Internet versus paper-and-pencil survey methods in psychological experiments: Equivalence testing of participant responses to health-related messages

Psychometric properties of the Functional Literacy Questionnaire among Portuguese adolescents

BACKGROUND

Robust tools to assess self-reported adolescent functional health literacy are lacking. In Portugal, the only available tool is the Newest Vital Sign for Portuguese adolescents (NVS-PTeen), though presenting modest validity and reliability properties. A new instrument-the Functional Literacy Questionnaire (FLiQ)-was developed, inspired by the NVS-PTeen, but following the European Regulation for food labeling and targeting a balanced assessment of numeracy and verbal comprehension skills. This study aimed to evaluate several psychometric properties of the FLiQ when administered to Portuguese adolescents.

METHODS

We conducted a longitudinal observational study with three phases: (1) Delphi panel with health literacy experts; (2) self-administration of FLiQ and NVS-PTeen to adolescents in 7th to 9th grades; and (3) re-administration of FLiQ four weeks after baseline, to the same group of participants.

RESULTS

FLiQ's content validity was excellent, with an Average-Content Validity Index of .95. Overall, 372 adolescents (50.3% girls) aged between 12-17 years (median age: 13) participated in the study. Of these, 150 completed the test-retest assessment. Internal consistency was good (Kuder-Richardson Fornula-20 = .70), as well as test-retest reliability (Intraclass Coefficient Correlation = .82). FLiQ total score was weakly correlated with the school year (rho = .174), and moderately with Portuguese (rho = .348) and Mathematics grades (rho = .333). Factor analysis indicated a two-dimension structure, reflecting numeracy and verbal comprehension skills. Item response theory analysis revealed differences in difficulty and discrimination capacity among items, all with adequate fit values.

CONCLUSION

FLiQ is a valid and reliable tool. It can be used to monitor functional health literacy levels in Portuguese adolescents.

Long-term transformational effects of near-death experiences

The purpose of this study was to deepen our understanding of the phenomenon of long-term transformational effects of near-death experiences (NDEs).

METHODS

Participants included 834 individuals who had experienced NDEs. We compared their responses with those of 42 individuals who had faced life-threatening situations (LTEs) without experiencing NDEs, aiming to discern whether transformations could be attributed solely to the proximity to death. We employed chi-square statistics to assess differences in aftereffects reported by the NDE and LTE-only groups. We also conducted a thematic analysis of the participants' narratives to capture a more detailed account of the transformations experienced.

RESULTS

Our central finding reveals a significant transformation in values and spiritual attitudes among participants following their NDEs, as compared to individuals who were faced with life-threatening situations without an NDE. Key transformations include an enhanced belief in divinity and in the afterlife, a decreased fear of death, and increased levels of compassion. Participants also reported a stronger belief in the meaningfulness of life, and a profound shift in life priorities and values, emphasizing the increased importance of their spiritual or religious lives.

CONCLUSIONS

The results support the notion that NDEs lead to a profound spiritual awakening and a reorientation towards life distinct from changes following LTEs without NDEs.

Differences in Presenting Health Warning Labels on Hookah Venue Menus Between Immersive Virtual Reality and Online Surveys

BACKGROUND

Virtual reality (VR) platforms can simulate the real world, whereas online surveys are efficient settings for assessing and testing information. In this study, the effects of presenting health warning labels (HWLs) on hookah venue menus were compared between these two message-testing settings.

METHODS

Separate studies were conducted in VR (n = 96) and online survey (n = 213) settings. Participants in both studies were randomly assigned to view menus with or without HWLs. This secondary data analysis compared outcomes between settings after propensity score weighting to account for differences in age, race, marital status, and education between studies.

RESULTS

Significant between-study differences were noted for the effects of HWLs on people's perceptions of the absolute harm of hookah smoking (p = 0.0363), the relative harm of hookah compared to cigarettes (p < 0.001), the absolute addictiveness of hookah (p < 0.001), and the relative addictiveness of hookah compared to cigarettes (p = 0.0352). When outcome variables differed significantly between the HWL and control conditions in only one of the two studies, smaller p-values were identified for the online survey setting than for the VR setting.

