María Dolores Hidalgo

Background: Recovery IS a multidimensional, subjective PROCESS that emphasizes personal strategies AND empowerment beyond symptom remission. The Illness Management AND Recovery (IMR) scale incorporates the perspectives OF BOTH users AND professionals, although its internal structure has had ONLY limited examination through advanced psychometric methods. Network analysis was applied TO the IMR scale WITH the aims OF (1) exploring interrelationships among items, (2) assessing network stability, AND (3) analyzing measurement invariance BETWEEN users AND professionals. Method: DATA were collected FROM 172 users AND 49 mental health professionals USING the IMR scale. Network analysis used the Triangulated Maximally Filtered Graph (TMFG) method AND the walktrap ALGORITHM, WITH stability assessed through bootstrapping. Results: The analysis indicated 39 significant connections among 15 items, highlighting coping strategies AS the central node, along WITH symptom distress, functional difficulties, AND symptom recovery. Exploratory Graph Analysis IDENTIFIED three factors: (1) Personal Growth AND Planning, (2) Social AND Health Behavior Management, AND (3) Symptom Management AND Resilience. Conclusions: Network analysis underscores the importance OF coping strategies, suggesting that interventions should focus ON strengthening these skills TO support recovery.

This study translated, adapted, and evaluated the psychometric properties of the Illness Management and Recovery (IMR) Scale for Spanish-speaking populations, including both clinician and client versions. The translation followed the International Test Commission’s 2018 guidelines to ensure cultural and linguistic appropriateness. A total of 172 mental health service users completed the client version, while their reference professionals provided the corresponding responses to the clinician version and Health Nation Outcome Scale. Users also completed the Recovery Assessment Scale, the Functional Social Support Questionnaire, and the Dispositional Hope Scale. The Spanish versions demonstrated good adequacy, revealing a three-dimensional structure—goals and connectedness, management, and medication/substance use—consistent across both versions and aligned with prior studies. The management dimension showed adequate internal consistency, whereas the other two dimensions had lower reliability. Correlations with established recovery measures supported the IMR scale’s external validity. Findings support the Spanish IMR scale as a valuable tool for assessing mental health recovery, capturing both clinician and user perspectives. This research contributes significantly to the evaluation of illness management and recovery among Spanish-speaking individuals with severe mental disorders, offering a culturally adapted and psychometrically sound measure.

Hope is currently considered one of the key components of personal recovery in mental health (along with connection, identity, meaning, and empowerment). T

This study investigates how congruence between ideologically charged sentences and translation students’ political orientations influences cognitive processing during translation. Using reaction times (RTs) as an index of processing effort, we examined the effects of ideological alignment, emotional arousal, personality traits, and working memory capacity on oral translation performance. In our predominantly progressive sample, progressive sentences elicited faster responses overall, whereas progressive participants were generally slower than conservative participants. The interaction between sentence ideology and participants’ ideology did not reach significance, although the descriptive pattern suggested faster responses to congruent content among progressive participants. Emotional arousal modulated processing speed in combination with ideology: medium arousal facilitated progressive sentences but produced the slowest RTs for conservative sentences. Higher working memory capacity significantly predicted faster RTs. Openness to Experience showed a small positive association with RTs, possibly reflecting a more reflective or creative approach to translation choices. Overall, these findings highlight the relevance of ideological congruence and emotional arousal in translation processing and support interdisciplinary approaches that integrate cognitive individual differences into translation research.

There has been an emphasis on effect sizes for differential item functioning (DIF) with the purpose to understand the magnitude of the differences that are detected through statistical significance testing. Several different effect sizes have been suggested that correspond to the method used for analysis, as have different guidelines for interpretation. The purpose of this simulation study was to compare the performance of the DIF effect size measures described for quantifying and comparing the amount of DIF in two assessments. Several factors were manipulated that were thought to influence the effect sizes or are known to influence DIF detection. This study asked the following two questions. First, do the effect sizes accurately capture aggregate DIF across items? Second, do effect sizes accurately identify which assessment has the least amount of DIF? We highlight effect sizes that had support for performing well across several simulated conditions. We also apply these effect sizes to a real data set to provide an example. Results of the study revealed that the log odds ratio of fixed effects (Ln OR ¯ FE ) and the variance of the Mantel–Haenszel log odds ratio ( τ ^ 2 ) were most accurate for identifying which test contains more DIF. We point to future directions with this work to aid the continued focus on effect sizes to understand DIF magnitude.

