Development of a Comprehensive Chinese Successful Aging Scale: Incorporating the Viewpoints of Older Adults

Inspiring by Martinson and Berridge’s (2015) systematic review, the current definition of successful aging (SA) fails to acknowledge the laypeople’s conceptualization of SA. Adopting a mixed-method approach, two studies were conducted with the aim of soliciting older adults’ perceptions of SA and to develop a multidimensional instrument for assessing SA. Study 1 was a qualitative study and 27 community-dwelling older adults (Mage=68.07 years, SD=7.10, range=60–83; 56.3% females) were interviewed. Interview transcripts were analyzed, and seven themes were emerged. An initial item pool for the Successful Aging Scale (SAS) was then established based on these themes as well as those in the SA literature, such as acceptance and independence. Study 2 was a survey study which was conducted among 414 community-dwelling older adults (Mage=64.50 years, SD=4.01, range=60–82; 55.3% females) to identify optimal items for constitution of the SAS. Exploratory factor analysis revealed a 12-factor solution, accounting for 62% of the variance. The 12 factors are adequate health, perceived constraints, flexible attitudes toward life, acceptance of age-related change, life embracement, active engagement, harmonious family, supportive friendship, civic awareness, social contribution, living independently, and adaptive coping strategies. The 12 factors exhibit similar strength of associations with most of the well-being measures, but certain factors show stronger correlation with depressive symptoms and social relationship, suggesting the uniqueness of each factor. Overall, the SAS demonstrates promising psychometric properties. These findings disclose that the older adults’ perceptions of SA could cover broader dimensions than those in Rowe and Kahn’s model (1997).

The Development of an Interpersonal Stressors Scale: Identifying Self-Imposed and Other-Imposed Interpersonal Stressors

While there has been research focused on interpersonal relationships and their impact on stress and well-being, no instrument has been developed to comprehensively evaluate interpersonal stressors. This research sought to develop and validate an Interpersonal Stressors Scale (ISS) for Chinese college students through three studies. Focus groups were used to generate the initial item pool (Study 1). Then two large samples ( N1 = 511; N2 = 330) were collected to explore the factor structure of the ISS and subsequently examine its reliability and validity estimates (study 2 and 3). Initial results indicated a model with 27 items and five first-order factors (interaction difficulty, behaving as expected, social criticism, relationship maintenance, and indebtedness avoidance) as well as two second-order factors (self-imposed stressors and other-imposed stressors) with strong psychometric properties. Criterion-related validity estimates indicated these two kinds of stressors were both associated with stress while having different relationships with general anxiety, depression, social anxiety, interpersonal satisfaction, and self-efficacy in social interactions. The nature and function of the structure for the ISS were discussed as well as the practical and research implications.

Development and Feasibility of the Headache-Related Light and Sound Sensitivity Inventories in Youth

Youth with chronic headache disorders often experience sensitivities to light and sound that trigger or exacerbate their headaches and contribute to functional disability. At present, there are no known validated measures for assessing these sensitivities and their impact on functioning in youth with chronic headaches. This pilot study sought to develop and assess the feasibility of measures of headache-related light and sounds sensitivities in youth with chronic headache disorders. The initial item pools were generated via an intensive literature review, an informal quality improvement project, and a panel of experts in chronic pain. Then, youth (n = 20) presenting for clinical evaluation of headaches completed the revised items as well as assessments of the measures’ feasibility and items’ understandability. A subset (n = 2) completed formal cognitive interviews as well. The resulting 20-item Headache-Related Light Sensitivity Inventory (HALSI) and 18-item Headache-Related Sound Sensitivity Inventory (HASSI) for youth assess headache-related sensory sensitivities, as well as related emotional and behavioral responses. Through the iterative incorporation of feedback, these measures appear to be feasible to administer and understandable tools for assessing light and sound sensitivity in youth with chronic headache disorders. Once they are empirically validated, they have the potential to serve as important tools for understanding the patient experience, developing interventions, and assessing treatment response.