CONCLUSIONS

This study represents the first direct comparison of the effects of hookah HWLs between two message-testing settings. HWLs tested in the online survey setting were associated with larger shifts in attitudes and beliefs than those tested in the VR setting, suggesting that the effectiveness of hookah HWLs on attitudes and beliefs may be moderated by the message-testing platform. Additional real-world experiments remain necessary to determine whether either setting can accurately assess the effectiveness of HWLs.

An investigation into the optimal wear time criteria necessary to reliably estimate physical activity and sedentary behaviour from ActiGraph wGT3X+ accelerometer data in older care home residents

Background

Research protocols regarding the use of ActiGraph wGT3X+ accelerometers in care home residents are yet to be established. The purpose of this study was to identify the minimal wear time criteria required to achieve reliable estimates of physical activity (PA) and sedentary behaviour (SB) in older care home residents.

Methods

Ninety-four older adults from 14 care homes wore an ActiGraph wGT3X+ accelerometer on the right hip for 7 consecutive days. A pragmatic, staged approach was adopted in order to explore the effect of: monitoring day; minimum daily wear time and number of wear days on estimates of four outcomes derived from the accelerometer data: counts^.day^− 1, counts^.minute^− 1, PA time and SB time.

Results

Data from 91 participants (mean age: 84 ± 9 years, 34% male) was included in the analysis. No effect of monitoring day was observed. Lowering the daily wear time to ≥ 8 h (compared to ≥10 h) had no effect on the outcomes of interest. Four days of monitoring was sufficient to provide reliable estimates of all four outcomes.

Conclusion

In this study, a minimum wear time criterion of ≥ 8 h on any 4 days was required to derive reliable estimates of PA and SB from ActiGraph wGT3X+ accelerometer data in older care home residents.

Study protocol for a type III hybrid effectiveness-implementation trial of strategies to implement firearm safety promotion as a universal suicide prevention strategy in pediatric primary care

Background

Insights from behavioral economics, or how individuals’ decisions and behaviors are shaped by finite cognitive resources (e.g., time, attention) and mental heuristics, have been underutilized in efforts to increase the use of evidence-based practices in implementation science. Using the example of firearm safety promotion in pediatric primary care, which addresses an evidence-to-practice gap in universal suicide prevention, we aim to determine: is a less costly and more scalable behavioral economic-informed implementation strategy (i.e., “Nudge”) powerful enough to change clinician behavior or is a more intensive and expensive facilitation strategy needed to overcome implementation barriers?

Methods

The Adolescent and child Suicide Prevention in Routine clinical Encounters (ASPIRE) hybrid type III effectiveness-implementation trial uses a longitudinal cluster randomized design. We will test the comparative effectiveness of two implementation strategies to support clinicians’ use of an evidence-based firearm safety practice, S.A.F.E. Firearm, in 32 pediatric practices across two health systems. All pediatric practices in the two health systems will receive S.A.F.E. Firearm materials, including training and cable locks. Half of the practices (k = 16) will be randomized to receive Nudge; the other half (k = 16) will be randomized to receive Nudge plus 1 year of facilitation to target additional practice and clinician implementation barriers (Nudge+). The primary implementation outcome is parent-reported clinician fidelity to the S.A.F.E Firearm program. Secondary implementation outcomes include reach and cost. To understand how the implementation strategies work, the primary mechanism to be tested is practice adaptive reserve, a self-report practice-level measure that includes relationship infrastructure, facilitative leadership, sense-making, teamwork, work environment, and culture of learning.

Discussion

The ASPIRE trial will integrate implementation science and behavioral economic approaches to advance our understanding of methods for implementing evidence-based firearm safety promotion practices in pediatric primary care. The study answers a question at the heart of many practice change efforts: which strategies are sufficient to support change, and why? Results of the trial will offer valuable insights into how best to implement evidence-based practices that address sensitive health matters in pediatric primary care.

Trial registration

ClinicalTrials.gov, NCT04844021. Registered 14 April 2021.

Supplementary Information

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s13012-021-01154-8.

An Investigation into the Acquired Capability for Suicide

OBJECTIVE

The acquired capability for suicide (ACS) is one of the most important breakthroughs in suicide research. ACS refers to an individual's increased fearlessness about death over time from experiencing painful and provocative events (PPE) and is based on opponent-process theory-a habituation model. Few studies have investigated how ACS develops and found that ACS remained relatively stagnant.

