The Psychometric Properties of the Relaxation/Meditation/Mindfulness (RMM) Tracker t Inventory in an Iranian Population

Background. A growing body of research has examined the psychometric properties of popular mindfulness inventories for different population. The present study is aimed at exploring the psychometric properties and factor structure of the Relaxation/Meditation/Mindfulness (RMM) Tracker t Inventory in Iran. Method. This was a cross-sectional and methodological study that conducted in Kerman, southeast Iran. Fifty, 300, and 163 Iranian adult participants were participated in the pilot, exploratory, and confirmatory phase, respectively. Face, content, and structural validities, Cronbach’s alpha, and Omega coefficient were used to validate the Persian scale. Results. The results showed that the “Persian version of RMM t” had acceptable content and face validities. The Principal Axis Factoring (PAF) with Promax Rotation showed that the P-RMM t has 3 scales of “Mindful Love, Thankfulness, and Transcendence,” “Relaxation,” and “Mindful Deepening” which further confirmed with confirmatory factor analysis. The internal consistency of all three scales was acceptable (Cronbach’s alpha coefficients > 80 ). Conclusion. The Persian version of RMM Tracker t seems to be a valid and reliable questionnaire to assess the levels of mindfulness in the Iranian general population.

PERBANDINGAN PRINCIPAL AXIS FACTORING DAN MAXIMUM LIKELIHOOD DALAM MENENTUKAN FAKTOR DOMINAN YANG MEMPENGARUHI PEMBELAJARAN NAHWU SHOROF (STUDI KASUS PONDOK PESANTREN ROUDLOTUL MUTA’ALLIMIN PUTRI)

This study discusses the dominant factors that influence the success of learning nahwu shorof at the Roudlotul Mutaalimin Islamic Boarding School for the daughter of Minggirsari Village. Determining the dominant factor is done to maximize the quality of education in the boarding school, so that the interest of prospective students is increasing. In this study, two extraction methods were compared, namely the Principal Axis Factoring and Maximum Likelihood methods. There are 13 variables that affect the success of nahwu shorof learning, namely the natural environment (P1), social environment (P23), curriculum (P49), madrasa program (P1012), facilities and facilities (P1315), teaching staff (P1619), condition of physiological (P2021), condition of the five senses (P22), interest in learning (P2325), intelligence of students (P26), student talent (P27), motivation of students (P28), cognitive ability (P2930). The purpose of this study, namely to determine the most appropriate extraction method used in the analysis. The result of this study is the Maximum Likelihood method which is more appropriate than the Principal Axis Factoring method, because it has a smaller RMSE (Root Mean Squared Error) value.

Algorithmic jingle jungle: A comparison of implementations of principal axis factoring and promax rotation in R and SPSS

A statistical procedure is assumed to produce comparable results across programs. Using the case of an exploratory factor analysis procedure—principal axis factoring (PAF) and promax rotation—we show that this assumption is not always justified. Procedures with equal names are sometimes implemented differently across programs: a jingle fallacy. Focusing on two popular statistical analysis programs, we indeed discovered a jingle jungle for the above procedure: Both PAF and promax rotation are implemented differently in the psych R package and in SPSS. Based on analyses with 247 real and 216,000 simulated data sets implementing 108 different data structures, we show that these differences in implementations can result in fairly different factor solutions for a variety of different data structures. Differences in the solutions for real data sets ranged from negligible to very large, with 42% displaying at least one different indicator-to-factor correspondence. A simulation study revealed systematic differences in accuracies between different implementations, and large variation between data structures, with small numbers of indicators per factor, high factor intercorrelations, and weak factors resulting in the lowest accuracies. Moreover, although there was no single combination of settings that was superior for all data structures, we identified implementations of PAF and promax that maximize performance on average. We recommend researchers to use these implementations as best way through the jungle, discuss model averaging as a potential alternative, and highlight the importance of adhering to best practices of scale construction.

Exploratory Factor Analysis for Identifying Comorbidities as Risk Factors Among Patients with Cied

The emergence of SARS-CoV-2 affected care both for acute and chronic health conditions. Majority of the patients with cardiac implantable electronic devices (CIEDs) have multiple comorbidities, which can influence their response to COVID-19. An online survey consisting of 45 multiple-choice question was designed for CIED patients assessing comorbidities and overall health condition during September -December 2020. A multivariate analysis based on principal axis factoring (PAF) was performed on the eligible 184 survey response. Three factors were identified. Ten-year survival rates were calculated with Charlson Comorbidity Index. The extracted factors explained 66.1% of the cumulative variance and were consistent with medical literature data.

Development and Validation of News Addiction Scale

The current study was undertaken in order to construct a psychometrically sound measure of news addiction for Pakistani people. The research comprised of three studies. The first study dealt with the development of News Addiction Scale (NAS) for Pakistani people. The items of the scale were empirically determined for content validation and an exploratory factor analysis was undertaken on a purposive sample of 247 individuals (men = 183, women = 64; with a mean age of 40.1 years, SD = 15.2 years). Thirty items were subjected to Principal Axis Factoring and the resulting scree plot and Eigenvalues evidenced a single factor solution with 19 items, which accounted for 53.96% of the variance. In the second study, a confirmatory factor analysis was carried out on a sample of 240 participants and the results revealed an excellent model fit to the data, which validated the unidimensional structure of the scale. Study III of the present research was conducted on a purposive sample of 100 individuals and it provided a convincing evidence of convergent validity of the scale as significant positive correlation was observed between news addiction and behavioral activation and concurrent validity as individuals with more duration of exposure had significantly higher mean score on the NAS. Across the two studies, the Cronbach alpha of the scale remained ≥ .90. These pieces of evidence suggested that NAS would be a promising indigenous measure of news addiction.

