Gender-inclusive, culturally sensitive validation of the parental self-efficacy to respond to school refusal.

Introduction: There are limited medical professionalism assessment tools that are adapted for Singapore. We aimed to evaluate the validity, reliability and feasibility of the Singapore version of the Professionalism Mini-Evaluation Exercise (P-MEX) for assessment of professionalism of residents at a teaching hospital in Singapore. Methods: We collected assessment data from residents from July 2019 to January 2020. Content validity was evaluated through cognitive debriefing interviews (CDIs). Construct validity was evaluated using a priori hypothesis with another comparator instrument. Structural validity was assessed through both confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) using the original four-factor model and exploratory factor analysis (EFA). Internal consistency was assessed using Cronbach’s alpha. Results: CDIs conducted with nine faculty supported content validity of the Singapore version of P-MEX. The cross-sectional data demonstrated satisfactory construct validity (83% of hypotheses met) and good internal consistency (Cronbach’s alpha ranged from 0.72 to 0.93). The CFA of the original four-factor model of the P-MEX did not obtain meet all the acceptable fit of indexes. EFA suggested a two-factor model—the first factor had an eigenvalue of 8.52 and explained 73.8% of the variance, while the second factor had an eigenvalue of 1.90 and explained 26.2% of the variance. Conclusion: This study supports the content validity, construct validity, internal consistency of the Singapore version of P-MEX in assessing medical professionalism in the local residency training programme. However, there was no conclusive support for the original four-factor model of the P-MEX. EFA identified 2 main factors, which appeared to encompass “Patient care and inter-professional relationship skills” and “Reflective skills”. Keywords: Professionalism, Singapore, Validation, Assessment

The subjective orgasm experience, defined as the psychological evaluation and perception of orgasm, has been consistently associated with sexual and relationship satisfaction. Despite studies showing that orgasm depends more on cognitive-affective factors rather than sensitive ones, and that this response is not always associated with a pleasant experience, research typically focuses on orgasm frequency. This highlights the need for instruments measuring the subjective orgasm experience. The Orgasm Rating Scale (ORS) stands out as one of the few self-reported measures designed to assess this experience, however it has not been validated to the Portuguese population. The current article aims to adapt and translate the ORS to the Portuguese context (ORS-Pt) and to evaluate its psychometric properties (validity and reliability). The ORS was translated into Portuguese using back-to-back translation. Refinements to this version were made upon a pilot test with 12 participants, including experts in sexology, who provided feedback. Psychometric properties of the final ORS-Pt were assessed using a sample of 1178 participants (72.5% women, Mdnage= 39). Two weeks after filling in the baseline questionnaire, 498 participants completed the retest. Participants filled in a set of questionnaires assessing the ORS-Pt, sociodemographic characteristics, subjective orgasm experience, sexual satisfaction, distress, pleasure, and functioning. Exploratory Factor Analysis revealed a four-dimensional structure of the 24-item scale, which was supported by good fit indices of a Confirmatory Factor Analysis: Affective, Sensory, Intimacy, and Rewards. The instrument correlated positively and significantly with orgasm quality, sexual satisfaction, and pleasure. Additionally, the ORS-Pt correlated weakly and negatively with sexual distress. These results support the instrument's good validity based on relations with other variables. The ORS-Pt was able to distinguish between participants with and without orgasm difficulties based on the total scale, Affective, Intimacy, and Rewards scores. Finally, the ORS-Pt presented excellent internal consistency (Cronbach's alpha of 0.95 for baseline and retest), supporting good internal consistency stability over time. The ORS-Pt is a valid and reliable tool to complement existing instruments of orgasm functioning, which can aid in diagnosing and tailoring interventions for orgasm difficulties. The large sample size is a strength, though convenience sampling methods may limit the generalizability of the results. Additionally, this instrument is specific to the context of partnered sexual relationships. The ORS-Pt is a reliable and valid tool to assess subjective orgasm experience, appropriate for both clinical and research purposes.

