A Battery of Measures for Psychometric Assessment of Life History Strategy

In recent years, life history theory has significantly strengthened its position in the social sciences, offering explanations for persistent variations in behavior and values, as well as physiological, cognitive, psychological, and social traits of individuals along the continuum between fast and slow strategies. In this paper, we present a comprehensive overview of this all-encompassing theory, demonstrating its significance across various disciplines. Psychometric methods for assessing life history strategy (LHS) are typically based on the evaluation of the so-called K -factor, where a high value indicates a slower LHS and, conversely, a lower value indicates a faster LHS. In our study, we were adapting and validating the most popular unidimensional measure, the so-called Mini-K, for the Russian context, supplementing it with our measure for assessing the harshness of childhood conditions (threats, deprivations, unpredictability), which allows us to overcome the limitations of the original approach. The first stage of development and adaptation involved a qualitative analysis of the measures’ content using cognitive interviews. These interviews supported the adequacy of the item formulations for the Russian-speaking context, as well as their accuracy and clarity. In the second stage, an empirical validation of the methods was conducted through a sociopsychological survey involving 2,032 Russians. The results showed that the proposed factor structure for both measures possesses optimal global fit with the measurement models. The scales demonstrated sex invariance, high reliability coefficients, as well as convergent and discriminant validity. Considering previous research on the psychometric assessment of LHS, the Mini-K method demonstrated adequate results that are substantively related to the measure assessing the harshness of childhood conditions and some biodemographic indicators. The proposed measures will be especially useful for studies dedicated to examining individual and group differences.