Reducing Assessment Time Without Sacrificing Content Validity in Short-Form Development: An Illustration Through the Revised 20-Item Short Version of the UPPS-P Impulsive Behavior Scale (UPPS-P-20-R)

Abstract

The UPPS-P Impulsive Behavior Scale is a well-established psychometric instrument for assessing impulsivity, a key multidimensional psychological construct encompassing distinct facets that are differentially associated with numerous psychopathological and neuropathological symptoms across various disorders. To facilitate its integration in clinical and research settings, Billieux et al. (2012) developed and evaluated the psychometric properties of a 20-item short version of the UPPS-P Impulsive Behavior Scale (UPPS-P-20), reducing assessment time to approximately one-third of that of the original version of the psychometric instrument. Despite its widespread popularity, legitimate concerns were raised about the content validity of this short version of the UPPS-P Impulsive Behavior Scale. Indeed, the inevitable loss of construct-level content coverage in short-form development, although often unaddressed by researchers, warrants in-depth examination. Therefore, the present registered report aimed to develop and evaluate the psychometric properties of a revised short version of the UPPS-P Impulsive Behavior Scale through an expert-driven and data-driven methodological approach to short-form development emphasizing item-level and construct-level content validity. Taken together, the present registered report provides professionals in clinical and research settings (1) a revised short English-language psychometric instrument for assessing impulsivity – i.e., the revised 20-item short version of the UPPS-P Impulsive Behavior Scale (UPPS-P-20-R) – that presents strong psychometric properties, notably addressing the legitimate concerns critically highlighted about the content validity of the UPPS-P-20, and (2) a data-driven methodological approach to construct-level content validity in short-form development – i.e., the R package shortr – that can be adopted to develop short versions of any psychometric instrument.