Test of Reliability and Validity of Impulsiveness Scale Among Married Chinese

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.

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

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.

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 (χ=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.

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.