METHOD

This study sought to expand these findings by observing how ACS develops in two cross-sectional data sets involving high-risk nonclinical samples of physicians (n = 419) and veterinary students (n = 124). Participants completed online questionnaires assessing both general PPEs (e.g., witnessing abuse) and job-specific PPEs (e.g., exposure to euthanasia), as well as ACS.

RESULTS

Our results partially replicated prior findings indicating that more PPEs do not significantly affect ACS.

CONCLUSIONS

Limitations of this study include the use of cross-sectional data and self-report measures. These results, in combination with existing models of habituation, suggest ACS may not progress linearly.

Focusing on situation-specific expectations in major depression as basis for behavioural experiments - Development of the Depressive Expectations Scale

OBJECTIVES

Dysfunctional expectations are considered to be core features of various mental disorders. The aim of the study was to develop the Depressive Expectations Scale (DES) as a depression-specific measure for the assessment of dysfunctional expectations. Whereas previous research primarily focused on general cognitions and attitudes, the DES assesses 25 future-directed expectations (originally 75 items) which are situation-specific and falsifiable.

DESIGN AND METHODS

To evaluate the psychometric properties of the DES, the scale was completed by 175 participants with and without severe depressive symptoms in an online survey. Participants additionally completed the Patient Health Questionnaire modules for depression (PHQ-9) and anxiety (GAD-7). People experiencing depressive symptoms were informed about the study with the help of self-help organizations.

RESULTS

Reliability analyses indicated excellent internal consistency of the scale. An exploratory factor analyses revealed four factors: social rejection, social support, mood regulation, and ability to perform. The DES sum score strongly correlated with the severity of depressive symptoms. The DES sum score also significantly correlated with symptoms of generalized anxiety.

CONCLUSION

The DES was shown to have excellent reliability; validity analyses were promising. As the DES items are situation-specific and falsifiable, they can be tested by the individual using behavioural experiments and may therefore facilitate cognitive restructuring. Thus, a structured assessment of patients' expectation with help of the DES can provide a basis for interventions within cognitive-behavioural treatment of depression.

PRACTITIONER POINTS

Assessing situation-specific expectations in patients experiencing depressive symptoms can provide a basis for the conduction of behavioural experiments to test patients' expectations. For the use of behavioural experiments, therapists should choose those dysfunctional expectations which a patient strongly agrees on. To modify patients' expectations, they should be exposed to situations where the discrepancy between patients' expectations and actual situational outcomes can be maximized. The Depressive Expectations Scale can be completed repeatedly to monitor a patient's progress within cognitive-behavioural treatment.

An examination of the equivalency of self-report measures obtained from crowdsourced versus undergraduate student samples

Increasingly, researchers have begun to explore the potential of the Internet to reach beyond the traditional undergraduate sample. In the present study, we sought to compare the data obtained from a conventional undergraduate college-student sample to data collected via two online survey recruitment platforms. In order to examine whether the data sampled from the three populations were equivalent, we conducted a test of equivalency using inferential confidence intervals-an approach that differs from the more traditional null hypothesis significance testing. The results showed that the data obtained via the two online recruitment platforms, the Amazon Mechanical Turk crowdsourcing site and the virtual environment of Second Life, were statistically equivalent to the data obtained from the college sample, on the basis of means of standardized measures of psychological stress and sleep quality. Additionally, correlations between the sleep and stress measures were not statistically different between the groups. These results, along with practical considerations for the use of these recruitment platforms, are discussed, and recommendations for other researchers who may be considering the use of these platforms are provided.

Factors related to meeting physical activity guidelines in active college students: A social cognitive perspective

OBJECTIVE

To examine the relations of sex, exercise self-efficacy, outcome expectations, and social support with meeting physical activity guidelines (PAGs).

PARTICIPANTS

Three hundred ninety-six college students participated in this study in the summer 2013.

METHODS

Students completed online questionnaires that assessed physical activity behaviors and psychosocial factors (ie, self-efficacy, outcome expectancies, and social support). Students' physical activity profile was categorized as meeting no PAGs, meeting aerobic PAGs only, meeting muscle-strengthening PAGs only, or meeting both PAGs.

