Psychometric Assessment in Humanistic and Existential Psychology

Cultural Groups and Latent Variables

  • Cultural Group A and Cultural Group B are compared using variables Y1 to Y5.
  • \eta A and \eta B represent latent variables for groups A and B, respectively.
  • \lambda A1 to \lambda A5 and \lambda B1 to \lambda B5 are factor loadings.
  • \epsilon1 and \epsilon2 represent measurement errors.
  • Equation for each item: Yx = \lambda x\eta + \epsilon x, where Yx is an item on the questionnaire.

Measurement Invariance

  • Tests if \eta A = \eta B and \lambda A1 = \lambda B1 across groups.

Chinese and American People - Distress Example

  • Example comparing boredom, discomfort, crying, and sadness between Chinese and American people.
  • Latent variables \eta A and \eta B might represent depression or anger.

Humanist/Existential Approaches

Core Principles

  • Focus on private experiences, subjective perceptions, and the self.
  • Emphasis on the present rather than historical causes.
  • Importance of thinking, acting, and feeling.

Conceptualizing Psychosocial Problems

  • Challenges include formulating cases based on theory and developing critical skills in choosing relevant measures.
  • Importance of communicating evidence-based assessment choices coherently.

Application

  • Measurement of key constructs.
  • Consideration of reliability and validity of measurement tools.
  • Application to real-world problems.

Assessment

  • Essential principles and key constructs.
  • Importance of theory-based assessment.
  • Mapping key constructs onto assessment strategies.

Agenda

  • Revisiting assessment questions.
  • Exploring existential concepts.
  • Discussion of Viktor Frankl and Carl Rogers.
  • Existential meaning.
  • The Multidimensional Existential Meaning Scale.
  • Measure of fusion.
  • Awkward fits between existential/humanist approaches and psychometric approaches.

Humanistic/Existential Approaches

  • Emerged in the 1950s in the US; Journal of Humanistic Psychology began in 1961.
  • Focus on subjective experience and the self.
  • Rooted in existentialism, with influence from Kierkegaard, Sartre, and Heidegger.
  • Emphasis on human freedom and responsibility for their own behavior.
  • Humans as choosing, free, and responsible agents.
  • Potential for self-change.

Existential Anxiety

  • The courage to be authentic, breaking from conformity.
  • Awareness of non-being, alienation, nothingness, and the inevitability of death.
  • Human desire for significance despite the transient nature of life.

Humanistic Concepts

  • Belief in the inherent goodness and potential for meaningful relationships.
  • Capacity to free oneself from crippling assumptions and attitudes.
  • Focus on growth and self-actualization.
  • Emphasis on present and conscious processes.
  • Shared existential concepts of responsibility, freedom, self-awareness, and choice.

Assessment Considerations

  • Qualitative versus quantitative research.
  • Critique of rational empirical methods.
  • Emphasis on narrative methods.
  • Consideration of capturing compassion, self-acceptance, and values for living.

Viktor Frankl and Meaning

  • Viktor Frankl (1905-1997).

Core Theory

  • Primary motivational force is the search for meaning.
  • Life can have meaning even in the most miserable situations.
  • Meaning comes from purposeful work, love, and courage in the face of difficulty.

Frankl's Experiences

  • Experiences in Auschwitz and other death camps.

Multidimensional Existential Meaning Scale (MEMS)

  • Exploration questions:
    • Face validity?
    • Strengths/weaknesses of the scale?
    • Measurement equivalence across cultures, genders, ages?

The Multidimensional Existential Meaning Scale

  • Tripartite view of meaning: comprehension, purpose, and mattering.
  • MEMS assesses these three subconstructs.
  • Favorable psychometric properties, good factor structure, and reliability.
  • Effectively differentiates the three subconstructs of meaning.
  • Each MEMS subscale carries predictive power for relevant variables and other meaning measures.
  • Theoretically consistent, differential associations with other variables (e.g., dogmatism, behavioral activation, and spirituality).