Purpose This study aims to examine the alignment between Geographic Information Systems (GIS) education and vocational qualifications within the framework of quality assurance (QA) in higher education. It investigates how academic programmes meet competency requirements of GIS Specialist (Level 6) National Qualification, aligned with the European Qualifications Framework (EQF), and develops a validated scale that can serve as a QA tool for monitoring curriculum–qualification alignment. Design/methodology/approach A scale was developed based on the learning outcomes and performance criteria. Data was collected from 174 graduates of GIS-related programmes. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses were performed to ensure the validity and reliability of the scale, while Cronbach’s alpha and composite reliability coefficients were used to test internal consistency. Findings The results indicate that developed scale has a four-factor structure with strong validity and reliability, capturing self-efficacy perceptions in technical organisation, quality management and work organisation, occupational health and safety and information security. Findings also highlight a gap between academic curricula and certain vocational qualification standards, especially in workplace safety and information security, underscoring the need for continuous alignment of higher education with industry requirements. Research limitations/implications This study is limited to self-reported perceptions of graduates in Türkiye and may not fully generalise to other contexts. Future research should include comparative analyses across countries and integrate certification exam results for a more comprehensive assessment. However, this study is limited by its modest sample size (n = 174), regional focus (two universities) and reliance on self-reported perceptions, which may affect generalisability. Nevertheless, the proposed scale is a valuable instrument for planning curriculum modifications, carrying out evidence-based evaluations in accreditation procedures and comparing programme results with EQF/Turkish Qualifications Framework (TQF) certifications in higher education institutions’ quality assurance processes. Practical implications The validated scale can be used by universities, accreditation bodies and policymakers as a QA instrument to monitor the alignment of GIS curricula with national and European qualification frameworks. It provides actionable evidence for programme reviews, curriculum revisions and external quality evaluations, supporting the PDCA cycle in institutional QA systems. Social implications By promoting transparency, accountability and international comparability, this study contributes to enhancing employability, labour market mobility and quality culture in higher education. Aligning education with vocational qualifications also fosters lifelong learning and continuous professional development among GIS professionals. Originality/value From a quality assurance standpoint, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study presents one of the first scales to link professional competency criteria with GIS educational outcomes. Despite sample and regional constraints, the scale is a valuable instrument for curriculum reform, accreditation evaluations and EQF/TQF compliance studies.

Purpose The COVID-19 pandemic broke out in December 2019 in Wuhan, China. In February 2020, countries responded to the pandemic by issuing guidelines to maintain social distancing, including enforcing lockdowns. Organisations were required to have their employees work from home (WFH), which had both positive and negative outcomes. During this pandemic, employees were embedded/stuck at home in the lockdown, and as people were forced to WFH remotely, a key question emerged: How does working from home - along with job embeddedness, supervisor’ listening perception, turnover intention and motivation-affect together simultaneously on turnover behaviour in such a context. This paper main aim is to examine that. Design/methodology/approach Five hypotheses were formulated for this research. Data were drawn from an online survey of 126 professional IT employees of a global high-tech firm in the first COVID-19 lockdown in Israel. Logistic regression analysis was conducted to test the hypotheses (via PROCESS) along with a sensitivity power analysis. Discriminant and convergent validity through a series of confirmatory factor analyses were conducted to evaluate the model. Findings The main findings indicate that embeddedness (“stuckness”) decreases turnover intention, and that turnover intention mediates the job embeddedness–decision to leave relationships. Intent to leave mediated the embeddedness–actual turnover relationship only for individuals with a low level of job motivation. Finally, a significant moderated–mediating effect of embeddedness on actual turnover through turnover intention for individuals who rated their supervisors’ listening as high but had low motivation was found. These findings offer important insights for managers of high-tech firms aiming to improve employee retention and reduce turnover behaviour. Finally, it was found that WFH strategy that was used during the COVID-19 pandemic (that might create quiet quitting) and is still used in the labour market and the high-tech sector is not significantly related to IT employees’ turnover intention and hence will not prevent intent to leave and probably turnover behaviour in the IT sector. The findings are discussed considering the literature. Originality/value This paper emphasises the findings of full remote work/WHF in the high-tech sector among engineers in lockdown conditions on turnover behaviour. No research examined it under full closure conditions of the COVID-19 when employees were forced to WFH only and work only remotely while they did not work hybrid and cannot do that because of the lockdown. Bloom et al. (2024, p. 1) found that “hybrid work improved reduced quit rates by one-third”. However, in contrast to that research, this study checked the impact of hybrid work and not full WFH and also with a different study population. Thus, it seems that to fully WFH where employees were forced to work entirely remotely and cannot work hybrid, there is a different impact on IT employees’ turnover. Additionally, WFH setup did not moderate or mediate the embeddedness–turnover intention/resigning relationship. Thus, indirectly encouraging embeddedness can assist in retaining IT employees and preventing turnover behaviour. Employees’ motivation level moderates the relationship between embeddedness and intent to leave at varying levels. Finally, listening moderates motivation’s significant moderated mediation effect on the relationship between embeddedness and intent to leave. These results extend the turnover literature.

