Revising the BIS/BAS Scale to study development: Measurement invariance and normative effects of age and sex from childhood through adulthood.

Abstract

Carver and White's Behavioral Inhibition System/Behavioral Activation System (BIS/BAS) Scale has been a useful tool for studying individual differences in reward/punishment sensitivity; however, its factor structure and invariance across development have not been well tested. In the current study, we examined the factor structure of the BIS/BAS Scale across five age groups: 6-10-year-old children (N=229), 11-13-year-old early adolescents (N=311), 14-16-year-old late adolescents (N=353), 18-22-year-old young adults (N=844), and 30-45-year-old adults (N=471). Given poor fit of the standard four-factor model (BIS, Reward Responsivity, Drive, Fun Seeking) in the literature, we conducted exploratory factor analyses in half of the participants and identified problematic items across age groups. The four-factor model showed poor fit in our sample whereas removing the BAS Fun Seeking subscale and problematic items from the remaining subscales improved fit in confirmatory factor analyses conducted with the second half of the participants. The revised model showed strict invariance across age groups and by sex, indicating consistent factor structure, item loadings, thresholds, and unique/residual variances. Additionally, in our cross-sectional data, we observed non-linear relations between age and subscale scores, where scores tended to be higher in young adulthood than childhood and later adulthood. Furthermore, sex differences emerged across development; adolescent and adult females had higher BIS scores than males in this age range, whereas sex differences were not observed in childhood. These differences may help us to understand the rise in internalizing psychopathology in adolescence, particularly in females. Future developmental studies are warranted to examine the impact of rewording problematic items.

A comparison of psychometric and convergent validity for social anhedonia and social closeness.

“…The BIS/BAS includes scales to represent unidimensional behavioral inhibition (BI) and behavioral activation, as well as three behavioral activation subscales: Reward Responsiveness, Drive, and Fun Seeking. The current factor structure has displayed satisfactory psychometric properties across previous administrations (Leone, Perugini, Bagozzi, Pierro, & Mannetti, 2001), although this is not uniformly found in the literature (e.g., Pagliaccio et al, in press). Higher scores indicate greater levels of the assessed trait.…”

Neural Correlates of Reward Processing in Depressed and Healthy Preschool-Age Children

“…44 We examined the following subscales, BAS Drive, BAS Reward Responsiveness, and BIS, using the recently revised and validated scoring. 45 …”

Do losses loom larger for children than adults?

“…Mean scores were calculated for the revised, age-invariant subscales (BAS Drive, BAS Reward, and BIS) (Pagliaccio et al, 2015). See Supplemental Table 2 for items and wording for each subscale.…”

“…However, only recently has measurement invariance of the BIS/BAS from childhood through adulthood been tested and established (i.e. the same construct is being measured across ages) by removing specific items/subscales from Carver and White’s original measure that show weak or inconsistent factor loadings/structure across developmental stages (Pagliaccio et al, 2015). Thus, modified BIS/BAS subscales can be calculated from the standard BIS/BAS and are appropriate for studies across development.…”