German Translation of the Four-Item Mentalising Index (FIMI-G)

Alex Bertrams, Max Blaise, Ann Krispenz — Thu, 08 Feb 2024 00:00:00 -0800

Mentalising can be defined as the social-cognitive ability to understand and infer the mental non-emotional states of oneself and others. Recently, the Four-Item Mentalising Index (FIMI), a self-report scale, was developed to efficiently measure mentalising ability in English-speaking samples. This study presents a German translation of the FIMI—namely, the Four-Item Mentalising Index-German (FIMI-G). To assess the usefulness of the translation, initial evidence for the psychometric properties of the FIMI-G was gathered in a German-speaking sample from Austria, Germany, and Switzerland (N = 283). As expected, the corrected item-total correlations, the confirmatory factor analysis, and the inner consistency estimation indicated a homogenous, unidimensional measure which corresponds to the English original. In addition, the FIMI-G scores were related to the validation criteria as expected. Socially desirable responding did not undermine the validity. It is concluded that the German FIMI translation is a useful measure.

Measuring Organizational Transparency With 10 Items: Validation of a German Short Scale

C. Richard Hossiep, Julian Märtins, Gerhard Schewe — Thu, 08 Feb 2024 00:00:00 -0800

In recent research on transparency in organizational settings, a multidimensional understanding of supervisor transparency has gained acceptance. Following recent operationalizations, the construct can be measured by the five dimensions of Disclosure, Clarity, Accuracy, Timeliness, and Relevance of shared information. Initial applications of the scale already show its usefulness in that theoretically well-founded relationships, e.g., to trust, could be empirically supported using the instrument. As the instrument consists of twenty items, it can be too long for specific application fields. A shorter, more economical instrument is of value, especially in surveys that include many different constructs. In this article, we report on our testing of the suitability of a German shorter version consisting of only ten items. The results show that this instrument respects the dimensionality of the construct and leads to similar effects concerning its relationship to trust (-worthiness) and job satisfaction compared to the long scale. The findings also support the notion that individual transparency dimensions have different and distinct effects. Thus, the importance of a multidimensional understanding of transparency in organizational settings is also underlined by the short scale.

Measurement Instruments for the Social Sciences

German Translation of the Four-Item Mentalising Index (FIMI-G)

Measuring Organizational Transparency With 10 Items: Validation of a German Short Scale