A Monte Carlo study compared 14 methods to test the statistical significance of the intervening variable effect. An intervening variable (mediator) transmits the effect of an independent variable to a dependent variable. The commonly used R. M. Baron and D. A. Kenny (1986) approach has low statistical power. Two methods based on the distribution of the product and 2 difference-in-coefficients methods have the most accurate Type I error rates and greatest statistical power except in 1 important case in which Type I error rates are too high. The best balance of Type I error and statistical power across all cases is the test of the joint significance of the two effects comprising the intervening variable effect.

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A comparison of methods to test mediation and other intervening variable effects.

The most commonly used method to test an indirect effect is to divide the estimate of the indirect effect by its standard error and compare the resulting z statistic with a critical value from the standard normal distribution. Confidence limits for the indirect effect are also typically based on critical values from the standard normal distribution. This article uses a simulation study to demonstrate that confidence limits are imbalanced because the distribution of the indirect effect is normal only in special cases. Two alternatives for improving the performance of confidence limits for the indirect effect are evaluated: (a) a method based on the distribution of the product of two normal random variables, and (b) resampling methods. In Study 1, confidence limits based on the distribution of the product are more accurate than methods based on an assumed normal distribution but confidence limits are still imbalanced. Study 2 demonstrates that more accurate confidence limits are obtained using resampling methods, with the bias-corrected bootstrap the best method overall.

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Confidence Limits for the Indirect Effect: Distribution of the Product and Resampling Methods.

Poorly controlled cancer pain is a significant public health problem throughout the world. There are many barriers that lead to undertreatment of cancer pain. One important barrier is inadequate measurement and assessment of pain. To address this problem, the Pain Research Group of the WHO Collaborating Centre for Symptom Evaluation in Cancer Care has developed the Brief Pain Inventory (BPI), a pain assessment tool for use with cancer patients. The BPI measures both the intensity of pain (sensory dimension) and interference of pain in the patient's life (reactive dimension). It also queries the patient about pain relief, pain quality, and patient perception of the cause of pain. This paper describes the development of the Brief Pain Inventory and the various applications to which the BPI is suited. The BPI is a powerful tool and, having demonstrated both reliability and validity across cultures and languages, is being adopted in many countries for clinical pain assessment, epidemiological studies, and in studies of the effectiveness of pain treatment.

Pain assessment: Global use of the Brief Pain Inventory.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/acr.20543

Measures of Adult Pain: Visual Analog Scale for Pain (VAS Pain), Numeric Rating Scale for Pain (NRS Pain), McGill Pain Questionnaire (MPQ), Short-Form McGill Pain Questionnaire (SF-MPQ), Chronic Pain Grade Scale (CPGS), Short Form-36 Bodily Pain Scale (SF-36 BPS), and Measure of Intermittent and Constant Osteoarthritis Pain (ICOAP)

I use a divorce-stress-adjustment perspective to summarize and organize the empirical literature on the consequences of divorce for adults and children. My review draws on research in the 1990s to answer five questions: How do individuals from married and divorced families differ in well-being? Are these differences due to divorce or to selection? Do these differences reflect a temporary crisis to which most people gradually adapt or stable life strains that persist more or less indefinitely? What factors mediate the effects of divorce on individual adjustment? And finally, what are the moderators (protective factors) that account for individual variability in adjustment to divorce? In general, the accumulated research suggests that marital dissolution has the potential to create considerable turmoil in people's lives. But people vary greatly in their reactions. Divorce benefits some individuals, leads others to experience temporary decrements in well-being, and forces others on a downward trajectory from which they might never recover fully. Understanding the contingencies under which divorce leads to these diverse outcomes is a priority for future research.

The Consequences of Divorce for Adults and Children

The measurement of subjective pain intensity continues to be important to both researchers and clinicians. Although several scales are currently used to assess the intensity construct, it remains unclear which of these provides the most precise, replicable, and predictively valid measure. Five criteria for judging intensity scales have been considered in previous research: ease of administration of scoring; relative rates of incorrect responding; sensitivity as defined by the number of available response categories; sensitivity as defined by statistical power; and the magnitude of the relationship between each scale and a linear combination of pain intensity indices. In order to judge commonly used pain intensity measures, 75 chronic pain patients were asked to rate 4 kinds of pain (present, least, most, and average) using 6 scales. The utility and validity of the scales was judged using the criteria listed above. The results indicate that, for the present sample, the scales yield similar results in terms of the number of subjects who respond correctly to them and their predictive validity. However, when considering the remaining 3 criteria, the 101-point numerical rating scale appears to be the most practical index.

The measurement of clinical pain intensity: a comparison of six methods.

Divorced Dads: Shattering the Myths

One of the causes of the underuse of the Solomon four-group design may be that the complete details for the statistical analysis have not previously been presented. The primary issue previously unaddressed was how to combine an analysis of the effect of the treatment in the posttest-only groups with the same effect in the pre- and posttest groups (after an earlier phase of the analysis has shown no evidence of pretest sensitization.) A meta-analytic solution for this problem is proposed, and the entire analysis is presented, complete with flowchart and example. It is shown that the analysis has adequate statistical power even if the total N is not increased from that of a posttest-only design, removing the last of the serious objections to the Solomon design.

Statistical Treatment of the Solomon Four-Group Design: A Meta-Analytic Approach

Volunteer characteristics and volunteer rates across several laboratory experiments of sexual arousal were compared. Conditions were created to assess which component of the experimental setting was responsible for low volunteer rates in experiments using genital measurement. Subjects were 324 male and 424 female undergraduate students who had volunteered for an experiment on sexuality and personality. After completing several measures of sexual experience and attitude, subjects received a written description of one of the following conditions and were asked if they wished to volunteer: (1) sexual film, (2) sexual film and subjective rating of arousal, (3) sexual film and assessment through forehead temperature, (4) sexual film and assessment with a device that was placed over the clothes and measured genital heat flow, (5) sexual film and assessment with the heat flow device while partially undressed, or (6) sexual film and assessment with the vaginal photoplethysmograph or penile strain gauge while partially undressed. Men were significantly more likely to volunteer than women, and volunteer rates for both men and women decreased significantly when and only when subjects were required to undress. Multivariate analyses of variance revealed that both male and female volunteers were more sexually experienced, reported more exposure to erotic materials, and worried less about their sexual performance than nonvolunteers. No differences in volunteer characteristics occurred across the increasingly intrusive conditions for women while a few differences occurred for men. The present findings suggest that researchers should be cautious about discussing the generality of findings of studies involving exposure to a sexually explicit film alone as well as of experiments that involve self-report or physiological measures of sexual arousal.

Volunteer bias in erotica research: Effects of intrusiveness of measure and sexual background

This article studied the relations of children’s mental health problems to the warmth of their relationship with their noncustodial father and custodial mother and the level of conflict between the parents. Using a sample of 182 divorcing families, multiple regression was used to test the independent effect of father warmth, mother warmth, and interparental conflict. Results indicated that father warmth and mother warmth were both independently related to lower child-externalizing problems. However, the relations between mother and child warmth and child-internalizing problems were different as a function of interparental conflict and level of warmth with the other parent. Implications for court practices and policies are discussed.

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Sanford L. Braver

Papers

The measurement of clinical pain intensity: a comparison of six methods.

Divorced Dads: Shattering the Myths

Statistical Treatment of the Solomon Four-Group Design: A Meta-Analytic Approach

Volunteer bias in erotica research: Effects of intrusiveness of measure and sexual background

Effects of father and mother parenting on children's mental health in high- and low-conflict divorces