دانلود رایگان مقاله انگلیسی خوش بینی و بدبینی در جمعیت عمومی: ویژگی های روان سنجی آزمون جهت گیری زندگی - الزویر 2017

Abstract

Background/Objective: The Life Orientation Test-Revised (LOT-R) is often used to assess dispositional optimism. The aims of this study were to test psychometric properties of the LOT-R, to provide normative scores, and to test the association between optimism and several psychological, sociodemographic, and behavioral factors. Method: A randomly selected German general population community sample with an age range of 18-80 years (N = 9,711) was surveyed. Results: The Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) proved two (correlated) factors: Optimism and Pessimism. Invariance tests across gender and age groups confirmed metric invariance. There were only small gender differences in the LOT-R total score (M = 16.4 for females and M = 16.1 for males). The correlation between the subscales Optimism and Pessimism was strong for young and well educated people. Low optimism mean scores were observed for unemployed people, people with low income, smokers, and obese people. Normative scores of the LOTR are provided. Conclusions: The study confirmed the bidimensional structure of the LOT-R and invariance across age and gender. We can recommend using this instrument for measuring dispositional optimism and pessimism in epidemiological research and clinical practice.

Discussion

The first aim of this study was to test age and gender differences. As in previous studies, age differences were small in magnitude. Males were slightly less optimistic than females. Though the gender difference was statistically significant, the effect size of this difference was low (d = .12). Two previous German general population studies (Armbruster et al., 2015; Glaesmer et al., 2012) also found very small gender effects (d ≤ .07), and in a Colombian general population sample (Zenger et al., 2013) males were slightly more optimistic than females (d = .12 for the Total score). We also observed slight age differences; the older age groups reported less optimism than the younger ones. This was also in line with previous studies (Armbruster et al., 2015; Glaesmer et al., 2012; Zenger et al., 2013). The low occurrence of gender and age differences justifies reporting normative data for the whole population, without differentiating between age and gender groups.

Are optimism and pessimism independent variables? Most researchers reported only weak negative correlations between these subscales and concluded independency. In our total sample, the correlation was r = -.22, which is in line with other studies: r = -.12 (Zenger et al., 2013) and r = - .20 (Glaesmer et al., 2012). As in the most recent German study (Armbruster et al., 2015), the correlation between optimism and pessimism depends on the age of the subjects. Among young people, there was a clear negative correlation, while in the oldest group the correlation was even slightly positive. This is also in line with a strong negative correlation between the latent variables found in a Spanish sample of university students (Cano-García et al., 2015). One reason for the lack of a clear negative correlation between optimism and pessimism in the general population is the so-called acquiescence effect, a tendency to give affirmative answers to items irrespective of their content. This acquiescence or yes-set effect (Savalei & Falk, 2014) contributes to a small or inverse association of constructs which are theoretically in an opposite position. This acquiescence effect seems to be more pronounced in older people and in people with lower education levels. Whenever examinations use samples of students one must be aware that their response behavior differs from that of older and less educated people, a fact that limits the generalizability of those findings.