Episcopal Measure of Faith Tradition: A Context-Specific Approach to Measuring Religiousness

Precise measurement of religiousness remains a vexing problem. In addition to relying almost exclusively on self-report, existing measures of religiousness pay little attention to the specific context of religious belief, and this may override distinctive norms of particular faith traditions and potentially confound the conclusions drawn from such research. To address these limitations, the authors describe a modified form of narrative content analysis that could eventually sort respondents into distinct theological traditions. A pilot test among Episcopalians demonstrates encouraging reliability (kappa 0.74, 95% LCI 0.47, P < 0.0002), and tests for convergent and discriminate validity suggest that the context of religious belief is both relevant and insufficiently assessed by the existing paradigm of religious measurements. If validated in a religiously diverse sample, this approach could be combined with existing, context-free measures of religiousness to generate more meaningful findings.     

A Cross-Contextual Construction of Clients' Therapeutic Practice

This study demonstrates how gathering data from a different context can significantly change how an object of study may be viewed. Data from a qualitative diary study of psychotherapeutic practice were used to construct a cross-contextual view of psychotherapy. Data about clients’ everyday lives as well as psychotherapy sessions were analyzed. Examples of how extra-therapeutic factors are significant to client change are presented. Six types of extra-therapeutic information sources that clients use to develop their personal stances while in therapy were identified. The case of one client's abundant use of extra-therapeutic sources of information offers a different construction of how psychotherapy works, emphasizing client activities outside sessions. The implications of the study for psychotherapy research are addressed.     

Context-Specific Learning, Personality, and Birth Order

Most people believe that learning to get along (or not get along) with their siblings played an important role in shaping their personality, and that their position in the family—oldest, youngest, or in the middle—had lasting effects. Yet studies of birth order generally fail to support these beliefs. The apparent contradiction can be resolved by taking into account the context-specific nature of learned behavior. There is abundant evidence that people do not automatically transfer behavior from one context to another: They wait until they have evidence that what they learned in Context 1 will also be useful in Context 2. Because patterns of behavior acquired in the family of origin tend to be useless or inappropriate in other settings, birth order effects show up only in that context. Outside the family they grew up in, firstborns and later-borns are indistinguishable in personality.     

The Effect of a Context-Specific Primed Goal on Goal Commitment and Team Performance

The effect of a context-specific prime for cooperation on goal commitment and team performance were examined. In the first experiment, the participants (n = 139) performed the Lost on the Moon simulation (Hall & Watson, 1970) individually and as a team (n = 50). The teams were randomly assigned to a condition where they were assigned the same goal. They were then primed (n = 23) through a photograph of cooperation or to the control condition (n = 27). Consistent with NASA’s directions for performing the simulation, performance was measured by how well a team performed relative to the answers of experts, namely, staff at NASA. The results showed that a primed behavioural goal to cooperate has a positive effect on team performance. These results were replicated in a second and third experiment involving a social dilemma where both a pro-social, group-centric goal and a pro-self, egocentric goal could be self-set for the amount of points to make. Thus the positive effect of a goal primed for cooperation on a team’s performance was shown to be robust even when there was an explicit mixture of cooperative and competitive incentives. This finding was replicated in a third experiment with actual money. Consistent with goal setting theory, commitment to the team’s goal moderated the primed goal-performance relationship.     

Constructs,inferences, and mental measurement

The ‘construct’ concept occupies a significant place in psychology and, yet its role is misunderstood. Psychologists think that theorising in the area of psychological testing involves conjuring constructs, which are operationally defined and measured via psychometric tests. However, the ‘construct’ concept is unworkable and laden with confused philosophical baggage accrued under the hegemony of logical empiricism, and its real function in psychology is obscured. Via an analysis of its history and logic, I expose its flawed conception of the relation between theoretical and observable concepts and the way in which it serves the myth of mental measurement. Finally, it is shown how the actual logic of theorising in science, which entails that theories are best inferred from relevant phenomena, not imaginatively constructed, oppugns this myth and promises to coordinate theoretical concepts with the phenomena to be explained.     

