by sex interaction effects on the individual DSM-III-R criteria for major depression (MD). Based on 1-year reports, six of the nine MD criteria and duration requirement were found to have covariate factor loading and/or threshold effects that significantly deviated from their corresponding factor level expectations. A significant age effect was found for the binary duration variable factor loading. The ‘loss of interest’, ‘weight problems’ and ‘psychomotor problems’ criteria all displayed forms of threshold only effects. ‘Depressed mood’, ‘fatigue’, and ‘feeling worthless’ had more complex patterns that included both factor loading and threshold effects. A significant factor age by sex interaction effect indicating an increasing female mean difference with age was found to be largely associated with the presence of differential threshold covariate effects. Disagreement between estimated factor scores and DSM-derived affected vs. unaffected classification was ∼ 1.3%. Status on the duration requirement was found to be the one feature common to all discrepancies. The MD criteria set provided maximum information for calibrating MD factor scores in the scale region where discrepancies occurred. The dimensional modeling results are discussed in the broader context of epidemiological research and clinical assessment of major depression.

Background: The present study aims to develop and validate a Chinese version of the Dementia Rating Scale (DRS) for use with Chinese populations in psychogeriatric settings.

Methods: The DRS was translated into Chinese and its content validity was evaluated by an 11-member expert panel. To assess reliability and concurrent validity, 52 subjects with dementia were recruited from medical and psycho-geriatric settings using purposive sampling.

Results: With percentage of agreement as an indicator, 28 out of 36 items (78%) had satisfactory content validity. Items with a percentage of agreement below 70% were reviewed and modified, based on the comments of the experts. The CDRS had excellent test-retest and inter-rater reliability, with intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) at 0.94 and 0.93 respectively. Intraclass correlation coefficients ranged between 0.75 and 0.89 for the subscales. The internal consistency of the CDRS subscale, as measured by Cronbach's α, ranged from 0.57 to 0.82. The CDRS had high correlations with the Chinese Mini-mental State Examination (r=0.80 for total score, r=0.58 to 0.84 for subscales.

Conclusions: The CDRS is a valid instrument for the assessment of dementia in Chinese–speaking subjects.