RESULTS

A multinomial logistic regression revealed that students' sex and psychosocial factors significantly affected the odds of meeting any and all PAGs. Sex significantly moderated the relationship between outcome expectancy and meeting aerobic PAGs and between outcome expectancy meeting muscle-strengthening PAGs.

CONCLUSIONS

Results indicate that interventions designed to increase psychosocial factors may increase the likelihood of students meeting any and all PAGs. Social support may be especially beneficial for increasing muscle-strengthening activity.

Defining equivalence in medical education evaluation and research: does a distribution-based approach work?

Educators often seek to demonstrate the equivalence of groups, such as whether or not students achieve comparable success regardless of the site at which they trained. A methodological consideration that is often underappreciated is how to operationalize equivalence. This study examined whether a distribution-based approach, based on effect size, can identify an appropriate equivalence threshold for medical education data. Thirty-nine individuals rated program site equivalence on a series of simulated pairwise bar graphs representing one of four measures with which they had prior experience: (1) undergraduate academic achievement, (2) a student experience survey, (3) an Objective Structured Clinical Exam global rating scale, or (4) a licensing exam. Descriptive statistics and repeated measures ANOVA examined the effects on equivalence ratings of (a) the difference between means, (b) variability in scores, and (c) which program site (the larger or smaller) scored higher. The equivalence threshold was defined as the point at which 50 % of participants rated the sites as non-equivalent. Across the four measures, the equivalence thresholds converged to average effect size of Cohen's d = 0.57 (range of 0.50-0.63). This corresponded to an average mean difference of 10 % (range of 3-13 %). These results are discussed in reference to findings from the health-related quality of life field that has demonstrated that d = 0.50 represents a consistent threshold for perceived change. This study provides preliminary empirically-based guidance for defining an equivalence threshold for researchers and evaluators conducting equivalence tests.

Pro Free Will Priming Enhances "Risk-Taking" Behavior in the Iowa Gambling Task, but Not in the Balloon Analogue Risk Task: Two Independent Priming Studies

Studies indicated that people behave less responsibly after exposure to information containing deterministic statements as compared to free will statements or neutral statements. Thus, deterministic primes should lead to enhanced risk-taking behavior. We tested this prediction in two studies with healthy participants. In experiment 1, we tested 144 students (24 men) in the laboratory using the Iowa Gambling Task. In experiment 2, we tested 274 participants (104 men) online using the Balloon Analogue Risk Task. In the Iowa Gambling Task, the free will priming condition resulted in more risky decisions than both the deterministic and neutral priming conditions. We observed no priming effects on risk-taking behavior in the Balloon Analogue Risk Task. To explain these unpredicted findings, we consider the somatic marker hypothesis, a gain frequency approach as well as attention to gains and / or inattention to losses. In addition, we highlight the necessity to consider both pro free will and deterministic priming conditions in future studies. Importantly, our and previous results indicate that the effects of pro free will and deterministic priming do not oppose each other on a frequently assumed continuum.

Are We Modular Lying Cues Detectors? The Answer Is "Yes, Sometimes"

We quickly form first impressions about newly encountered people guiding our subsequent behaviour (approach, avoidance). Such instant judgments might be innate and automatic, being performed unconsciously and independently to other cognitive processes. Lying detection might be subject to such a modular process. Unfortunately, numerous studies highlighted problems with lying detection paradigms such as high error rates and learning effects. Additionally, humans should be motivated doing both detecting others’ lies and disguising own lies. Disguising own lies might even be more challenging than detecting other people’s lies. Thus, when trying to disguise cheating behaviour, liars might display a mixture of disguising (fake) trust cues and uncontrolled lying cues making the interpretation of the expression difficult (perceivers are guessing). In two consecutive online studies, we tested whether seeing an increasing amount (range 0–4) of lying cues (LC) and non-lying cues (NLC) on a standard face results in enhanced guessing behaviour (studies 1 and 2) and that enhanced guessing is accompanied by slower responding (study 2). Results showed that pronounced guessing and slowest responding occurred for faces with an intermediate number and not with the highest number of LC and NLC. In particular, LC were more important than NLC to uncertain lying decisions. Thus, only a few LC may interfere with automatic processing of lying detection (irrespective of NLC), probably because too little lying cue information is yet available.