Cognitive-Behavioral Constructs and Children's Behavioral and Emotional Problems

Each cognitive behavior therapy has produced research concerning the cognitive construct it posits to mediate psychopathology. This study attempted to compare the major cognitive behavioral constructs to determine how they are related to each other and how each is related to teachers' perception of externalized and internalized behavioral and emotional problems. Children between the ages of 9 to 13 were classified as internalized, externalized, mixed, or no behavior and emotional problems groups according to their scores on the Teacher's Report Form of the Child Behavior Checklist and teachers' ratings on the Walker Problem Identification Scale. Measures of Ellis' (1962) irrationality, Beek's (1976) negative automatic thoughts, Spivack's (Spivack, Platt, & Shure, 1976) social problem skills, and Meichenbaum's (1977) guiding self statements were administered to the children. The results indicated that the various cognitive constructs were only moderately correlated with each other. Irrational beliefs and cognitive distortions were correlated higher than other comparisons. The correlations between the measures of the constructs suggest they are slightly related but represent different constructs. The emotional and behavioral problems groups scored higher than the no problems group on some subtest of irrational beliefs and negative cognitive thoughts. Also, the measures of emotional and behavior problems correlated significantly with some subtest of irrational beliefs and negative automatic thoughts. Irrational beliefs appeared to be related to internalized and externalized emotional and behavioral problems, while negative automatic thoughts appeared to be best related to internalized emotional and behavioral problems. The measures of problem solving skills and guiding self statements appear to be best related to externalized problems.     

Safety Climate Measurement: an Empirical Test of Context-Specific vs. General Assessments

Purpose

Safety climate researchers develop and use both general and industry-specific safety climate measures. Theories about language comprehension suggest that context facilitates meaning; however, the relative value of context-specific safety climate measures in the prediction of safety outcomes is an empirical question that has not been rigorously tested. The purpose of the present study was to provide a rigorous comparison of context-specific vs. general safety climate measures.

Design/Methodology/Approach

Seven hundred forty-six university laboratory personnel from five different kinds of research labs (i.e., animal biological, biological, chemical, human subjects/computer, or mechanical/electrical) completed contextualized safety climate measures, a general safety climate measure, and measures of other safety-related constructs.

Findings

Measurement equivalence analyses indicated that the general safety climate measure was not equivalent across the five lab types. Hypothesis testing revealed that contextualized information was most helpful when included in safety climate measures for less, rather than more, safety-salient contexts, but overall, there was relatively little difference in the validities for general and context-specific measures.

Implications

Results suggest that context has a small influence on how individuals respond to safety climate measures and provide guidance for researchers/practitioners when deciding between using industry-specific or general safety climate measures. It appears most beneficial to use industry-specific measures when examining safety climate in a less-safety-salient context.

Originality/Value

This study offers one of the first empirical tests of a contextualized safety climate measure involving a rigorous, unconfounded comparison of five context-specific safety climate measures with a general measure.

     

Constructs and Construct Validation: Definitions and issues

This article presents a definition of constructs, construct validity, and wn- struct validation and traces some of the historical treatments of the terms. It is argued that construct validity and validation procedures can be particularly useful in personnel-testing contexts, where jobrelatedness is required. Several examples are presented using sophisticated modeling procedures along with other kinds of data to illustrate how evidence to show job relatedness through construct validation might be developed. Several cautions are extended re- garding the use of these statistical modeling procedures.     

The Implicit Relationship Between Religious and Paranormal Constructs

Several decades worth of research have produced mixed results concerning the relationship between beliefs in religious and paranormal phenomena. While this previous work focused on the explicit measurement of these beliefs, these studies focused on a new level of analysis. Specifically, what is the implicit relationship between religious and paranormal constructs? In Study 1, participants completed a version of the Implicit Association Test (IAT) to assess the association between religious and paranormal stimuli, as well as completed measures of religiosity and paranormal belief. Results supported an association between these constructs that was moderated by intrinsic religiosity and faith in science. Study 2 again provided evidence for an association while addressing a methodological concern regarding the IAT. The results are discussed in their impact on the understanding of the cognitive representation of religious and paranormal constructs and the respective belief systems.     

