Abschlussarbeiten (BSc/MSc Psychologie)

Typ: Masterarbeit

Betreuer: Kristin Jankowsky, Ulrich Schroeders

Kurzbeschreibung: The Big Five personality trait openness to experiences represents a combination of creativity, intellect, differentiated interests, aesthetic sensitivity, the tendency to actively seek out new experiences or being thoughtful about (new) ideas. Items measuring openness have several shortcomings that potentially bias a fair assessment: (a) items are often based on Western culture (e.g., “Do not enjoy going to art museums”, Johnson, 2005), (b) some items are outdated (e.g., “I’ve never really enjoyed looking through an encyclopedia”, Ashton & Lee, 2007), and (c) others are specifically affected by age or socio-economic status (e.g., “Thinks poetry and plays are boring”, Soto & John, 2017). As such, measures of openness do not provide fair and comparable assessment, as they capture a wide range of non-related participant characteristics. The goal of this thesis is to identify openness items (or measures) that are least (or most) affected by culture/country, gender, SES, and age. Different analytical approaches are possible including relative importance regression models (Grömping, 2006) or Ant Colony Optimization (Olaru et al., 2019).

Referenzen:

• Ashton, M.C., & Lee, K. (2007). Empirical, Theoretical, and Practical Advantages of the HEXACO Model of Personality Structure. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 11(2), 150-166. https://doi.org/10.1177%2F1088868306294907
• Grömping, U. (2006). Relative importance for linear regression in R: The package relaimpo. Journal of Statistical Software, 17(1), 1–27. https://doi.org/10.18637/jss.v017.i01
• Johnson, J. A. (2005). Ascertaining the validity of individual protocols from Web-based personality inventories. Journal of Research in Personality, 39(1), 103–129. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrp.2004.09.009
• Olaru, G., Schroeders, U., Hartung, J., & Wilhelm, O. (2019). Ant Colony Optimization and Local Weighted Structural Equation Modeling. A Tutorial on Novel Item and Person Sampling Procedures for Personality Research. European Journal of Personality, 33(3), 400–419. https://doi.org/10.1002/per.2195
• Soto, C. J., & John, O. P. (2017). The next Big Five Inventory (BFI-2): Developing and assessing a hierarchical model with 15 facets to enhance bandwidth, fidelity, and predictive power. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 113(1), 117–143. https://doi.org/10.1037/pspp0000096

Typ: Bachelor- oder Masterarbeit

Betreuer: Priscilla Achaa-Amankwaa, Ulrich Schroeders

Kurzbeschreibung: The historical division of Germany into East and West has contributed to the emergence of two slightly different cultures in Germany, forming a kind of collective knowledge (Schuman & Corning, 2000). Although the German reunification was more than 30 years ago, there are still differences in the knowledge bases of East and West Germans. These differences between East and West Germans of different ages are to be investigated at the level of individual knowledge items from the domain of public events knowledge (Beier & Ackerman, 2001; Hambrick et al., 2007). Knowledge about public events include, for example, knowledge about celebrated athletes, musicians, and influential politicians. Using data from an age-heterogeneous sample, the applicant examines to what extent differences in knowledge trace back to regional and cohort differences. Preferentially this is done with machine learning algorithms (Rosenbusch et al., 2021).

Referenzen:

• Beier, M. E., & Ackerman, P. L. (2001). Current-events knowledge in adults: An investigation of age, intelligence, and nonability determinants. Psychology and Aging, 16(4), 615–628. https://doi.org/10.1037/0882-7974.16.4.615
• Hambrick, D. Z., Meinz, E. J., & Oswald, F. L. (2007). Individual differences in current events knowledge: Contributions of ability, personality, and interests. Memory & Cognition, 35(2), 304–316. https://doi.org/10.3758/bf03193451
• Rosenbusch, H., Soldner, F., Evans, A. M., & Zeelenberg, M. (2021). Supervised machine learning methods in psychology: A practical introduction with annotated R code. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 15(2), Article: e12579, https://doi.org/10.1111/spc3.12579
• Schuman, H. & Corning, A. D. (2000). Collective Knowledge of Public Events: The Soviet Era from the Great Purge to Glasnost. American Journal of Sociology, 105(4), 913–956. https://doi.org/10.1086/210396

Typ: Bachelor- oder Masterarbeit

Betreuer: Katja Roost, Ulrich Schroeders

Kurzbeschreibung: The Regulating Emotions in Parenting Scale (REPS, Rodriguez & Shaffer, 2021) is a new measure focusing on emotion regulation of parents in the different parenting context. Effective parenting is considered a critical contributor to child emotional, cognitive, and social development. Variables that enable parents to meet the demands inherent to the parenting role, and manage the child's and personal needs (often at the same time) have been shown to buffer the stress of parenting and to prevent a potentially unhealthy dynamic. The REPS explained greater variance in outcome measures in parenting than general emotion regulation measures, suggesting incremental validity of the scale. The aim of the thesis is to develop a German translation of the REPS using appropriate techniques (Hambleton, 2005) and to explore the psychometric properties in a sample of parents, including further parenting measures to address questions of validity in a German sample.