Developing a new human-autonomy team cohesion Scale

Cohesion is an important construct in understanding human-autonomy team dynamics and effectiveness, yet methods to adequately measure this construct are still being developed. Here we describe the initial steps of the development of a new human-autonomy team cohesion scale: item development, content validation, and preliminary scale item evaluation. The initial item pool was developed resulting in 134 items and underwent content validation with subject matter experts to reduce the item pool to 82. For the content validation, participants watched a set of video clips displaying examples of high and low human-autonomy team cohesion and rated the clips using the new human-autonomy team cohesion scale. Preliminary results revealed that our new human-autonomy team cohesion scale is a reliable and valid measure of cohesion in these contexts. Additionally, ratings for the high cohesion clips were somewhat higher than the low cohesion clips. Further analyses will determine if each of the items are contributing to the overall validity of the scale and will be further evaluated for possible removal.

Pattern-enhanced Contrastive Policy Learning Network for Sequential Recommendation

Sequential recommendation aims to predict users’ future behaviors given their historical interactions. However, due to the randomness and diversity of a user’s behaviors, not all historical items are informative to tell his/her next choice. It is obvious that identifying relevant items and extracting meaningful sequential patterns are necessary for a better recommendation. Unfortunately, few works have focused on this sequence denoising process. In this paper, we propose a PatteRn-enhanced ContrAstive Policy Learning Network (RAP for short) for sequential recommendation, RAP formalizes the denoising problem in the form of Markov Decision Process (MDP), and sample actions for each item to determine whether it is relevant with the target item. To tackle the lack of relevance supervision, RAP fuses a series of mined sequential patterns into the policy learning process, which work as a prior knowledge to guide the denoising process. After that, RAP splits the initial item sequence into two disjoint subsequences: a positive subsequence and a negative subsequence. At this, a novel contrastive learning mechanism is introduced to guide the sequence denoising and achieve preference estimation from the positive subsequence simultaneously. Extensive experiments on four public real-world datasets demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach for sequential recommendation.

On the functional safety of a complex technical control system with digital twins

The Aim of this paper is to evaluate the advantages of digital twin technology as compared with the conventional approaches to the design of a vital two-channel system. Methods. The system is described with a Markovian model. This model allows defining the quantitative safety characteristics if the system is affected by right-side failures. Results. The system’s primary quantitative safety indicators were identified as the mean time to wrong-side failure and mean time to right-side failure along with the quantitative relations of the prime and additional costs for a batch of products. Conclusion. Transforming the initial item into a system with digital twins allows significantly reducing the rate of wrong-side failures. This effect may be obtained not only with the use of digital twins, but also as the result of the system transitioning into the state of right-side failure in each event of discrepancy betwin the initial item and/or the digital twins. It has been established that the mean time to right-side failure under such conditions is not less than the mean time to failure of the initial item. That means that highly efficient measures for safety improvement allow maintaining the system dependability at a level not lower than that of the initial item. The introduction of digital twins into a system is a new, not yet tested way of ensuring system safety. The decision on the benefits of additional costs is taken by the customer and system developer together. At the same time, it must be taken into consideration that in case of large batches of manufactured technical systems, the effect of additional costs is reduced and the effect of significantly improved safety is maintained.

Digital Sustainability in the Organization: Scale Development and Validation

This study aims to develop a measurement scale for the digital sustainability practices in the organization. Considering that digital sustainability practices vary across industries and context, this study develops a scale of digital sustainability metrics, which is based on a comprehensive literature review. The proposed model was then tested with partial least squares-structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM). Several phases of qualitative and quantitative investigations of employees were conducted to propose and validate the construct of digital sustainability. The scale development process consists of initial item generation, item refinement, validity assessment and model testing. Four dimensions, namely, content, technology, preservation and promotion, were identified. A 16-item scale was proposed and validated. Theoretical and practical implications were discussed. Practitioners should focus on investing behind organisational resources and technologies that enhance the operationalisation of digital sustainability rather than seeking to promote the understanding of the concept and importance of digital sustainability. This study addresses the research gap, combining a focus group interview and literature review, followed by conceptualization and validation of a measurement scale of digital sustainability. Digital sustainability was validated as a manifestation of the availability, preservation, promotion and technological aspect of digital content in corporations.