工作嵌入的概念、测量及相关变量

工作嵌入代表个体与工作的嵌入程度,用于解释个体为什么留在组织中的一系列因素,具有非情感性、多维度的特点。工作嵌入明显区别于工作满意度、组织承诺等组织行为学变量,包括匹配、联结以及牺牲三个维度。该文明确了工作嵌入与相关变量的概念区别,重点介绍了工作嵌入测量方法的发展以及其在组织行为领域中的研究成果,并指出了今后有必要对其影响因素、测量工具、维度以及结果变量拓展等四个方面进行探讨     

Constructs, operational definition, and operational analysis

We argue that a certain picture of the relationship between language and the world informed Meehl’s outlook on how science worked. That picture authorized talk about constructs and has led to construct proliferation and other problems. Operational analysis offers an alternative view and suggests that a major shortcoming of soft psychology is its lack of disciplined limits on acceptable verbal behavior.     

The Counselor Selling Method: Concepts and Constructs

The concepts, constructs and theoretical underpinnings of the counselor selling method are presented. The method is based on a contingency approach to selling and has three components—personality knowledge, microskills and strategies, and processes. Personality knowledge is based upon dimensional personality theory, transactional analysis theory and Berne's PAC model. Microskills and strategies are derived from work in the counseling field. Finally, the sales process is adapted from the Ivey and Matthews meta-model of counselor interviewing. The components are empirically tested and the implications are discussed.     

态度强度的维度结构与研究操作

态度强度指态度具有坚持性和抵抗性的程度及其对信息加工过程和行为产生影响的程度,包括可获得性、两面性、确定性、精细加工、极端性、重要性、知识性、个人相关性和结构一致性9个常见维度。文章介绍了态度强度的操纵和测量方法,对探讨态度强度维度结构的已有研究进行了阐述和总结,在此基础上指出态度强度至少包含三重维度结构,并提出将态度强度与群体水平变量和社会预警系统相联系等研究角度     

Background Data Constructs as Predictors of leadership

Applied psychologists have long been interested in predictors of leadership activities. In this study, a measure of adolescent leadership activities was con- structed, and the background data items correlated with leadership activities were identified. These item correlates were grouped into 29 content clusters intended to summarize the observed relations. These content clusters were then used to construct a series of 29 rational scales intended to tap dimen- sions of life history relevant to leadership activities. Those scales evidenced substantial convergent and divergent validity. More centrally, they yielded cross-validated multiple correlations of .74 and .78 for predicting leadership activities in the male and female samples. These scales also yielded cross-validated multiple correlations of .26 and .37 when used to predict men's and women's collegiate leadership activities, whereas similar constructs were found to predict the success rate of leadership development programs. The implications of these findings for leadership theory and the prediction of leader performance are discussed.     

Differentiation and Sociality in Terms of Elicited and Provided Constructs

Previously unacquainted undergraduates (15 men, 15 women) interacted briefly in randomly assigned pairs, and subsequently attempted to infer the self-evaluations of their partners in terms of both personal constructs elicited from the latter and a set of supplied constructs. Inferences based on elicited constructs were significantly more accurate (p < .005) than were those based on supplied ones. Also, the self-evaluations of participants with relatively less differentiated personal-construct systems, as assessed by the repertory-grid procedure, were inferred by their partners significantly more accurately (p < .01) in terms of elicited constructs than were those of participants with relatively more differentiated personal-construct systems. These findings are interpreted within the framework of personal-construct theory.     

A Multi-Method Investigation of Two Family Constructs

Two family constructs—prominence and interpersonal distance—are examined. Their origins are traced in the experimental and theoretical literature. The validity of each construct is investigated using data obtained from 15 families with a symptom-bearing child. Validity is supported in both cases through the occurrence of significant correlations among different measures of the same construct. It is suggested that the current distress of the families being studied may have increased the clarity of the prominence hierarchies and dyadic distances that emerged.     

Psychological Events and Constructs: An Alliance with Smith

The Psychological Record - The distinction between constructs and events is often overlooked in the sciences, as evidenced by a number of long-standing confusions of the former with the latter. The...