Reliability and validity of a self-report emotional expressivity measure: The Japanese version of the Berkeley Expressivity Questionnaire

AIM

This study developed the Japanese version of the Berkeley Expressivity Questionnaire (BEQ), a self-report measure of three emotional expressivity facets, and provided evidence of its reliability and validity.

METHODS

Five hundred and four students answered an online survey. To determine test-retest reliability, 241 of the participants completed the Japanese version of the BEQ again approximately 1 month after initial surveying was completed.

RESULTS

Cronbach's alpha coefficients were 0.83 for the BEQ full scale, and 0.61-0.77 for subscales. Test-retest correlations were 0.61 for the full scale, and 0.57-0.61 for subscales. Construct validity was demonstrated by correlations between BEQ scores and scores on measures of emotional expressivity, self-monitoring, self-esteem, depression, "Big Five" (neuroticism, extraversion, openness, agreeableness, and conscientiousness) personality traits, and emotional control.

CONCLUSION

The Japanese version of the BEQ has adequate internal consistency, reliability, and construct validity. Test-retest reliability was lower than that of the original scale. This study was the first in Japan to develop a self-rating questionnaire assessing multiple facets of emotional expressivity.

Affective and restorative valences for three environmental categories

The present study evaluated images of environments in three categories with different affective and restorative valences through two computerized assessments. A non-verbal computerized response scale and the Mexican Scale of Environmental Restoration Perception were employed. 104 students assessed the affective qualities of 117 images (47 natural, 37 urban with nature, and 33 built-up without nature) according to pleasure and activation dimensions. Then 96 students assessed 54 images with high and low valence for their restorative quality. Natural images were found to generate positive affective reactions of liking and activation and high restorative quality. Affective responses to urban with nature environments tended to be positive with moderate restorative quality. Built-up without nature environments were perceived as less pleasant and had low restorative quality. However, among built-up without nature environments, some settings with striking architectural qualities evoked positive affective valences.

The effect of caffeine on spontaneous pupillary oscillations

PURPOSE

Caffeine stimulates the central nervous system, but the duration and extent of its influence on the pupil are not known. The aim of this study was to determine whether caffeine could have an effect on pupillary sleepiness waves, measured with the Pupillographic Sleepiness Test (PST) during routine clinical PST testing, where the caffeine dose-response of a participant cannot be registered before recording.

METHODS

Twenty participants (aged between 22 and 51 years, (mean 30.9 years ± 8.9 SD, 11 women and nine men),.were tested at seven different time-points over 4.5 h. Each participant was tested under four conditions with coffee drunk or not between 1 and 2 h before the first measurement and/or 15 min afterwards.

RESULTS

Caffeine caused a reduction in the Pupillary Unrest Index (PUI) with a maximal effect 1.25 h after consumption. A prolonged effect is found if coffee was consumed between 1 and 2 h before the first measurement. More excessive coffee consumers show prolongation of the effect. Subjective scales of sleepiness, alertness and craving for caffeine were significantly correlated to linear logarithm of PUI (lnPUI).

CONCLUSIONS

We conclude that caffeine causes a dampening of the pupillary oscillations in well-rested participants. As caffeine consumption can affect the PST for up to 6.5 h after intake, it is recommended that if PST measurements are to be carried out in the morning, caffeine consumption should not be allowed after midnight.

Health anxiety, cognitive coping, and emotion regulation: a latent variable approach

BACKGROUND

Health anxiety, the fear or conviction of suffering from a severe disorder, represents a dimensional and multifactorial construct consisting of cognitive, behavioral, affective, and perceptual components. It has recently been proposed that dysfunctional emotion regulation strategies contribute to health anxiety, but the empirical evidence for this claim is sparse.

PURPOSE

The current research was aimed at broadly exploring and clarifying possible relationships between dimensions of health anxiety and cognitive coping and emotion regulation strategies.

METHOD

In two studies with non-clinical samples (n study 1 = 172; n study 2 = 242), health anxiety, cognitive coping, and emotion regulation strategies were assessed using multidimensional self-report measures. Functional (e.g., reappraisal) and dysfunctional (e.g., rumination) cognitive coping and emotion regulation strategies were differentiated.

