The Relationship of Insufficient Effort Responding and Response Styles: An Online Experiment

While self-report data is a staple of modern psychological studies, they rely on participants accurately self-reporting. Two constructs that impede accurate results are insufficient effort responding (IER) and response styles. These constructs share conceptual underpinnings and both utilized to reduce cognitive effort when responding to self-report scales. Little research has extensively explored the relationship of the two constructs. The current study explored the relationship of the two constructs across even-point and odd-point scales, as well as before and after data cleaning procedures. We utilized IRTrees, a statistical method for modeling response styles, to examine the relationship between IER and response styles. To capture the wide range of IER metrics available, we employed several forms of IER assessment in our analyses and generated IER factors based on the type of IER being detected. Our results indicated an overall modest relationship between IER and response styles, which varied depending on the type of IER metric being considered or type of scale being evaluated. As expected, data cleaning also changed the relationships of some of the variables. We posit the difference between the constructs may be the degree of cognitive effort participants are willing to expend. Future research and applications are discussed.

Latent Markov Factor Analysis: A Mixture Modeling Approach for Evaluating Within- and Between-Person Measurement Model Differences in Intensive Longitudinal Data

SUMMARY DOCTORAL DISSERTATION: Experience sampling methodology, in which participants are repeatedly questioned via smartphone apps, is popular for studying psychological constructs or “factors” (e.g., well-being or depression) within persons over time. The validity of such studies (e.g., concerning treatment decisions) may be hampered by distortions of the measurement of the relevant constructs due to response styles or item interpretations that change over time and differ across persons. In this PhD project, we developed a new approach to evaluate person- and time-point-specific distortions of the construct measurements, taking into account the specific characteristics of (time-intensive) longitudinal data inherent to experience sampling studies. Our new approach, latent Markov factor analysis, extends mixture factor analysis and clusters time-points within persons according to their factor model. The factor model describes how well items measure the constructs. With the new approach, researchers can examine how many and which factor models underlie the data, for which persons and time-points they apply, and thus which observations are validly comparable. Such insights can also be interesting in their own right. In personalized healthcare, for example, detecting changes in response styles is critical for accurate decisions about treatment allocation over time, as response styles may be related to the occurrence of depressive episodes.

Parental Response Style to Adolescent Self-Harm: Psychological, Social and Functional Impacts

Adolescent self-harm is a significant public health issue. We aimed to understand how parent stress response styles to their child’s self-harm affects their wellbeing and functioning and the wider family. Thirty-seven participants in Australia (parents; 92% female) completed a mixed methods survey regarding their adolescent child’s self-harm. We conducted Pearson zero-order correlations and independent t-tests to examine the impact of parent response style on their quality of life, health satisfaction, daily functioning, and mental health. We also used thematic analysis to identify patterns of meaning in the data. Two-thirds of participants reported mental ill health and reduced functional capacity due to their adolescent’s self-harm. Parents with a more adaptive response style to stress had better mental health. Qualitative analyses revealed parents experienced sustained feelings of distress and fear, which resulted in behavioural reactions including hypervigilance and parental mental health symptoms. In the wider family there was a change in dynamics and parents reported both functional and social impacts. There is a need to develop psychological support for the adolescent affected and parents, to support more adaptive response styles, and decrease the negative effects and facilitate the wellbeing of the family unit.

Exploring the Opportunities and Challenges Relating to the Variances in Students’ Response to Dissatisfaction in Business Management Educational Services

Consumers respond to their lack of satisfaction with service provision in a variety of ways. For instance, research findings indicates that consumers’ response options to service dissatisfaction is related to customer loyalty, which may impact their future repurchase intentions (Janjua, 2017). The current study investigates the impact of loyalty, and its cultural understanding, on dissatisfaction response styles of university students. In particular, it compares the variations in response options between Anglo-Saxon Australian students and international Middle Eastern students, attending Australian universities and other tertiary higher education Australian institutions, in an attempt to explore the impact of culture on dissatisfaction, and the resultant response options chosen by students, as guided by culturally defined perceptions and values (Newsome & Cooper, 2016). Findings indicate that there are significant variations in terms of the degree of ethnic loyalty and the response options that students engage in as a reaction to educational service dissatisfaction, mostly attributable to differences in cultural values. The contributions of this study are three-fold. First, the current research study further develops our understanding of cultural loyalty and its impact on students’ future repurchase intentions. Secondly, it provides an understanding of the dissatisfaction response styles of university students coming from different ethnic backgrounds. Finally, this study further contributes to our understanding of the relationship between students’ ethnic backgrounds and their respective repurchase decisions.

