Quinten A. W. Raaijmakers

Maturation of personality in adolescence.

The present research assesses adolescent personality maturation by examining 3 measures of change and stability (i.e., mean-level change, rank-order stability, and profile similarity) of Big Five personality traits, employing data from a 5-annual-wave study with overlapping early to middle (n = 923) and middle to late (n = 390) adolescent cohorts. Results indicated that mean levels of Agreeableness and Emotional Stability increased during adolescence. There was mixed evidence for increases in Extraversion and Openness. Additionally, rank-order stability and profile similarity of adolescent personality traits clearly increased from early to late adolescence. For all change facets, the authors found evidence for gender differences in the timing of adolescent personality maturation, as girls were found to mature earlier than boys.

Psychometric Properties of the Screen for Child Anxiety Related Emotional Disorders (SCARED) in the General Adolescent Population

OBJECTIVE This study examined the psychometric properties of the Screen for Child Anxiety Related Emotional Disorders (SCARED) in a large sample of adolescents from the general population. METHOD In 2001, 1,340 junior high and high school adolescents in the Netherlands completed the SCARED. The SCARED is a questionnaire that purports to measure five child and adolescent anxiety symptom dimensions. The factor structure of the SCARED was investigated by means of confirmatory factor analyses that were conducted for males and females, early (10-13 years) and middle (14-18 years) adolescent groups, and for Dutch and ethnic minorities. Analyses of variance were carried out to compare mean scores for the various groups. RESULTS The five-factor structure of the SCARED not only had the best fit for the general adolescent population but also for the age, gender, and ethnic groups. It was also found that the SCARED scores of the adolescent subgroups differed from one another in agreement with previous studies on adolescent anxiety disorder symptoms. CONCLUSIONS The findings of this study support the claim that the SCARED has a five-factor structure. The usefulness of the SCARED was also demonstrated.

The Structure of The Extended Psychosis Phenotype in Early Adolescence-A Cross-sample Replication

The extended psychosis phenotype, or the expression of nonclinical positive psychotic experiences, is already prevalent in adolescence and has a dose-response risk relationship with later psychotic disorder. In 2 large adolescent general population samples (n = 5422 and n = 2230), prevalence and structure of the extended psychosis phenotype was investigated. Positive psychotic experiences, broadly defined, were reported by the majority of adolescents. Exploratory analysis with Structural Equation Modelling (Exploratory Factor Analysis followed by Confirmatory Factor Analysis [CFA]) in sample 1 suggested that psychotic experiences were best represented by 5 underlying dimensions; CFA in sample 2 provided a replication of this model. Dimensions were labeled Hallucinations, Delusions, Paranoia, Grandiosity, and Paranormal beliefs. Prevalences differed strongly, Hallucinations having the lowest and Paranoia having the highest rates. Girls reported more experiences on all dimensions, except Grandiosity, and from age 12 to 16 years rates increased. Hallucinations, Delusions, and Paranoia, but not Grandiosity and Paranormal beliefs, were associated with distress and general measures of psychopathology. Thus, only some of the dimensions of the extended psychosis phenotype in young people may represent a continuum with more severe psychopathology and predict later psychiatric disorder.

Effectiveness of Different Missing Data Treatments in Surveys with Likert-Type Data: Introducing the Relative Mean Substitution Approach:

This article introduces a new approach to the substitution of missing values in surveys with Likert-type scales: relative mean substitution. The effectiveness of this method is demonstrated in comparison with three other commonly used methods for dealing with missing values, making use of actual field data. The emphasis is on two aspects of global effectiveness: (a) the accuracy in estimating various parameters at the same time and (b) the accuracy in estimating, for Likert-type scales with different psychometric characteristics, these various parameters under different conditions, such as different numbers of respondents (1,674; 400; and 100) and different distributions of missing values (two random and three nonrandom situations). The results indicated that this new relative mean substitution approach globally produced the most accurate estimates, mainly because of the more accurate estimation of the variances and the sensitivity to items with deviating means, provided that the Likert-type scales are sufficiently homogeneous.

Developmental trajectories of adolescent anxiety disorder symptoms: a 5-year prospective community study.

OBJECTIVE This study prospectively examined the developmental trajectories of anxiety disorder symptoms in a large sample of adolescents from the general population. METHOD Two cohorts of early and middle adolescents (1,318 junior high and high school students) completed the Screen for Child Anxiety Related Emotional Disorders during 5 consecutive years. The Screen for Child Anxiety Related Emotional Disorders is a questionnaire that measures self-rated child and adolescent anxiety symptoms that map onto DSM-IV-TR anxiety disorders. At the first wave of measurement, the early and middle adolescent cohorts were an average of 12 and 16 years of age, respectively. Age and sex differences in the developmental trajectories of adolescent anxiety disorder symptoms over time were examined by means of latent growth modeling. RESULTS Over the course of 5 years, there was a slight decrease in the panic disorder, school anxiety, and separation anxiety disorder symptoms for all of the adolescents, with the exception of social phobia symptoms, which remained fairly stable over time. Adolescent girls showed a slight increase of generalized anxiety disorder symptoms over time, whereas these symptoms decreased among adolescent boys. CONCLUSIONS This study replicates and extends earlier findings on the developmental trajectories of anxiety symptoms during adolescence. By using individually focused, trajectory-based analyses rather than group score differences, this study extends earlier findings and advances our understanding of age and sex differences in the development of adolescent anxiety symptoms.

Identity Formation in Adolescence: Change or Stability?

