Optimizing Efficiency of Psychopathology Assessment through Quantitative Modeling: Development of a Brief Form of the Externalizing Spectrum Inventory

摘要

The Externalizing Spectrum Inventory (ESI; ) provides for integrated, hierarchical assessment of a broad range of problem behaviors and traits in the domain of deficient impulse control. The ESI assesses traits and problems in this domain through 23 lower-order facet scales organized around three higher-order dimensions, reflecting general disinhibition, callous-aggression, and substance abuse. The full-form ESI contains 415 items, and a shorter form would be useful for questionnaire screening studies or multi-domain research protocols. The current work employed item response theory and structural modeling methods to create a 160-item brief form (ESI-bf) that provides for efficient measurement of the ESI’s lower-order facets and quantification of its higher-order dimensions either as scale-based factors or as item-based composites. The ESI-bf is recommended for use in research on psychological or neurobiological correlates of problems such as risk-taking, delinquency, aggression, and substance abuse, and studies of general and specific mechanisms that give rise to problems of these kinds.