Supplementary materials to: A Confirmatory Factor Analysis of the 18 Subscales of the Young Schema Questionnaire Short Form 3 (YSQ-S3) in an Australian Clinical and Nonclinical Sample

Abstract

Limited attention has been given to examining the factor structure of each YSQ-S3 subscale to determine whether the five items purported to measure an early maladaptive schema (EMS) demonstrate adequate convergent validity. The aim of this study was to evaluate the factor structure of the 18 individual YSQ-S3 subscales. Eighteen confirmatory factor analysis models were conducted using a large, mixed sample of 574 Western Australian clinical outpatients and 264 community members. The findings revealed that acceptable models were observed for only one (Self-Sacrifice) of the 18 subscales. After examining several options, model respecification resulted in adequate model fit for 10 out of the 18 revised subscales after the deletion of a single item: Emotional Deprivation, Mistrust/Abuse, Social Isolation, Vulnerability to Harm, Subjugation, Self-Sacrifice, Entitlement/Grandiosity, Insufficient Self-Control, Unrelenting Standards, and Punitiveness. Models for the remaining eight subscales were rejected even after model respecification options were examined. As such, only modified versions of 10 YSQ-S3 subscales achieved some form of model fit adequacy, offering confidence that the summed score for these subscales is valid and clinically meaningful. The findings have important implications given YSQ-S3 subscale scores are extensively used in English-speaking populations.