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CHAPTER 1: Introduction: The most common craniofacial congenital anomaly is the cleft lip and/or palate (CLP). The CLEFT-Q is the first condition-specific comprehensive patient reported outcome instrument (PROM) for patients with CLP. Other measures used in assessment of patients with CLP are Child Oral Health Impact Profile (COHIP) and Cleft Hearing, Appearance and Speech Questionnaire (CHASQ). The development and validation of the CLEFT-Q have been completed in three phases. In phase I, 138 patients with CLP from six countries were interviewed, and data were used to form 13 scales measuring appearance, facial function and health-related quality of life (HR-QOL). In phase II, scales were field-tested internationally with 2434 patients to examine reliability and validity as well as develop a common scoring algorithm for international use. Phase III, the focus of this thesis, aimed to examine further construct validity and responsiveness of the CLEFT-Q scales. CHAPTER 2: Methods: Patients were recruited at six cleft centres in Canada, USA and UK between January 2018 and October 2019. The sample included patients aged 8-29 seeking rhinoplasty, orthognathic, cleft lip scar revision and alveolar bone graft (ABG) operations. Before and six months after surgery, participants were asked to complete the CLEFT-Q scales relevant to their operation and two other PROMs frequently used in cleft research, i.e., COHIP and CHASQ. Cross-sectional construct validity was examined by testing prespecified hypotheses about expected relationships between CLEFT-Q, CHASQ and COHIP instruments. Internal responsiveness was examined using the distribution-based method. Data were analysed using paired sample t-tests and calculation of effect sizes (ESs) and minimally important differences (MIDs). CHAPTER 3: Results: Examination of cross-sectional construct validity of the CLEFT-Q scales using the COHIP and CHASQ subscale resulted in 39/53 (74%) hypotheses having been supported by the results. The required sample size to examine responsiveness using the anchor-based approach was not reached. Assessment of internal responsiveness using the distribution-based approach demonstrated that the appearance scales were highly responsive to change following cleft-specific surgeries, with statistically significant results and ESs ranging from 0.4 (small) to 1.8 (large). Change on the CLEFT-Q HR-QOL scales was not statistically significant. As predicted, the ESs on scales measuring facial aspects most affected by rhinoplasty and orthognathic surgeries were larger than the ESs on scales measuring facial aspects least affected by these surgeries. MIDs for each scale in each operation were determined. CHAPTER 4: Discussion: Assessment of cross-sectional construct validity demonstrated that CLEFT-Q performs as it was intended when compared with other similar measures (i.e., CHASQ and COHIP). The CLEFT-Q appearance scales were responsive to change following rhinoplasty, orthognathic and cleft lip scar revision operations. As predicted, the CLEFT-Q appearance scales did not detect change following the ABG operation as this operation does not result in visible difference. As hypothesized, the CLEFT-Q HR-QOL scales were less responsive to change than appearance scales as HR-QOL is a more distal construct than appearance in relation to the cleft-related surgeries performed. The preliminary MIDs estimated by the distribution-based approach should be confirmed in studies with diverse CLP populations and larger sample sizes using the anchor-based approach. The findings of this phase III study build on the results of another CLEFT-Q validation study, which demonstrated the ability of the CLEFT-Q scales to detect differences between groups with varying surgical status, i.e., need surgery, have had surgery and never needed surgery. CHAPTER 5: Conclusion: Cross-sectional construct validity of the CLEFT-Q scales was supported by most prespecified hypotheses. The CLEFT-Q scales were found to be responsive to change. MIDs were determined. The results of this phase III study should be confirmed in a larger and more culturally diverse patient population. Future studies to examine reproducibility and measurement error as well as external responsiveness of the CLEFT-Q scales may be beneficial to add to the psychometric evaluation process. / Thesis / Master of Science (MSc)

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(1) Surrender to God (STG), is a construct which quantifies the extent to which an individual willingly relinquishes control to God. (2) An STG scale has been developed, yet remains unvalidated, as it relates to psychological constructs. (3) Utilizing undergraduate participants (N=249), we conducted a psychometric validation of the STG scale, and examined its potential relation with depression, anxiety, stress, and suicide risk

Many children in foster care have emotional or behavioral problems or are at risk for these problems. It is important to identify parents willing to foster children with these problems in order to ensure placement, care, stability and well-being of such children. This study presents a new 40-item self-report measure of the willingness of parents to foster children with emotional and behavioral problems, and two 20-item parallel forms of this measure. In addition, this study presents evidence of reliability and validity of scores derived from these measures with a national sample of 297 foster mothers. Coefficient alpha for these measures was 92 or greater, indicating excellent internal consistency reliability. Scores from these measures were unrelated to demographic characteristics, providing evidence of discriminant validity. In addition, scores from these measures were higher for foster mothers licensed to provide treatment foster care than for mothers only licensed to provide regular foster care, providing support for known groups validity. Finally, support for construct validity is provided by the fact that foster mothers with higher scores on these measures had fostered longer, were fostering more children at the time of this study, and had fewer children removed from their home at their request.