Assessing Teacher and Librarian Collaboration: A Preliminary Report

Exploratory factor analysis was used to examine the structure of a 32-item teacher and librarian collaboration survey (TLC-II). The survey consisted of two scales with 16 items in each scale, Frequency and Importance to Student Learning. Scores from teacher surveys (N=194) were examined using principal axis factoring and oblique rotation to identify underlying constructs. A four factor interpretable structure of teacher and librarian collaboration emerged providing support for a proposed model of teacher and librarian collaboration. Internal consistency was high for the overall scale and for each of the factors. The results of this study provide a basis for further refinement of the instrument in preparation for broad distribution among teachers and librarians.

A preliminary study: designing and validating projective images of Young’s early maladaptive schema (EMS) domains

Background This study aims to design and validate ten projective images of Young’s Early Maladaptive Schema (EMS) domains. For this purpose, two questions are to be addressed. (1) How is the factorial structure of the projective images of EMS domains? (2) Do the images designed in the domains of disconnection and rejection, impaired autonomy and performance, impaired limits, other-directedness, and over-vigilance and inhibition have sufficient validity? Methods This is an applied mixed-methods exploratory study, in which the statistical population consisted of psychologists from Tehran Province in the qualitative section (n = 8) as well as other individuals aged between 18 and 65 years (mean age = 33) from Qazvin in the quantitative section (n = 102) in 2018. The research questions were analyzed through principal axis factoring with a varimax rotation, confirmatory factor analysis, Pearson correlation coefficient, and Cronbach’s alpha. Results According to the results, ten images and five domains of Young’s EMSs contribute to a simple structure. Accounting for 70.35% of the total variance of EMSs, the five dimensions include disconnection and rejection, impaired autonomy and performance, impaired limits, other-directedness, and over-vigilance and inhibition. Conclusions The results indicated that the designed projective images yielded acceptable construct validity.

Exploring the Factor Structure of the Glasgow Children’s Benefit Inventory: New Recommendations for Reporting Results

Objective: Patient-reported outcomes can be useful for reporting benefit from non-life-saving interventions, but often they report a single overall score, which means that much information on the specific areas of benefit is lost. Our aim was to perform a new factor analysis on the Glasgow Children’s Benefit Inventory (GCBI) to create subscales reflecting domains of benefit. Further aims were to assess the internal consistency of the GCBI, and to develop guidelines for reporting both a total score and sub-scales in future studies. Methods: We collected 4 existing datasets of GCBI data from children who have undergone tonsillectomy, ventilation tube insertion, pinnaplasty, and submucous diathermy to the inferior turbinates. We performed exploratory factor analysis with principal axis factoring with varimax rotation, we sought redundancy in question items, and we measured internal consistency. Results: Using the combined dataset of 772 cases, we found 4 factors which accounted for 64% of the variance and which we have labeled “Psycho-social,” “Physical health,” “Behavior,” and “Vitality.” Subscale results varied in predictable ways depending on the nature of the intervention. Cronbach’s alpha was 0.928. Item-total correlations were high, and no item could be deleted to improve alpha. Floor effects were apparent for various questions but were not consistent between different interventions. Conclusions: The GCBI contains a range of questions which each add value in different clinical interventions. We can now make recommendations for reporting the results of the GCBI and its 4 new subscales.

Algorithmic Jingle Jungle: A Comparison of Implementations of Principal Axis Factoring and Promax Rotation in R and SPSS

A statistical procedure is assumed to produce comparable results across programs. Using the case of an exploratory factor analysis procedure—principal axis factoring (PAF) and promax rotation—we show that this assumption is not always justified. Procedures with equal names are sometimes implemented differently across programs: a jingle fallacy. Focusing on two popular statistical analysis programs, we indeed discovered a jingle jungle for the above procedure: Both PAF and promax rotation are implemented differently in the psych R package and in SPSS. Based on analyses with 230 real and 216,000 simulated data sets implementing 108 different data structures, we show that these differences in implementations can result in fairly different factor solutions for a variety of different data structures. Differences in the solutions for real data sets ranged from negligible to very large, with 38% displaying at least one different indicator-to-factor correspondence. A simulation study revealed systematic differences in accuracies between different implementations, and large variation between data structures, with small numbers of indicators per factor, high factor intercorrelations, and weak factors resulting in the lowest accuracies. Moreover, although there was no single combination of settings that was superior for all data structures, we identified implementations of PAF and promax that maximize performance on average. We recommend researchers to use these implementations as best way through the jungle, discuss model averaging as a potential alternative, and highlight the importance of adhering to best practices of scale construction.

A Scripture-Specific Religious Orientation Scale: Development and Validation

Objectives: to develop a novel religious orientation scale based on the Quran and validate it with pre-university students of secondary education Method: All the Quranic ayat which addressed its believers directly regarding their religious orientation were scrutinized in terms of pre-university students’ characteristics, resulting in the selection of 57 upon which a 60-item Quranic Orientation Scale (QOS) was developed. The scale was administered to 1123 students and their responses were subjected to Principal Axis Factoring and Promax with Kaiser Normalization (PKN). Results: Out of 60 items comprising the QOS, 48 loaded acceptably and exclusively on seven rotated factors called believing in holy scriptures,, remembering and seeking Allah, fulfilling Quranic obligations, following Allah confidently, following Quranic instructions, not befriending disbelievers, and informed Quranic struggle. Both the scale and its underlying factors had internal consistency and correlated significantly with each other. Conclusion: The Quran teaches the domain of religious orientation directly to its readers as a hierarchically and culturally independent schema consisting of specific species and genera. Pre-university student, however, not only reduce the domain as regards the number of its constituting species and genera but also develop their own religious families. Going through this process consciously they render their religious orientation a hierarchically and culturally organized schema.