Loneliness and depression are the most prevalent mental health issues among older adults, and their relationship has been documented in studies using reflective psychopathological models based on the total scores. However, mental health problems should be investigated at the level of individual symptoms in order to develop intervention strategies aimed at mitigating the adverse impact of both variables. The goal was to examine the extent to which symptoms of loneliness relate to symptoms of depression in elderly Peruvians using the network method in 328 Peruvian adults with an average age of 68.44 years (SD = 7.64). The participants were selected through non-probability convenience sampling, which may limit the generalizability of the results. The Patient Health Questionnaire-2 (PHQ-2) and three-item UCLA Loneliness Scale were used in this study. Network analysis was used to identify cen...

Background: Depression and anxiety are two of the most prevalent and disabling mental disorders worldwide, both in the general population and in outpatient clinical settings. Objective: This study aimed to analyze the psychometric properties of the Patient Health Questionnaire-4 (PHQ-4) based on network analysis metrics. Methods: A total of 911 Paraguayans (23.71% women and 76.29% men; mean age 31.25 years, SD = 10.63), selected by non-probabilistic convenience sampling, participated in the study. Network analysis was used to evaluate the internal structure, reliability, and measurement invariance between men and women. Results: The results revealed that the PHQ-4 is a unidimensional measure through Exploratory Graph Analysis (EGA). Reliability, through structural consistency, identified that 100% of the time, only a single dimension was obtained, and all items remained stable, as they w...

Background: Depression and anxiety are two of the most prevalent and disabling mental disorders worldwide, both in the general population and in outpatient clinical settings. Objective: This study aimed to analyze the psychometric properties of the Patient Health Questionnaire-4 (PHQ-4) based on network analysis metrics. Methods: A total of 911 Paraguayans (23.71% women and 76.29% men; mean age 31.25 years, SD = 10.63), selected by non-probabilistic convenience sampling, participated in the study. Network analysis was used to evaluate the internal structure, reliability, and measurement invariance between men and women. Results: The results revealed that the PHQ-4 is a unidimensional measure through Exploratory Graph Analysis (EGA). Reliability, through structural consistency, identified that 100% of the time, only a single dimension was obtained, and all items remained stable, as they w...

This study aimed to evaluate the psychometric properties of the Grief Impairment Scale (GIS) using a network psychometric model. A total of 1048 individuals from Peru and El Salvador participated. A network psychometric model was used to determine internal structure, reliability, and cross-country invariance. The results indicate that the GIS items were grouped into a single network structure through Exploratory Graph Analysis. Reliability was estimated by structural consistency, and it was found that when replicating the network structure within an empirical dimension, a single network structure was consistently obtained, and all items remained stable. Furthermore, the network structure was invariant, thus functioning similarly across the different country groups. In conclusion, the GIS presented solid psychometric evidence of validity based on its internal structure, reliability, and c...

This study aimed to evaluate the psychometric properties of the Grief Impairment Scale (GIS) using a network psychometric model. A total of 1048 individuals from Peru and El Salvador participated. A network psychometric model was used to determine internal structure, reliability, and cross-country invariance. The results indicate that the GIS items were grouped into a single network structure through Exploratory Graph Analysis. Reliability was estimated by structural consistency, and it was found that when replicating the network structure within an empirical dimension, a single network structure was consistently obtained, and all items remained stable. Furthermore, the network structure was invariant, thus functioning similarly across the different country groups. In conclusion, the GIS presented solid psychometric evidence of validity based on its internal structure, reliability, and c...

The Grief Impairment Scale (GIS) is used to measure functional impairment due to grief following the death of a loved one. However, there is no information on its cross-cultural utility. Thus, this study assessed the measurement invariance of the GIS using a large sample of bereaved adults (N = 2060) from Peru, El Salvador, Ecuador, and Colombia. Specifically, we employed two measurement invariance techniques: multi-group confirmatory factor analysis (MG-CFA) and the alignment optimization method. The results indicated that the GIS demonstrated configural and metric invariance, but not scalar invariance through MG-CFA. The alignment optimization method indicated the presence of an approximate invariance. Therefore, the results suggest that the GIS measures grief-related impairment similarly across the four Latin American countries. Among the countries examined, Peru reported the highest ...