RESULTS

Using structural equation modeling, the results of Study 1 revealed significant and consistent associations between the dimensions of health anxiety and dysfunctional coping and emotion regulation strategies. Study 2 replicated and extended the main findings of Study 1 by demonstrating that the associations between health anxiety and strategies of coping and emotion regulation were independent of the current level of depressive symptoms.

CONCLUSION

Health anxiety was found to be associated with dysfunctional coping and emotion regulation strategies (e.g., suppression). The positive associations between behavioral dimensions of health anxiety (e.g., seeking reassurance) and dysfunctional coping strategies may suggest that behavioral dimensions of health anxiety serve as a compensatory strategy to overcome difficulties in cognitive coping.

Ein national gefördertes Onlinelabor als Infrastruktur für die psychologische Forschung

Momentan besteht hohes wissenschaftspolitisches Interesse an der Entwicklung von Forschungsinfrastrukturen in allen Wissenschaftsbereichen. Wir plädieren dafür, ein national gefördertes Onlinelabor für die psychologische Forschung in diesen Diskurs einzubringen. Dieses Labor sollte einen großen Teilnehmerpool, notwendige Software-Tools, edukative Komponenten (Methodenberatung) sowie Schnittstellen zu Datenarchiven zur Verfügung stellen. Die Vorteile einer solchen Einrichtung werden auf der Basis von Effizienzbetrachtungen sowie methodischen und forschungsethischen Überlegungen verdeutlicht. Abschließend diskutieren wir mittelfristige Entwicklungspotenziale eines Nationalen Onlinelabors.

Rape Avoidance Behavior among Slovak Women

Rape has been a recurrent adaptive problem for many species, including humans. Rape is costly to women in terms of disease transmission, partner abandonment, and unwanted pregnancy (among other costs). Therefore, behavioral strategies which allow women to avoid coercive men may have been favored by selection. In line with this evolutionary reasoning, the current research documented that physically stronger women and those in a committed romantic relationship reported more rape avoidance behavior. In addition, virgin women tended to perform more rape avoidance behavior compared with their non-virgin counterparts. Women with high conception risk perceived themselves as physically stronger, which may protect them against a potential rapist. Fear of unwanted pregnancy from rape decreased as age increased, reflecting higher fertility among younger participants. However, older women reported more rape avoidance behavior, which contradicts evolutionary predictions. The results provide some support for evolutionary hypotheses of rape avoidance behavior which suggest that woman's perception of rape is influenced by parental investment and perceived physical condition.

Beyond Gender Differences

Proponents of what has been termed the Gender Similarities Hypothesis (GSH) have typically relied on meta-analyses as well as the generation of nonsignificant tests of mean differences to support their argument that the genders are more similar than they are different. In the present article, we argue that alternative statistical methodologies, such as tests of equivalence, can provide more accurate (yet equally rigorous) tests of these hypotheses and therefore might serve to complement, challenge, and/or extend findings from meta-analyses. To demonstrate and test the usefulness of such procedures, we examined Scholastic Aptitude Test–Math (SAT-M) data to determine the degree of similarity between genders in the historically gender-stereotyped field of mathematics. Consistent with previous findings, our results suggest that men and women performed similarly on the SAT-M for every year that we examined (1996–2009). Importantly, our statistical approach provides a greater opportunity to open a dialogue on theoretical issues surrounding what does and what should constitute a meaningful difference in intelligence and achievement. As we note in the discussion, it remains important to consider whether even very small but consistent gender differences in mean test performance could reflect stereotype threat in the testing environment and/or gender biases in the test itself that would be important to address.

Predicting changes in delusional ideation: the role of mindfulness and negative schemas

OBJECTIVES

Understanding factors that contribute to delusional ideation has important clinical implications. This study looked at the impact of mindfulness and negative schemas on changes in delusional ideation over time.

DESIGN

A sample of University students was selected to investigate processes related to delusional ideation in a non-clinical sample.

METHOD

A web-based survey was completed by 700 University students, 204 of whom completed a second identical survey after 6 months, to comprise the longitudinal sample.

RESULTS

Results from the study demonstrated that negative schemas and mindfulness were related to changes in delusional ideation over time and support was found for a mediated model, whereby mindfulness mediated the impact of schemas on the outcome.

CONCLUSIONS

The findings point to the importance of mindfulness as an intervention for preventing non-clinical delusional ideation transitioning into clinical delusions.