Estimating the number of latent factors underlying a set of dichotomous items is a major challenge in social and behavioral research. Mokken scale analysis (MSA) and exploratory graph analysis (EGA) are approaches for partitioning measures consisting of dichotomous items. In this study we perform simulation-based comparisons of two EGA methods (EGA with graphical least absolute shrinkage and selector operator; EGAtmfg with triangulated maximally filtered graph algorithm), two MSA methods (AISP: automated item selection procedure; GA: genetic algorithm), and two widely used factor analytic techniques (parallel analysis with principal component analysis (PApc) and parallel analysis with principal axis factoring (PApaf)) for partitioning dichotomous items. Performance of the six methods differed significantly according to the data structure. AISP and PApc had highest accuracy and lowest bias for unidimensional structures. Moreover, AISP demonstrated the lowest rate of misclassification of items. Regarding multidimensional structures, EGA with GLASSO estimation and PApaf yielded highest accuracy and lowest bias, followed by EGAtmfg. In addition, both EGA techniques exhibited the lowest rate of misclassification of items to factors. In summary, EGA and EGAtmfg showed comparable performance to the highly accurate traditional method, parallel analysis. These findings offer guidance on selecting methods for dimensionality analysis with dichotomous indicators to optimize accuracy in factor identification.

The COVID-19 pandemic had a detrimental effect on mental health since its start in 2020 and current data on mental health is limited. This study provides recent longitudinal data on psychological distress among a country-wide sample of adults. We recruited and surveyed 1,956 adults in Spain in April 2021 and August 2022 on sociodemographic- and pandemic-related psychological distress using the General Distress 21-item version of the Depression, Anxiety, and Stress Scale (DASS). Paired sampled t-tests assessed DASS scores by sex from April 2021 to August 2022; and one-way ANOVAs assessed DASS scores across sociodemographic characteristics. Results showed that psychological distress slightly improved across the total sample from April 2021 to August 2022; though females, young adults, students, and individuals with lower income experienced more psychological distress. Increases in severe stress scores were found particularly among men. Our data provides an overview of the psychological distress of Spanish adults 2.5 years into the pandemic and provides novel evidence that though life has resumed a sense of normalcy after the COVID-19 pandemic, the mental health of key populations (e.g., females, young adults, students, low-income) is still suffering and further intervention and resources are needed.

Background:: There are no validated instruments in Spain for measuring parental feeding styles. The aim was to validate the Parental Feeding Styles Questionnaires (PFSQ) in a Spanish sample. Method:: A total of 523 mothers of 523 school-children participated. The children had a mean age of 4.4 years ( = 1.3), with 51% being boys ( = 4.3 years, = 1.4) and 49% girls ( = 4.5 years, = 1.3). The PFSQ and the Comprehensive General Parenting Styles Questionnaire (CGPQ) were used. Results:: A model of four correlated factors was identified: Prompting/encouraging eating, emotional feeding, instrumental feeding, and control over eating. Cronbach's alpha for the subscales ranged from 0.64 to 0.86, and McDonald's Omega coefficient ranged from 0.66 to 0.86. Emotional feeding and prompting/encouraging eating had values above 0.70, control over eating had a value of 0.68 and instrumental feeding had an alpha coefficient of 0.64 and omega coefficient of 0.66. The factor structure was similar to the original and to other adapted versions. The Spanish sample used more control over eating and prompting/encouraging to eat. Conclusions:: The adapted PFSQ is a suitable instrument for assessing the feeding styles of Spanish parents.

The Illness Management and Recovery Scale (IMR-S) is based on the IMR program, developed to assess the recovery process for people with severe mental disorders by considering the perceptions of clients and clinicians involved in it. The aim of this study was to analyze the psychometric properties of the IMR-S so as to determine the reliability and suitability of its scores for evaluating recovery. Two coders searched five databases for studies, published between January 2004 and May 2023, that describe the psychometric assessment of the IMR-S. Studies were assessed using the COnsensus-based Standards for the selection of health Measurement INstruments (COSMIN) Risk of Bias checklist. Finally, 46 papers were included. Methodological quality was very good for most of the studies that provide information on internal validity, and limited for those that report on responsiveness. Measurement properties were positive for convergent validity and measurement error. The quality of evidence was high for structural validity studies. Although this study only includes research published in English and may have overlooked certain psychometric properties evaluated in studies published in other languages, our findings suggest that the IMR-S is a valid and reliable instrument, demonstrating its potential to offer guidance for clinical practice.

This study examines Spanish adults’ social media use during the COVID-19 pandemic using mixed-methods to assess and understand frequency, context, and changes in social media use during two critical time points in Spain. We conducted semi-structured interviews in April 2020, and two waves of surveys (April 2020, April 2021) among Spanish adults. We coded and analyzed qualitative data related to social media use during the first lockdown period in Spain using Dedoose software; and ran descriptive statistics and chi-square tests to assess changes in social media use over the two survey waves related to perceived social support and loneliness. Participants ranged in age from 18–92 and were representative of the Spanish population’s sociodemographics. Interview data show that WhatsApp was most commonly used, and that social media allowed for social support and engaging in healthy behaviors. Survey data show that women and individuals aged 18–34 had the greatest increases in social media use. Statistically significant associations were found between social support and loneliness with social media use. Our results show that promoting social media use as an emotional resource for social support in times of crisis or isolation can minimize loneliness and can be a beneficial tool for general worldwide crises.