Social isolation, social cognition and symptom severity in Chilean patients with Schizophrenia: A mediational model.

The nature of mind scale (NOMS): Validation of an eight-dimensional scale assessing beliefs about the relationship between mind and matter.

Genetic literacy scale: Construct and discriminant validity and population differences.

Factor structure and measurement invariance of the PTSD Checklist for DSM-5 in a national sample of veterans prescribed long-term opioid therapy for chronic pain.

Factor structure of allostatic load biomarkers: Associations with puberty and disadvantage.

Research finds better reentry/recidivism program outcomes when individuals receive services that match their risks and needs. As such, the Short-Term Assessment of Risk and Treatability (START) was developed to identify risk of future violence/offending, strengths, and targets for treatment. More empirical evidence is needed to characterize the psychometric properties of the START in general correctional settings before it may be used in practice. The current preregistered study explored the factor structures of the START strengths and vulnerabilities items, and reliability and construct validity of the factors, using 605 individuals (83% men, 68% White, 11% Hispanic) incarcerated in a county jail in the Southeastern United States. Exploratory factor analysis on a random half of the sample (N = 302) and confirmatory factor analysis on the other half (N = 303) identified the best fitting factor structures for the two item sets. Construct validity was tested through correlations between the START factor scores and external criteria indexing mental health, criminogenic risk, personal resources, and reentry/treatment attitudes. Exploratory factor analyses found four factors featuring well-being, externalizing, personal resources, and openness to change for the strengths and vulnerabilities items independently; in each case, confirmatory factor analysis suggested that the exploratory factor analysis-derived structure was superior to the unidimensional model. Convergent and discriminant validity were partially supported, with most factors correlating meaningfully with theoretically consistent external criteria. Results provided preliminary evidence of the multidimensionality of the START as used in an incarcerated sample. Further research replicating these factors and examining their predictive validity is needed to confirm their utility. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).

Validating the children's eating behaviour questionnaire in a UK sample: A suitable tool for mothers and fathers.

Treatment preferences and self-stigma in depression: Development and validation of the brief ATDT-SF.

Development and validation of a cultural competence perception inventory for nurses.

