The reliability and validity of four selected scales--namely, job control, psychological demands, supervisor support, and coworker support--from the Chinese Version of the Job Content Questionnaire (C-JCL) were studied in 551 male and 648 female workers in Taiwan. Cronbach's alpha coefficients for job control, supervisor support, and coworker support were all above.80. Whereas it was.55 for psychological demands, indicating insufficient internal consistency for this subscale. Participants responded to questionnaire items relatively consistently over a 3-month period. Exploratory factor analyses disclosed 4 empirical factors, which corresponded closely with theoretical constructs of the JCL. As predicted by the model, lowest levels of job satisfaction were found in workers in "iso-strain" category (i.e., high demands combined with low control and low social support). These findings indicated that the C-JCL is reliable and valid for assessing psychosocial work conditions among Taiwanese workers, although further improvement is needed for the psychological demands subscale.

Predictions of an automatic-imagery, strategic-imagery, and context-availability hypothesis of concreteness effects in free recall were examined. In each experiment, recall of abstract and concrete words controlled for rated context availability was compared with the typical situation in which context availability is confounded with imageability. In Experiment 1, a directed intentionalrecall task produced concreteness effects in recall. Experiment 2 compared concreteness effects in recall following three orienting tasks: imagery rating, context-availability rating, and a directed intentional-memory task. Concreteness effects in the context-availability-controlled condition were found following the imagery-rating and the directed intentional-memory tasks, but not after the context-availability-rating task. In Experiment 3, subjects reported the strategies that they used to encode the list. Subjects reporting an imagery strategy showed concreteness effects for words controlled for rated context availability, but those not reporting it did not. These results support a strategic-imagery view of concreteness effects in free recall.There is now a long history to the general finding that abstract verbal materials are remembered more poorly than concrete materials (see Paivio, 1971Paivio, , 1986. For example, this finding has been shown in studies of paired associates learning (Paivio, 1965), memory for sentences (Brewer, 1975;Marschark & Paivio, 1977), and free recall of unrelated word lists (Christian, Bickley, Tarka, & Clayton, 1978;Rubin, 1980;Rubin & Friendly, 1986), among others. Abstract words are remembered more poorly by children and adults alike (Vellutino & Scanlon, 1985). Stimulus concreteness or, to be more precise, stimulus imageability is one of the most powerful predictors of recall in studies of verbal memory (Rubin, 1983). However, the causal role of imagery in these studies of concreteness effects in verbal memory have been the source of much debate. In this article, we will discuss the emergent predictions of three hypotheses for why abstract words are remembered more poorly than concrete words.The first hypothesis, which we will call the automaticimagery hypothesis, is designed to represent the intuitive view that the sensory information associated with concrete words naturally makes them more resistant to forgetting. This view claims that there are two representational systems associated with concepts in semantic memory: a verbal representation (consisting of verbal associates) and an Preparation of thisarticle was supported in part by Grant BNS-8808453 from the National Science Foundation to the first author. We appreciate the helpful comments that W. Fabricius, R. Fisher, M. Marschark, A. Paivio, and E. Shoben gave us on an earlier version of this paper. Some of the research described in this article was presented at the Southeastern Psychological Association meeting in March 1987. C. Akin is now affiliated with the Banks County, GA, Public School System.Correspondence should be addressed to P....

An important assumption for comparing children's quality of life (QoL) between children's and parents' perceptions is that measurement equivalence/invariance (ME/I) exists. The ME/I across the child- and parent-reported Chinese PedsQL was examined, and the latent means between child self-reports and parent-proxy reports were compared. Third-grade to sixth-grade children (n = 519) and their parents (n = 270) respectively completed the child- and parent-reported PedsQL. Seventy-eight parents completed parent-proxy reports twice. Full ME/I across child and parent reports was found in first- and second-order factor loadings. Partial ME/I was supported in item intercepts and item residual variances. The latent means of child self-reports and of parent-proxy reports were not significantly different, which suggested interchangeability between child- and parent-reported PedsQL. The ME/I results support the use of PedsQL scores to compare children's and parents' perceptions of children's QoL.

Quality of life (QoL) instruments for children provide an important health index for school healthcare professionals to understand students’ overall health status. We investigated the psychometric properties of the Chinese version of the widely used Kid-KINDL and reported on the wording effect of its positively and negatively worded items. A convenience sample of 8- to 12-year-old students (n = 443) completed the Kid-KINDL; 89 of them completed it again 7–14 days later. The internal consistency was satisfactory in the total score (α = .87) and two subscales (α = .704 [emotional] and .853 [self-esteem]), but unsatisfactory for the other subscales (α = .578 [physical], .533 [friend], .520 [family], and .560 [school]). Test-retest reliability was acceptable in all the subscales and the total score (ICC > .6). A multitrait-multimethod design using several confirmatory factor analysis models confirmed the construct validity of the Kid-KINDL when the wording effect was taken into account (GFI = .912–.934, TLI = .889–.930, CFI = 0.910–.947, IFI = 0.912–0.948, RMSEA = 0.045–0.057, SRMR = .045–.056). We conclude that the Kid-KINDL is a reliable and valid tool for teachers to use to evaluate students’ QoL if the total score is used.

The Chinese version of the PedsQL is a relatively reliable and valid instrument, and the PedsQL short form showed a better construct validity than did the full form. Measurement across gender was invariant; therefore, the comparisons of quality of life between boys and girls were appropriate.