Meaning in Life (MIL)

  • MIL – the extent to which one’s life is experienced as making sense (George & Parks 2017).

Tripartite Model (George & Park, 2017, pp 614)

Comprehension

  • Extent to which individuals perceive a sense of coherence and understanding regarding their lives.
  • Feeling that there is a clear and coherent organization to one’s life.

Purpose

  • Extent to which life is ‘directed and motivated by valued life goals’.
  • Without this, can feel aimless and disengaged.

Mattering

  • My existence is significant, important, and of value to others.
  • Central function of religion and spirituality may be to transcend materiality.

Multidimensional Existential Meaning Scale (MEMS) (George & Park, 2017)

  • Aim: To develop a scale of meaning in life based on the tripartite model (comprehension, purpose, mattering).

Method:

  • Initial set of items.
  • Survey three samples of undergrads median age 19 from Northeastern US (relevance to different cultures/age groups?).
  • Assess one sample twice (2 weeks apart) to assess test-retest reliability.

Analyses:

  • Factor analyses – will there be three separate factors – sounds like a CFA doesn’t it!
  • Actually did an EFA first.
  • Do the subscales correlate with other MIL measures.
  • Do the measures correlate with well-being variables, as we would expect this would.

EFA

  • Factor loadings and communalities from EFA.

CFA

  • CFA factor loadings and item descriptives.

Unidimensional Scales Comparison

  • Compared to the following unidimensional scales:
    • Presence MLQ = 5 items from the presence subscale of the Meaning in Life Questionnaire.
    • PPMS = Perceived Personal Meaning Scale.
    • Composite scale = 8 items from a range of scales.

Relationships with Well-being Variables

  • Exploration of relationships with life satisfaction, positive affect, negative affect, depression, anxiety, and stress.

Cronbach’s Alpha

  • A test of internal consistency (expressed as number between 0 and 1).
  • How closely related a set of items are as a group – inter-relatedness.
  • A high alpha does not mean the measure is unidimensional (use a CFA/EFA to determine this).
  • Should only use alpha on a defined subscale or factor, not a measure containing 2 or more factors.
  • More advanced than item-total correlation.
  • An acceptable range is > .7.
  • The more items a scale has, the higher the alpha (all other things equal).
  • An alpha of 0.95 is not necessarily good – it might just be the questions are redundant…

Multidimensional Existential Meaning Scale (MEMS) Reliability

  • To assess internal consistency, Cronbach's alpha of the MEMS subscales were computed in all three samples.
  • In samples 1, 2, and 3 (computed at Time 1), alphas for comprehension were 0.90, 0.90, and 0.90, respectively; for purpose, alphas were 0.89, 0.89, and 0.88, respectively; and for mattering, alphas were 0.84, 0.85, and 0.90, respectively.
  • To assess test-retest reliability, correlations were computed between Time 1 subscale scores and Time 2 subscale scores in Sample 3.
  • Over the two week period, the comprehension subscale correlated with itself at 0.75, purpose with itself at 0.75, and mattering with itself at 0.85.
  • Thus, Cronbach's alphas and correlations showed that the MEMS subscales have good internal consistency and test-retest reliability.

Self-Concept and Incongruence

  • The actual self and the ideal self (sometimes thought of as self concept).
  • When these systems are in opposition or incongruent.
  • Want to go to university but entry marks are not high enough.
  • Accurate perception can be threatening to the self.
  • We try to get congruence by engaging in defensive behaviour, such as:
    • Viewing incongruent elements as forced on us by others.
    • Selective focus on certain experiences that are consistent with our ideal self, avoid, withdraw from experiences that are inconsistent with our ideal self.
  • Big discrepancies between self and ideal often lead to disappointment and dissatisfaction, dejection, shame and embarrassment.
  • Discrepancies have an impact on how we feel and what we do to cope.

