Psychometric properties of the paper-and-pencil and online versions of the Italian Saving Inventory-Revised in non-clinical samples

Three studies were performed to investigate the psychometric properties of the of the paper-and-pencil and online versions of the Italian Saving Inventory-Revised (SI-R), in non-clinical participants. In Study 1, the SI-R was administered to a community sample of 473 participants together with a battery including measures of: obsessive-compulsive symptomatology, compulsive shopping, depression, and anxiety. In Study 2, temporal stability of the SI-R was investigated by administering the scale to 75 participants twice with a 4-week interval in between. In Study 3, 452 participants completed the SI-R through the internet. Evidence of internal consistency, test-retest reliability, construct validity, and replicability of the original three-correlated-factor structure was obtained. After ruling out the bias due to nonrandomized assignment to administration methods through propensity matching, multiple-group confirmatory factor analyses also provided evidence of measurement invariance among the administration formats, which nonetheless showed higher latent and manifest mean scores in online participants, consistent with the 'online disinhibition effect'. These results suggest that the Italian version of the SI-R retains the psychometric properties of the original in both the paper-and-pencil and online versions, though different norms seem to be needed.