Personality Assessment To-Go

A particular feature of unproctored Internet Testing (UIT) is the participants’ freedom to decide on the formal aspects of their participation, such as time of day, device, and whether, how often, and for how long they might intermit their participation. A main point of discussion has been how these aspects alter the quality and content of an assessment. The issue remains understudied while simultaneously maintaining great importance for many fields. We examined this question in a UIT assessment of the Big Five personality factors in the present study. A sample of 441 participants who completed the assessment and 527 participants who aborted their participation was used to analyze quality (internal consistency, response styles) and content (mean score) differences. Results revealed several dependencies among small effect sizes. The discussion focuses on the potential practical implications of the present findings.

Accounting for Item Response Process and Response Styles Using the Unfolding Item Response Tree (UIRTree) Model

Many researchers have found that unfolding models may better represent how respondents answer Liker-type items and response styles (RSs) often have moderate to strong presence in responses to such items. However, the two research lines have been growing largely in parallel. The present study proposed an unfolding item response tree (UIRTree) model that can account for unfolding response process and RSs simultaneously. An empirical illustration showed that the UIRTree model could fit a personality dataset well and produced more reasonable parameter estimates. Strong presence of the extreme response style (ERS) was also revealed by the UIRTree model. We further conducted a Monte Carlo simulation study to examine the performance of the UIRTree model compared to three other models for Likert-scale responses: the Samejima’s graded response model, the generalized graded unfolding model, and the dominance item response tree (DIRTree) model. Results showed that when data followed unfolding response process and contained the ERS, the AIC was able to select the UIRTree model, while BIC was biased towards the DIRTree model in many conditions. In addition, model parameters in the UIRTree model could be accurately recovered under realistic conditions, and wrongly assuming the item response process or ignoring RSs was detrimental to the estimation of key parameters. In general, the UIRTree model is expected to help in better understanding of responses to Liker-type items theoretically and contribute to better scale development practically. Future studies on multi-trait UIRTree models and UIRTree models accounting for different types of RSs are expected.

Disclosure Style and Response Engagement During Disclosures of Concealable Stigmatized Identities

Supportive disclosure experiences benefit the well-being of those with concealable stigmatized identities (CSIs). The present research examines relationships between discloser’s disclosure directness, recipient’s response engagement, feelings of identity support, and disclosure response satisfaction. Across several correlational and experimental studies, direct disclosures (i.e., those referencing the CSI more explicitly) were met with more engaged recipient responses (e.g., verbal discussion of CSIs). Moreover, more engaged recipient responses were evaluated by disclosers as more supportive/validating and satisfying. To isolate the effects of disclosure directness, we explored and controlled for other disclosure factors including closeness to recipient and discloser outness. This work fills a current literature gap regarding how disclosure and response styles may promote positive disclosure experiences for those with varied CSIs.

“All or nothing”

In the current study, we investigated the unique associations between dichotomous thinking, extreme response style (ERS), and the Dark Triad of personality, namely, Machiavellianism, narcissism, and psychopathy. We hypothesized that dichotomous thinking would exhibit a positive effect on ERS, and that dichotomous thinking would be positively associated with the Dark Triad even after accounting for ERS. Participants were 488 adults with a mean age of 29.54 years (SD = 10.38). Results confirmed dichotomous thinking positively predicts ERS, that the relationship between dichotomous thinking and the Dark Triad domains remains positive and significant even after accounting for ERS. Moreover, ERS manifested weak negative associations with the Dark Triad, with a significant relationship only with psychopathy. Findings from the current study help expand the understanding of both the substantive nature of response styles and the cognitive processes underlying the Dark Triad of personality.