The influence of sensitivity to reward and punishment, propensity for sensation seeking, depression, and anxiety on the risky behaviour of novice drivers: a path model

Young novice drivers are significantly more likely to be killed or injured in car crashes than older, experienced drivers. Graduated driver licensing (GDL), which allows the novice to gain driving experience under less-risky circumstances, has resulted in reduced crash incidence; however, the driver's psychological traits are ignored. This paper explores the relationships between gender, age, anxiety, depression, sensitivity to reward and punishment, sensation-seeking propensity, and risky driving. Participants were 761 young drivers aged 17-24 (M=19.00, SD=1.56) with a Provisional (intermediate) driver's licence who completed an online survey comprising socio-demographic questions, the Impulsive Sensation Seeking Scale, Kessler's Psychological Distress Scale, the Sensitivity to Punishment and Sensitivity to Reward Questionnaire, and the Behaviour of Young Novice Drivers Scale. Path analysis revealed depression, reward sensitivity, and sensation-seeking propensity predicted the self-reported risky behaviour of the young novice drivers. Gender was a moderator; and the anxiety level of female drivers also influenced their risky driving. Interventions do not directly consider the role of rewards and sensation seeking, or the young person's mental health. An approach that does take these variables into account may contribute to improved road safety outcomes for both young and older road users.

The impact of stressors on second generation Indian Residential School survivors

From 1863 to 1996, many Aboriginal children in Canada were forced to attend Indian Residential Schools (IRSs), where many experienced neglect, abuse, and the trauma of separation from their families and culture. The present study examined the intergenerational impact of IRS exposure on depressive symptomatology in a convenience sample of 143 First Nations adults. IRS experiences had adverse intergenerational effects in that First Nations adults who had a parent attend IRS (n = 67) reported greater depressive symptoms compared to individuals whose parents did not attend (n = 76). Parental IRS attendance moderated the relations between stressor experiences (adverse childhood experiences, adult traumas, and perceived discrimination) and depressive symptoms, such that second generation Survivors exhibited greater symptomatology. Adverse childhood experiences partially mediated the relation between parental IRS attendance and both adult trauma and perceived discrimination. Moreover, both of these adulthood stressors partially mediated the relation between adverse childhood experiences and depressive symptoms. Finally, all three stressors demonstrated a unique mediating role in the relation between parental IRS attendance and depressive symptoms. Although alternative directional paths could not be ruled out, offspring of IRS Survivors appeared at increased risk for depression, likely owing to greater sensitivity to and experiences of childhood adversity, adult traumas, and perceived discrimination.

The complexity of personality: advantages of a genetically sensitive multi-group design

Findings from many behavioral genetic studies utilizing the classical twin design suggest that genetic and non-shared environmental effects play a significant role in human personality traits. This study focuses on the methodological advantages of extending the sampling frame to include multiple dyads of relatives. We investigated the sensitivity of heritability estimates to the inclusion of sibling pairs, mother-child pairs and grandparent-grandchild pairs from the German Socio-Economic Panel Study in addition to a classical German twin sample consisting of monozygotic- and dizygotic twins. The resulting dataset contained 1.308 pairs, including 202 monozygotic and 147 dizygotic twin pairs, along with 419 sibling pairs, 438 mother-child dyads, and 102 grandparent-child dyads. This genetically sensitive multi-group design allowed the simultaneous testing of additive and non-additive genetic, common and specific environmental effects, including cultural transmission and twin-specific environmental influences. Using manifest and latent modeling of phenotypes (i.e., controlling for measurement error), we compare results from the extended sample with those from the twin sample alone and discuss implications for future research.

Using the Internet to prescreen participants for research on interpersonal violence: experimental design considerations

Internet-based testing has become increasingly popular in recent years due largely to the availability of computers and the Web to research participants. For researchers studying interpersonal violence, Internet-based methodologies can also be used as a prescreening device to identify a population of interest, such as individuals reporting violence in their relationships. However, several challenges exist with this approach. This article evaluates the use of an Internet-based prescreening device to identify potential participants for a study on interpersonal violence, highlighting challenges encountered with this methodology, and offers suggestions for improvement in experimental design when conducting Internet-based screenings of interpersonal violence.