The aim of this five-wave longitudinal study of 923 early to middle adolescents (50.7% boys; 49.3% girls) and 390 middle to late adolescents (43.3% boys and 56.7% girls) is to provide a comprehensive view on change and stability in identity formation from ages 12 to 20. Several types of change and stability (i.e., mean-level change, rank-order stability, and profile similarity) were assessed for three dimensions of identity formation (i.e., commitment, in-depth exploration, and reconsideration), using adolescent self-report questionnaires. Results revealed changes in identity dimensions towards maturity, indicated by a decreasing tendency for reconsideration, increasingly more in-depth exploration, and increasingly more stable identity dimension profiles. Mean levels of commitment remained stable, and rank-order stability of commitment, in-depth exploration, and reconsideration did not change with age. Overall, girls were more mature with regard to identity formation in early adolescence, but boys had caught up with them by late adolescence. Taken together, our findings indicate that adolescent identity formation is guided by progressive changes in the way adolescents deal with commitments, rather than by changes in the commitments themselves.

A meta-analysis of the cross-cultural psychometric properties of the Screen for Child Anxiety Related Emotional Disorders (SCARED)

BACKGROUND Accumulating studies have demonstrated that the Screen for Child Anxiety Related Emotional Disorders (SCARED), a modern youth anxiety questionnaire with scales explicitly designed to map onto specific DSM-IV-TR anxiety disorders, has good psychometric properties for children and adolescents from various countries. However, no study has yet been conducted as to the overall strength of the psychometric properties found in these studies. METHODS Studies were collected from the PsycINFO, PubMed, SSCI, SCI-Expanded, ERIC, and A&HCI databases from the year of the SCAREDs first publication (1997) to the present. The inclusion criteria focused on all studies that examined the psychometric properties of the SCARED. RESULTS We retained 21 articles, reporting a total of 25 studies from predominantly Europe (Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands) and the USA, as well as South Africa and China, which matched our inclusion criteria. It was found that the psychometric properties were robust for the SCARED scales related to the symptoms of DSM-IV-TR anxiety disorders, that females scored significantly higher than males and that age had a moderating effect on male and female score differences. CONCLUSIONS This meta-analysis suggests that the SCARED can be utilized as a screening instrument for DSM-IV-TR anxiety disorder symptom dimensions for children and adolescents from various countries.

Personality, perceived parental rejection and problem behavior in adolescence

BackgroundIt has been well documented that adolescents run a heightened risk for developing depression and aggression when they feel rejected by their parents and that parental rejection has different effects for gender in developing depression and aggression. Whether personality in combination with gender plays a role in the association between parental rejection, depression and aggression has not yet received much attention. MethodThis was a cross-sectional study using data from the Conflict and Management of Relationships study (CONAMORE). A total of 1142 early and middle adolescents completed questionnaires about parental rejection, depression, aggression and personality. The associations between the variables were tested in multi-group moderation models using structural equation modeling.Results:Perceived parental rejection was associated with depression and aggression in most of the combined personality type and gender groups. Personality type and gender moderated the associations between perceived parental rejection, depression and aggression. Several clear differences between the combined personality type and gender groups were found on these associations.Conclusion:Several clear moderating effects of the personality type x gender groups were found on associations between perceived parental rejection, depression and aggression. Future research should focus on these specific combinations instead of using either personality types or gender separately.

Evidence for a persistent, environment-dependent and deteriorating subtype of subclinical psychotic experiences: a 6-year longitudinal general population study

BACKGROUND Research suggests that subclinical psychotic experiences during adolescence represent the behavioral expression of liability for psychosis. Little is known, however, about the longitudinal trajectory of liability in general population samples. METHOD Growth mixture modeling was used to examine longitudinal trajectories of self-reported positive psychotic experiences in the Youth Self Report (YSR), completed three times over a period of 6 years by a general population cohort of adolescents aged 10-11 years at baseline (n=2230). RESULTS Four groups with distinct developmental trajectories of low, decreasing, increasing and persistent levels of mild positive psychotic experiences were revealed. The persistent trajectory was associated strongly with cannabis use, childhood trauma, developmental problems and ethnic minority status, and consistently displayed strong associations with factors known to predict transition from subclinical psychotic experience to clinical psychotic disorder (severity of and secondary distress due to psychotic experiences, social and attentional problems and affective dysregulation) and also with high levels of parental-reported psychotic experiences and use of mental health care at the end of the follow-up period. Progressively weaker associations were found for the increasing, decreasing and low trajectories respectively. CONCLUSIONS The results suggest that the outcome of early developmental deviation associated with later expression of psychotic experiences is contingent on the degree of later interaction with environmental risks inducing, first, persistence of psychotic experiences and, second, progression to onset of need for care and service use. Insight into the longitudinal dynamics of risk states in representative samples may contribute to the development of targeted early intervention in psychosis.

Psychometric properties of the Screen for Child Anxiety Related Emotional Disorders (SCARED) in the general Italian adolescent population: A validation and a comparison between Italy and The Netherlands

In this study examination is given to the psychometric properties of the Italian version of the Screen for Child Anxiety Related Emotional Disorders (SCARED) in a large community sample of adolescents. Additionally, a comparison was made between the anxiety scores of this Italian adolescent cohort (N=1975) and a comparative Dutch adolescent cohort (N=1115). Findings revealed that a five-factor structure of the SCARED applied not only to the Italian adolescents from the general community, but also to boys and girls, and to early and middle adolescents. Moreover, sex and age differences on anxiety scores within the Italian sample were found to be consistent with previous studies of adolescent anxiety disorders. Finally, Italian adolescents reported higher anxiety scores than their Dutch peers. Findings of this study highlight that the SCARED is a valid screening instrument to rate anxiety symptoms of Italian adolescents.