PTAM 2025

ABSTRACTS

Discrimination between types of common systematic variation in data contaminated by method effects using CFA models
Karl Schweizer

Abstract: In data contaminated by method effects, common systematic variation is inhomogeneous requiring that attribute-related common systematic variation is in structural investigations discriminated from other variation. In the reported study, CFA measurement models dealing differently with such inhomogeneity were compared with respect to their performance in investigating data contaminated by either speededness or high subset homogeneity. For this purpose, structured random data with five different levels of speededness respectively subset-homogeneity were generated and investigated. The investigations were conducted by the one-factor congeneric and tau-equivalent CFA models, as well as the bifactor CFA model designed as mixture of tau-equivalent and fixed-links models. In data with speededness the congeneric model indicated good model fit while the tau-equivalent model showed sensitivity for the effect. In data with subset-homogeneity both models showed sensitivity. Only the bifactor model accounted for the common systematic variation and discriminated well between the attribute and method effects.

Keywords: comfirmatory factor analysis, discrimination, speededness, subset homogeneity, method effect

Correspondence:
Karl Schweizer, Institute of Psychology, Goethe University Frankfurt, Theodor-W.-Adorno-Platz 6, 60323 Frankfurt a. M., Germany. K.Schweizer@psych.uni-frankfurt.de

Academic and Social Profiles of Adolescents with Autism
Christiane Lange-Küttner

Abstract: The INSIDE project is a longitudinal study of pupils who are in schools that provide inclusive education. At the beginning of the secondary school tier, there were 22 pupils with an autism diagnosis, two of them female, at ages 11 to 14 years. A comparison group with case-control matching in terms of gender and exact age in months was created by randomly selecting datasets of pupils from a large INSIDE panel (N = 2693). Adolescents with autism had the same level of competence in reading and mathematics as the comparison group but language grades were lower, most likely because of shortcomings in classroom discussion contributions. Factor analysis of questionnaires about the academic and social self-concept and school inclusion explained between 66.8% to 80.1% of the variance. In adolescents with autism, clear psychological dimensions of positive self-esteem, self-control, and peer relationships emerged. In contrast, in the comparison group, peer relationships were relevant for nearly every dimension showing the importance of social context for mainstream pupils. There was also a difference insofar as for adolescents with autism, critical thinking and evaluation was an important dimension, while for the comparison group, independent decision-making and speaking up was more relevant. Thus, while there was some common ground, there were differences revealed in both the composition of the main factors as well as in crucial anchor items of factors that explained less variance.

Keywords: Autism, Self-Concept, Peer Relationships, Self-Regulation

Correspondence:
Christiane Lange-Küttner, e-mail: c.langekuettner@uni-bremen.de