While growing evidence suggests sibling aggression is associated with a range of negative developmental outcomes, research examining sibling aggression remains limited. Understanding which acts of aggression are most commonly used among siblings may help identify behaviors that place youth at elevated risk for future emotional, behavioral, and social difficulties. Accordingly, the current study examined item-level frequencies of proactive and reactive sibling aggression in a sample of elementary-aged youth as well as evaluated gender and grade-level differences in acts of sibling aggression. Participants were 290 children (54.8
Empathy is a multifaceted capacity commonly assessed through cognitive and affective dimensions, yet traditional measures may insufficiently capture opposite-valence emotional responding. The Affective and Cognitive Measure of Empathy (ACME) was developed to broaden empathy assessment by distinguishing Cognitive Empathy, Affective Resonance, and Affective Dissonance. The present study examined whether this broader representation provides explanatory value beyond established measures of empathy used and whether it generalizes to an Italian adult sample. Participants (N = 542; 18–79 years) completed the ACME and measures of empathy, emotion dysregulation, aggression, and impulsivity. Confirmatory factor analyses provided support for the expected three-factor structure and measurement invariance across sex. Internal consistency was good to excellent across ACME subscales. Construct validity was supported by associations with established empathy measures and theoretically coherent links with emotion dysregulation, aggression, and impulsivity, with Affective Dissonance showing the strongest links to externalizing outcomes. Hierarchical regression further indicated that ACME explained significant additional variance beyond a widely used empathy measure across all tested outcomes, with the largest increments observed for Reactive Aggression, Proactive Aggression, and Hostility. Overall, these findings suggest that explicitly modeling Affective Dissonance may improve construct coverage in empathy assessment in research and applied settings.
This study examines the psychometric properties of the Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) subscale of the Scale of Externalizing Behavior Problems in Adults (SEPBA-BPD). This instrument is designed to assess BPD from an integrative perspective, incorporating both continuous and categorical approaches. The sample comprised 749 adult participants, including individuals from the general population and those in confinement. Three factorial models were evaluated to determine the dimensionality of the scale, concluding that a one-dimensional model provided the most parsimonious fit. The findings demonstrated that the scale shows adequate discrimination indices, internal consistency, and convergent validity in relation to external measures of Borderline Personality Disorder. Additionally, guidelines for item dichotomization were established and validated using Item Response Theory to optimize cut-off points based on the DSM-5 diagnostic criteria, thereby enhancing the instrument’s clinical utility. The results support the utility of the SEPBA-BPD as a versatile instrument for assessing Borderline Personality Disorder in both clinical and research settings, offering a comprehensive and multimodal approach to personality disorder assessment.
Depression is associated with numerous physical and psychological difficulties. Emerging adults—particularly college students—face developmental and contextual challenges that increase vulnerability to depressive symptoms. Filipino Americans remain underrepresented in both depression research and psychometric evaluations of widely used screening instruments. The present study examined the psychometric properties of scores from the 8-item Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-8) in a sample of college students from Southern California (698 Filipino Americans, 945 European Americans). Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was used to evaluate the factor structure of PHQ-8 scores, and multigroup CFA was conducted to examine measurement invariance across ethnicity and sex. Evidence relevant to extrapolation inferences was examined through associations with an established depression measure and theoretically related constructs, including anxiety, perceived stress, brooding rumination, self-esteem, and quality of life. Results supported a unidimensional factor structure and measurement invariance of PHQ-8 scores across groups. In addition, PHQ-8 scores demonstrated expected associations with the external validation variables, providing further support for their interpretation as indicators of depressive symptom severity among Filipino American and European American emerging adults.
Problematic social media use (SMU) is an increasing concern for adolescents’ wellbeing worldwide. The nine-item Social Media Disorder Scale (SMD) is widely used to assess problematic social media engagement in youth, yet its longitudinal psychometric properties remain insufficiently examined. Establishing the scale’s robustness across time is crucial for valid developmental inferences and for informing prevention and intervention efforts. This study evaluated the longitudinal measurement invariance, item-level informativeness and test-level precision of the SMD, as well as its criterion and predictive validity. Self-report data were collected from 306 Greek early adolescents (Mage = 13.30, SD = 0.58 at Wave 1; 42.8
