Measurement Invariance of the Prodromal Questionnaire-Brief Among White, Asian, Hispanic, and Multiracial Populations

The Prodromal Questionnaire-Brief is a scale that is used to screen individuals for risk for the development of psychosis. It has promising psychometric properties in clinical and nonclinical populations, including undergraduates. However, the measurement invariance of the scale has not been examined in Asian, White, Hispanic, and Multiracial samples. A total of 2,767 undergraduates at two large public U.S. universities completed the Prodromal Questionnaire-Brief. The Total scores had configural and scalar invariance, while the Distress scores displayed configural, metric, and partial scalar invariance. Follow-up analyses revealed that three items were responsible for the lack of complete scalar invariance for the Distress scores. This suggests that the Total and Distress scores are measuring the same construct across groups and mean scores represent the same level of latent prodromal traits across groups. Mean comparisons for the Distress Scale across ethnicity should be interpreted with caution because it lacks complete scalar invariance. White and Hispanic participants had lower Total scores that Multiracial and Asian participants, and this pattern emerged for 13 items. For the distress items that were scalar invariant, the Asian group reported more distress than the White and Hispanic groups, while the Multiracial group reported more distress than the White group.