Chemistry-specific mindsets have been shown to influence student engagement, self-efficacy, goal orientation, and academic achievement in chemistry. These beliefs are increasingly recognized as context-dependent, shaped through interactions within specific social and educational environments. The present study investigated the extent to which Turkish undergraduates have a growth chemistry mindset and how these beliefs relate to academic performance in chemistry across engineering and natural sciences majors. A total of 817 second-semester general chemistry students participated, completing surveys after the second midterm and prior to the final exam. The Chemistry Mindset Instrument (CheMI; Santos D. L., Barbera J. and Mooring S. R., (2022), Chem. Educ. Res. Pract. , 23 (3), 742–757) was used to assess students’ mindsets, while grade records provided measures of exam performance. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) supported the unidimensional structure of the CheMI, consistent with previous findings, providing evidence for its validity in this cultural and educational context. Structural equation modeling (SEM) examined whether chemistry mindset mediated the relationship between midterm and final exam performance across majors. Additional regression analyses explored how mindset influenced the midterm–final performance relationship among students with low, medium, and high levels of achievement. SEM results indicated that second midterm performance did not significantly predict mindset for either major. However, mindset significantly predicted final exam performance for engineering students, whereas this relationship was nonsignificant for natural sciences students. Furthermore, mindset emerged as a significant predictor only among the highest-performing students, suggesting that it may play a differentiating role at the upper end of achievement. These findings underscore the importance of considering mindset in instructional design and provide insights for targeted strategies to enhance student success in chemistry.

Purpose: A new assessment of the counseling relationship is presented, which is needed given the limitations of current assessments in the literature. Method: The research team developed 100 items to assess these three factors from the perspective of the counselor (50 items) and the client (50 items) then had 12 professional counselors serve as content validity judges. Based on their feedback, several items were deleted or modified. The modified assessment measures were then sent to 168 counselors and to 252 clients. Exploratory Structural Equation Modeling (ESEM) and then Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) were used to examine their factors structure. Results: Analyses yielded two 6 items versions of the assessment measure (i.e., client and counselor forms), comprised of the underlying constructs of Frame Consensus, Collaborative Motivation, and Collaborative Action. Both forms displayed strong psychometric properties indicative of reliability and validity. Conclusions: The new measure can be used as a complement to or as an alternative to existing measures of the counseling relationship in research or practice.

The present study aims to propose an Information Technology (IT) management model in the FinTech sector using a mixed-methods (qualitative–quantitative) approach, with a case study of the Tehran Stock Exchange Organization. To achieve this goal, after reviewing the concepts of information technology and financial technology (FinTech), the study first identified the components and indicators and developed a conceptual model through qualitative methods, and then validated the model and examined the relationships among its components through quantitative methods. The statistical population in the qualitative phase consisted of experts in the field of financial technology, while in the quantitative phase it included employees of the Tehran Stock Exchange Organization. The qualitative sample comprised 10 experts selected based on theoretical saturation, and the quantitative sample consisted of 80 individuals determined according to the Krejcie and Morgan table, selected through simple random sampling. For data collection, interviews and questionnaires were used. The validity of the research tools was confirmed through content validity (by experts) and construct validity (via confirmatory factor analysis using SPSS and SmartPLS4 software). The reliability was verified using Cronbach’s alpha coefficient and composite reliability. In data analysis, qualitative data were analyzed through interview coding, while quantitative data were examined using the Kolmogorov–Smirnov test to assess data distribution, and structural equation modeling (SEM) and path analysis were applied to validate the model and explore the relationships among variables. The qualitative findings revealed that in the proposed model, the causal conditions include (1) technology acceptance, (2) education and learning, and (3) infrastructure; the central phenomenon is (4) information technology management; the facilitators include (5) quality of financial services; the intervening conditions consist of (6) FinTech barriers and challenges; the strategy involves (7) financial knowledge management; and the consequences are represented by (8) IT management outcomes. The quantitative results indicated that technology acceptance, education and learning, and infrastructure have a significant positive effect on information technology management, which in turn enhances the level of financial knowledge management. Moreover, the results showed that the quality of financial services, as well as barriers and challenges, both directly and indirectly—through financial knowledge management—contribute to generating outcomes that improve IT management performance in FinTech organizations.

Unveiling the symptom structure of major depressive disorder and exploring its role in treatment response.

Cultural adaptation and validation of health literacy instrument for school-age children in Iranian adolescents.

Evaluating the Factor Structure of the Preliminary Version of EuroQol Health and Well-Being Instrument in China: A Replication of the Confirmatory Factor Analysis.