The ability to make sense of a wide array of stimuli presupposes the human tendency to organize information in a meaningful way. Efforts to assess the degree to which students organize information meaningfully have been hampered by several factors including the idiosyncratic way in which individuals represent their knowledge either with words or visually. Concept maps have been used as tools by researchers and educators alike to assist students in understanding the conceptual interrelationships within a subject domain. One concept-map assessment in particular known as the construct-a-map task has shown great promise in facilitating reliable and valid inferences from student concept-map ratings. With all of its promise, however, the construct-a-map task is burdened with several rating difficulties. One challenge in particular is that no published rubric has been developed that accounts for the degree to which individual propositions are important to an understanding of the overall topic or theme of the map. This study represents an attempt to examine the psychometric properties of two construct-a-map tasks designed to overcome in part this rating difficulty. The reliability of the concept-map ratings was calculated using a person-by-rater-by-occasion fully crossed design. This design made it possible to use generalizability theory to identify and estimate the variance in the ratings contributed by the three factors mentioned, the interaction effects, and unexplained error. The criterion validity of the concept-map ratings was examined by computing Pearson correlations between concept-map and essay ratings and concept-map and interview transcript ratings. The generalizability coefficients for student mean ratings were moderate to very high: .73 and .94 for the first concept-mapping task and .74 and .87 for the second concept-mapping task. A relatively large percentage of the rating variability was contributed by the object of measurement. Both tasks correlated highly with essay and interview ratings: .62 to .81.

Speech recognition threshold (SRT) is an important clinical measure that validates the pure-tone average (PTA), assists in diagnosis and prognosis of hearing and hearing impairment, and helps identify non-organic hearing impairment. Few published, recorded, and standardized materials exist in languages other than English, which results in audiologists testing individuals using materials developed in a non-native language. Research shows that this is problematic, as certain criterion for SRT testing are not met. Thus, performance may reflect test-language deficiency rather than hearing impairment. Currently, there are no known published materials for use in measuring the SRT in individuals whose native language is Tongan. The purpose of this project was to record and develop psychometrically equivalent words in Tongan for measuring the SRT. This study identified 28 trisyllabic words that were relatively homogenous in relation to audibility and psychometric function slope. The intensity of these 28 words was adjusted to equate 50% threshold performance for each word with the mean PTA (5.92 dB HL) for the twenty normally hearing participants. These materials were digitally recorded onto compact disc for distribution and use for SRT testing in Tongan.

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A principal axis factor analysis with promax rotation yielded four factors, or joint variations between the 20 items, that were inter-correlated with eigenvalues greater than 1. The ADBQ was also found to have high internal consistency (Cronbach's alpha = .86). The four factors were used to form four subscales of aggressive driving behavior that included anger/aggression, speeding/minor infractions, overt expression, and judgment of other drivers. The four subscales were found to correlate with self-reported biographical and driver history data, as well as, gender differences across scales. Additional analyses were conducted using data from the present sample from the University of Central Florida (N = 285) and the data from the previous study from Old Dominion University (N = 230) and Michigan Technological University (N = 265) for a combined sample of 780 undergraduate students. The findings in this present study provided additional support for the consistency, predictive validity, and factor structure of the ADBQ instrument. The Aggressive Driving Behavior Questionnaire proves to be a valuable measure in predicting the likelihood of a person engaging in aggressive driving behavior. The implications for driving behavior assessment, training, and instrument development are also discussed.; Over the past decade, aggressive driving behavior has become a topic of concern among the public, media, and researchers in the psychological community. Aggressive driving is a problematic pattern of social behavior that is not only a leading cause to motor vehicle accidents, but a serious threat to public safety. One instrument that has been developed to assess aggressive driving behavior is the Aggressive Driving Behavior Questionnaire (ADBQ). The ADBQ is a 20-item paper and pencil questionnaire intended to measure a driver's likelihood for engaging in aggressive driving behavior. The ADBQ was developed using a factor-analytic approach that combined five previously developed aggressive driving behavior scales (Brill, Mouloua & Shirkey, 2007). Of the 81 items of the five combined scales, nineteen latent variables were extracted and accounted for 67.4% of the explained variance for the observed responses. The final 20th item was developed by splitting one of the latent variables. A previous study, conducted at Old Dominion University (N = 230) and Michigan Technological University (N = 265), examined the ADBQ's factor structure and internal consistency, and found relatively high internal consistency (Cronbach's alpha = .77) and the identification of six factors using a principal axis factor analysis (Brill & Mouloua, 2011). The ADBQ was also tested in a controlled laboratory environment and found significant evidence that suggest the ADBQ is a valid predictor of aggressive driving behavior in a simulated environment (Brill, Mouloua & Shirkey 2009). The purpose of the present study was to further investigate the psychometric properties of the ADBQ. Based on a sample of 285 undergraduates (170 women and 115 men) from the University of Central Florida, the study examined the internal consistency, predictive and construct validity, and factor structure of the new questionnaire.