Using item response theory (IRT) to improve the efficiency of the Simple Clinical Colitis Activity Index (SCCAI) for patients with ulcerative colitis

Background The SCCAI was designed to facilitate assessment of disease activity in ulcerative colitis (UC). We aimed to interrogate the metric properties of individual items of the SCCAI using item response theory (IRT) analysis, to simplify and improve its performance. Methods The original 9-item SCCAI was collected through TrueColours, a real-time software platform which allows remote entry and monitoring of patients with UC. Data were securely uploaded onto Dementias Platform UK Data Portal, where they were analysed in Stata 16.1 SE. A 2-parameter (2-PL) logistic IRT model was estimated to evaluate each item of the SCCAI for its informativeness (discrimination). A revised scale was generated and re-assessed following systematic removal of items. Results SCCAI data for 516 UC patients (41 years, SD = 15) treated in Oxford were examined. After initial item deletion (Erythema nodosum, Pyoderma gangrenosum), a 7-item scale was estimated. Discrimination values (information) ranged from 0.41 to 2.52 indicating selected item inefficiency with three items < 1.70 which is a suggested discriminatory value for optimal efficiency. Systematic item deletions found that a 4-item scale (bowel frequency day; bowel frequency nocturnal; urgency to defaecation; rectal bleeding) was more informative and discriminatory of trait severity (discrimination values of 1.50 to 2.78). The 4-item scale possesses higher scalability and unidimensionality, suggesting that the responses to items are either direct endorsement (patient selection by symptom) or non-endorsement of the trait (disease activity). Conclusion Reduction of the SCCAI from the original 9-item scale to a 4-item scale provides optimum trait information that will minimise response burden. This new 4-item scale needs validation against other measures of disease activity such as faecal calprotectin, endoscopy and histopathology.

FunQ: Measuring the fun experience of a learning activity with adolescents

Researchers and practitioners in learning sciences, educational technology and child-computer interaction often argue that fun is an essential element of learning. Therefore, researchers in the above fields aim to explore how learning activities could be made more enjoyable in order to facilitate engagement in the learning process and to improve the learning outcomes. Despite such wide interest, there has been little systematic effort to define and measure fun. The herein introduced research aims to (a) define the term “fun” and (b) to create a tool for the reliable measurement of it. In the first study testing the initial item pool 75 students (μage = 11.78); in the think-aloud study testing the comprehensibility of the items six 11-year-old children and in the final validation study, 128 students (μage = 12.15) participated. We applied a deductive scale development approach. For the model testing, CFA was used and second-order latent variable models were fitted. In this paper, we conceptualize the term of fun and introduce the final 18-item version of the FunQ that consists of six dimensions (Autonomy, Challenge, Delight, Immersion, Loss of Social Barriers and Stress) and bears with the appropriate validity and reliability measures (ωoverall = 0.875 and ωpartial = 0.864; RMSEA = 0.052 and SRMR = 0.072). We contribute with (a) a review of the literature regarding the concept of fun, (b) a conception of fun as a multidimensional theoretically motivated concept, (c) a multidimensional instrument for assessing experienced fun—the FunQ—and (d) a psychometric evaluation of the proposed instrument. FunQ is put forward as a reliable and much-needed addition to the current palette of instruments.

DEVELOPMENT AND PSYCHOMETRIC PROPERTIES OF PARENTAL EXPRESSED EMOTIONS SCALE

Objective: To construct a scale and psychometric properties for the assessment of Parental expressed emotions scale in Urdu language. Study Design: Cross sectional study. Place and Duration of Study: Department of Psychology, University of Gujrat, from Mar to Oct 2019. Methodology: The initial item pool of 224 items was generated with the help of CFI (Camber well Family Interview description of parental expressed emotions scale, literature review and three focus groups with target population. Among the 124 expert evaluated items after pilot study 100 items were retained which included the five dimensions of parental expressed emotions scale including, Criticalcomments, Hostility, Emotional overinvolvement, Warmth and Positive remarks. Furthermore, in the final administration of this scales data were collected from 380 parents (both mothers & fathers) from the educational institutions and community of Gujrat using self-reported questionnaire. The exploratory factor analysis (EFA), confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and reliability analysis were implied for data scrutiny. Results: The final administration of 100 items was handed over to 380 participants. The model fit showed a p-value of 0.000 that established the structure validity and significance of the items to its subscales. At the final stage among the 100 items 31 were reliable for further use. Conclusion: A scale to measure parental expressed emotions in Urdu language is competently established with 31 questions andfive sub-scales.