Referenzen: 

• Hambleton, R. K. (2005). Issues, designs, and technical guidelines for adapting tests into multiple languages and cultures. In R. K. Hambleton, P. F. Merenda, & C. D. Spielberger (Eds.), Adapting educational and psychological tests for cross-cultural assessment (pp. 1–38). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers.
• Rodriguez, V. J., & Shaffer, A. (2021). Validation of the regulating emotions in parenting scale (REPS): Factor structure and measurement invariance. Journal of Family Psychology, 35(4), 468-477. https://doi.org/10.1037/fam0000808

Typ: Bachelor- oder Masterarbeit

Betreuer: Ulrich Schroeders, Priscilla Achaa-Amankwaa

Kurzbeschreibung: Famous Faces Tests are psychological assessments used to examine individuals' recognition and recall abilities concerning the faces of renowned individuals, such as politicians, athletes, scientists, and artists. These tests have been employed in both fundamental research and clinical applications, including the diagnosis of dementia or neurological impairments, rehabilitation, and forensic investigations (e.g., Van Den Elzen et al., 2023). In Germany, the 'Berühmte-Personen-Test' (Vollmer-Schmolck et al., 2000) covers the period from 1961 to 1995 and specifically pertains to the old federal states in Germany, making it outdated. In this thesis, a novel measurement instrument will be systematically developed for the German cultural context. The test will be validated in an age-heterogeneous sample in order to investigate possible age-related effects (i.e., reminiscence bump) and correlations with variables of interest (e.g., gc, openness).

Referenzen

• Van Den Elzen, E. H. T., Brehmer, Y., Van Deun, K., & Mark, R. E. (2023). Stimulus material selection for the Dutch famous faces test for older adults. Frontiers in Medicine, 10. https://doi.org/10.3389/fmed.2023.1124986
• Vollmer-Schmolck, H., Garbelotto, S., & Schmidtke, K. (2000). Der Berühmte-Personen-Test des Altgedächtnisses für öffentliche Daten 1966–1995. Zeitschrift für Neuropsychologie, 11, 12–22. https://doi.org/10.1024//1016-264X.11.1.12

Typ: Masterarbeit

Betreuer: Ulrich Schroeders, Timo Gnambs

The Actively Open-minded Thinking scale (AOT) is a psychological measure designed to assess an individual's cognitive ability to consider diverse perspectives, entertain new ideas, and revise one's beliefs when presented with valid and convincing evidence (sample item: "A person should always consider new possibilities"). Stanovich and West (2007) introduced a measure with 41 items that has become the most widely used AOT measure. The scale consists of six subscales: Flexible Thinking, Openness Values, Dogmatism, Categorical Thinking, Belief Identification, and Counterfactual Thinking. Despite these multi-factor structure and contradicting empirical evidence (e.g., Janssen et al., 2020), researchers often treat the scale as unidimensional. In this master's thesis, meta-analytic structural equation modeling will be used to collect item-level data from all available sources (especially open data sets in online repositories) and to compare competing measurement models of the AOT scale (for more information on the method, see Gnambs et al., 2023; Schroeders et al., 2022, 2023). An additional aim is to construct a psychometrically sound short AOT scale using a new statistical method combining meta-analytical techniques and metaheuristics, MASEM-ACO (Schroeders et al., 2023).

References

• Gnambs, T., & Schroeders, U. (2023). Reliability and factorial validity of the Core Self-Evaluations Scale: A meta-analytic investigation of wording effects. European Journal of Psychological Assessment. https://psyarxiv.com/j54zw
• Janssen, E. M., Verkoeijen, P. P. J. L., Heijltjes, A., Mainhard, T., Van Peppen, L. M., & Van Gog, T. (2020). Psychometric properties of the Actively Open-minded Thinking scale. Thinking Skills and Creativity, 36, 100659. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tsc.2020.100659
• Schroeders, U., Kubera, F., & Gnambs, T. (2022). The structure of the Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS-20): A meta-analytic confirmatory factor analysis. Assessment, 29(8), 1806–1823. https://doi.org/10.1177/10731911211033894
• Schroeders, U., Morgenstern, M., Jankowsky, K., & Gnambs, T. (in press). Short-scale construction using meta-analytic Ant Colony Optimization: A demonstration with the Need for Cognition Scale. European Journal of Psychological Assessment.https://psyarxiv.com/nw8k7
• Stanovich, K. E., & West, R. F. (2007). Natural myside bias is independent of cognitive ability. Thinking & Reasoning, 13(3), 225–247. https://doi.org/10.1080/13546780600780796