Q-Sort Methods

  • People use different words to describe the same experience.
  • Lots of cards with printed statements e.g., I am likeable, I am anxious, I am a great leader.
  • Consider how I’d like to be (ideal self) by placing them in a grid according to whether not like me (disagree) to really like me (agree).
  • Consider how I actually am (actual self) by placing them in a grid according to whether not like me to really like me.
  • Can then quantify the difference between ideal and actual self.
  • Good ‘within person measure’ (less useful ‘between person measure’).
  • Please don’t use these in your Case Assessment Plan.
  • Not common in research these days.
  • Often very hard to get an index of reliability and validity.

Acceptance and Commitment Approaches

  • Approaches to understanding growth.

Opening Ideas

  • ‘Feeling good’ versus living a rich and meaningful life.
  • Happiness (pleasure, gratification, elation) is:
    • Not normal but we crave and strive for it.
    • Great but doesn’t last.
    • Pursuing it is unsatisfying.
  • THIS IS THE TRAP.
  • What is a rich and meaningful life?
  • Take action based on what we consider valuable and meaningful.
    • Values – verbally constructed global desired life consequences.
    • Values – not out there to be found – they are to be defined elaborated and constructed in an ongoing way (Wilson et al., 2010).
    • Not fleeting, sometimes uncomfortable.
  • Life involves pain – cannot be avoided but we FIGHT IT, ARGUE, TAKE DRUGS TO STOP IT.

Psychological Flexibility

  • Being present here and now.
  • Being fully aware.
  • Choosing actions that are guided by your values.
  • Moving towards what is important.
  • Drains the power of chronic and overwhelming troublesome thoughts and frees us to live meaningfully.
  • Can change your life’s trajectory.

Thoughts

  • Are stories – sometimes true, sometimes false, sometimes both.
  • We all have them – chatter, soft/loud.

Cognitive Fusion

  • Story and event become blended
    • Thoughts seem to represent reality.
    • Thoughts are truth.
    • Thoughts need to be obeyed.
    • Thoughts are threatening.
  • Contrast with traditional CBT approaches (Ellis, Beck, etc).

The Struggle Switch

SWITCH IS ON…

  • ‘should of.. Could of…. This must…. This has to be… this can’t…’
  • troublesome feelings snowball – anxiety causes anger..
  • Acting inconsistent with values - alcohol/drugs to distract…

SWITCH IS OFF…

  • Anxiety comes, rises, goes..
  • Observe, don’t waste time and energy struggling against them…
  • Example of smoking.

ACT Perspective Capture

  • What kind of things would you want to capture from an ACT Perspective?
    • Cognitive fusion - people are entangled in their private experiences.
    • Psychological flexibility - the ability to contact the present moment more fully as a conscious human being, and to change or persist in behavior when doing so serves valued ends.

The Cognitive Fusion Questionnaire (CFQ)

  • Gillanders et al 2014.
  • Cognitive fusion occurs when people are entangled in their private experiences.
  • This questionnaire is free to use.
  • Citation: Gillanders, D. T., Bolderston, H., Bond, F. W., Dempster, M., Flaxman, P. E., Campbell, L., Kerr, S., Tansey, L., Noel, P., Ferenbach, C., Masley, S., Roach, L., Lloyd, J., May, L., Clarke, S., Remington, R. (2014) The development and initial validation of The Cognitive Fusion Questionnaire. Behavior Therapy, 45, 83-101, DOI: 10.1016/j.beth.2013.09.001.

Summary of Properties and Normative Data

  • CFQ Psychometric Summary

Summary of Existential/Humanist Perspectives

  • Focus is on subjective experience.
  • Free and actualised life.
  • Less focus on the past – ultimately freedom from the past is of interest.
  • We experience a meaningful life when we have clear and coherent life, purpose, and we matter/are valued.
  • Problems arise when we hold on to the past, fuse with thoughts, have conditions of worth.
  • Some time for questions about the assignment.