Improving Measurement in Couple and Family Therapy: An Item Response Theory Primer

Are In-the-Moment Resilience Processes Predicted by Questionnaire-Based Measures of Resilience?

Research on resilience is a growing field, and resilience has been conceptualized and operationalized in multiple ways. The aim of this study was to compare the Brief Resilient Coping Scale (BRCS), a conventional measure of resilience, with within-person process indicators derived from experience sampling method (ESM). A sample of 177 teachers from southern Finland participated in the study, commencing with a startup session followed by an 8-day ESM period. Through twice-daily prompts, participants reported their immediate positive and negative affect as well as recent stressors encountered, such as workload and challenging social interactions. As expected, within-person variation in affect was predicted by stressors. However, contrary to expectations, individual differences in affective reactivity to stressors were not predicted by BRCS (βpositive affect [95% CI] = -.20, [-.51, .11]; βnegative affect = .33, [-.07, .69]). Item response theory analyses of the BRCS revealed problems with precision. The results call into question the validity of measuring resilience using single administrations of retrospective self-report questionnaires such as the BRCS.

Psychometric Evaluation of Single-Item Relationship Satisfaction, Love, Conflict, and Commitment Measures

Issues in applied survey research, including minimizing respondent burden and ensuring measures' brevity for smartphone administration, have intensified efforts to create short measures. We conducted two studies on the psychometric properties of single-item satisfaction, love, conflict, and commitment measures. Study 1 was longitudinal, surveying college-age dating couples at three monthly waves (n =121, 84, and 68 couples at the respective waves). Partners completed single- and multi-item measures of the four constructs, along with other variables, to examine test-retest reliability and convergent, concurrent, and predictive validity. Single-item measures of satisfaction, love, and commitment exhibited impressive psychometric qualities, but our single-item conflict measure performed somewhat less strongly. Study 2, a cross-sectional online survey (n = 280), showed strong convergent validity of the single-item measures, including that of conflict.