Test of Reliability and Validity of Impulsiveness Scale Among Married Chinese

Abstract

Introduction

The Brief Barratt Impulsiveness Scale (BBIS) can be used in large scale rapid assessments and improves data quality while reducing subject response burden. It has been verified to have good reliability and cross-cultural consistency in multiple countries. However, there are no tests of impulsivity for the Chinese married population.

Aim

To investigate the applicability of the BBIS among the Chinese married population.

Methods

The BBIS was administered to 664 married middle-aged adults (sample 1) for item analysis and exploratory factor analysis (EFA), and to 758 married middle-aged adults (sample 2) for confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). At the same time, the trait anger scale (TAS), the quality marriage index (QMI) and the emotion reactivity scale (ERS) are selected as the calibration standards to test the correlation validity of the calibration standards.

Results

BBIS includes 8 items, which are composed of two dimensions of poor self-control and behavioral impulsivity; the two dimensions explained 68.10% of the total variance. CFA demonstrated that the fit index of the two-factor structure of the scale was good (χ²/df=2.315, RMSEA=0.042, RFI=0.971, CFI=0.989, NFI=0.982, IFI=0.990). The internal consistency reliability of each dimension and total scores were 0.824, 0.826 and 0.787, respectively. Total BBIS scores were significantly positively correlated with trait anger and emotional reactivity, and showed a significant negative correlation with marital quality. The Chinese version of BBIS had measurement equivalence between men and women.

Conclusion

The BBIS has good reliability and validity in the Chinese married population, and the measurement results can be compared across groups between different genders, which can be used as a suitable tool for impulse related research.

Keywords:

• Brief Barratt Impulsiveness Scale
• reliability
• validity
• Chinese

Ethical Approval

The study protocol was approved by the Ethics Committee of Jilin International Studies University (project number: 202111001). All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards. Written informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

Acknowledgments

We are very much thankful to all the researchers for data collection and processing. We thank all the survey participants in our study.

Author Contributions

All authors made a significant contribution to the work reported, whether that is in the conception, study design, execution, acquisition of data, analysis and interpretation, or in all these areas; took part in drafting, revising or critically reviewing the article; gave final approval of the version to be published; have agreed on the journal to which the article has been submitted; and agree to be accountable for all aspects of the work.

Disclosure

The authors report no conflicts of interest in this work.

Additional information

Funding

This study has been supported by the project of the Jilin Provincial Association of Higher Education (Project No. JGJX2021D340).