Aachen, Techn. Hochsch., Thesis (doctoral), 2002.

Objective: Obesity is one of the leading public health problems worldwide. Obese individuals are often stigmatized and the psychosocial consequences of overweight and obesity are the subject of current research. To detect stigmatizing attitudes towards obese people, the Fat Phobia Scale (FPS) was developed in the USA in the early nineties. In addition, the 14-item short form of the FPS was constructed. The FPS belongs to the most commonly used instruments for measuring negative attitudes towards obese people because of its good psychometric properties. For the recently developed German short form of the FPS, however, the comprehensive investigation of the psychometric properties and the determination of reference values are still pending. Thus, the main objectives of this study were the evaluation of the psychometric quality of the scale as well as the calculation of reference values. Methods: The study was based on a representative survey in the German general population. A sample of 1,657 subjects (18–94 years) was assessed via structured telephone interviews including the 14-item German version of the FPS. Descriptive statistics and inference-statistical analyses were conducted. Reference values in terms of percentage ranks were calculated. Results: Substantial evidence for the reliability and validity of the German short version of the FPS was found. This study, for the first time in Germany, provides age-specific reference values for the German short form of the FPS allowing the interpretation of individual test scores. Conclusion: Facing the far-reaching consequences of experienced stigmatization of obese individuals, these study results provide an important basis for further studies aiming at the investigation of negative attitudes towards overweight and obesity.

Techn. Universiẗat, Diss., 2006--Darmstadt.

Universiẗat, Diss.--Hamburg, 2007.

Univ., Diss.--Frankfurt (Main), 2005.

No description available.

Background: The Patient Health Questionnaire PHQ-9 is a widely used instrument to screen for depression in clinical research. The first aim of this study was to psychometrically test the PHQ-9 in a large sample of cancer patients. The second aim was to calculate unbiased estimates of the depression burden for several cancer groups taking into account age and gender distributions. Methods: A sample of 2,059 cancer patients with varying diagnoses were examined in this study six months after discharge from a rehabilitation clinic. A representative sample of 2,693 people from the general population served as controls. Expected PHQ-9 mean scores of the general population sample, regressed on age and gender, were calculated to enable a fair comparison of different groups of cancer patients. Results: While the reliability (Cronbach’s alpha) for the PHQ-9 scale was good (alpha ≥ 0.84), the CFA fit indices of the one-dimensional solution were unsatisfactory in the patients’ sample. The factorial analysis confirmed two factors. PHQ-9 mean scores for 15 types of cancer are given, ranging from 4.0 (prostate) to 8.2 (thyroid gland). Differences between expected mean scores (derived from the general population) and raw mean scores of the cancer subsamples are reported that provide a better estimate of the depression burden. Conclusions: The results confirmed that the PHQ-9 performs well in testing depression in cancer patients. Regression coefficients can be used for performing unbiased comparisons among cancer groups, not only for this study. The burden of patients with testis cancer and Hodgkin lymphoma is underestimated when age and gender are not taken into account.

Zugl.: Diss.

Universiẗat, Diss.--Frankfurt (Main), 2006.

The presented diploma thesis focuses on the person-centered approach in personality research and on the possibilities of predicting behavior in the online environment. The theoretical part defines different approaches to personality descriptions, with a special focus on the person-centered approach, variable-centered approach, and person-specific approach. The outputs of thematically relevant research studies are also summarized here. The empirical part describes the exploratory research, which aimed to examine the possibility of predicting the personality type of LinkedIn users in the context of the person-centered approach, based on an analysis of their profile and behavior associated with this professional social network. The standardized HEXACO-PI-R and 4Elements Personality Inventory® questionnaires were used in the research. Cluster analysis was performed on data from 118 participants who filled out the 4Elements Personality Inventory®. Based on that, 4 clusters that describes 52,2 % of the variance were formed. Furthermore, using multinomial logistic regression, two models predicting the probability of a person belonging to a certain cluster based on information about predictors were created. Another cluster analysis was performed on the data from HEXACO-PI-R, which created 6 clusters that...