Conceptualizing and Measuring Safe,Stable, Nurturing Relationships and Environments in Educational Settings

Most children and adolescents older than 5 years spend at least 6 h of their day in school settings. Like parents, education professionals can promote health and protect youth from harm by providing safe, stable, nurturing relationships and environments. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has developed a framework which posits that safe, stable, nurturing relationships and environments are Essentials for Childhood and are fundamental to promoting health and well-being; protecting youth from maltreatment and other violence and victimization; and ensuring optimal, healthy development. In this paper, the authors propose an approach to applying safe, stable, nurturing relationships and environments to the school ecology; review select survey measures to examine these constructs within educational settings; and suggest available indicators to measure safety, stability, and nurturance within the school context.     

Conceptualizing and Measuring Global Interpersonal Mistrust-Trust

Abstract

Global interpersonal mistrust is conceptualized as a general mistrust of the motives of others in situations related to one's well-being: a general tendency to view others as mean, selfish, malevolent, or unreliable people who are, thus, not to be depended on to treat one well. The authors developed an 18-item unidimensional self-report inventory measuring interpersonal mistrust as a negative cognitive orientation toward others. The measure comprises items describing perceptions of specific hypothetical interpersonal situations rather than items asking respondents to describe their own general behavior. The measure was reliable and evidenced construct validity in a heterogeneous sample of Australians.     

Conceptualizing and Measuring a Power/Interaction Model of Interpersonal Influence1

In response to new theoretical conceptualizations (Raven, 1992, 1993), an instrument was developed to measure 11 bases of power, the original 6 French and Raven (1959; Raven, 1965) bases of power, with 3 of these further differentiated: reward (personal, impersonal), coercion (personal. impersonal), legitimate (position, reciprocity, equity, dependence), expert, referent, and information. In Study 1, 317 American student respondents rated the likelihood that each of these power bases contributed to a supervisor successfully influencing a subordinate in a series of hypothetical situations. The internal consistency of the items which made up the 11 power bases proved adequate. Factor analysis found 7 factors and 2 categories of bases: harsh and soft. In Study 2, which used 101 Israeli health workers, the earlier findings were generally supported. In addition, job satisfaction was found to be positively related to the attribution of soft bases to the supervisor.     

Conceptualizing and Measuring Engagement: An Analysis of the Utrecht Work Engagement Scale

This article analyzes the Utrecht Work Engagement Scale (UWES; Schaufeli et al. in J Happiness Stud 3:71?C92, 2002b) on a variety of levels. Study 1 critiques the method by which the original scale was developed, and analyzes a similar sample using both exploratory and, subsequently, confirmatory factor analyses. Study 2 uses three samples to explore the 17-item UWES-17, and the recent shorter version of the scale, the 9-item UWES-9. Factor structures and reliabilities of scores for both scale versions were examined for each sample. Although some cautions are warranted when using the UWES, this research leans toward supporting a multifactorial conceptualization of the construct. Preliminary construct validation of the use of the measures was also established via correlations with other pertinent constructs. Although research on the measure remains sparse, the UWES-9 holds promise as a parsimonious version of the UWES-17 that appears valid in use, appears to yield reliable scores in the samples herein, and also appears to capture the purported three-factor dimensionality of the engagement construct better than does the original UWES-17 version.     

Conceptualizing Excellence: Past,Present, and Future

While an historical glance through the sport psychology literature reveals an interest in performance excellence since its beginning, a focus of personal excellence has been a more recent trend. This review will address the relationships between performance and personal excellence. More specifically, we question whether performance excellence in high-level sport, by virtue of the exceptional demands on the elite athlete, occurs at the expense of development in personal excellence or whether performance excellence is possible only through personal excellence. Furthermore, we propose that the field may reconcile these ideals in the future through an athlete-centered sport model. This model is defined by the philosophy that developmentally appropriate sport can be used as a vehicle for enhancing overall well-being and the acquisition of lifelong skills. Performance excellence, therefore, co-exists in the same environment as personal excellence. The implications of implementing an athlete-centered sport system for athletes and coaches and for the research and practice of those in sport psychology will be addressed.     

Conceptualizing institutions

Being part of the life of institutions requires a considerable amount of conceptual knowledge. In institutional settings, we must learn the relevant concepts to act meaningfully, and these concepts are internal in a peculiar way, namely, they are strictly relative to the rules of a given institution because they are constituted by those rules. However, institutions do not come out of nothing: They are inscribed in a social setting and this setting determines, at least in a broad sense, what is the nature of the institution. Our social life therefore creates more or less defined contexts for meaningful institutional activities, and these contexts in their own turn involve concepts. In this paper, I address this question by distinguishing between three kinds of concepts relevant for an institution and trying to identify the different relations that these concepts have with constitutive rules. I then proceed to explain how this distinction can improve our understanding of practical reasoning in institutional context.     

Conceptualizing suffering and pain

Background

This article aims to contribute to a better conceptualization of pain and suffering by providing non-essential and non-naturalistic definitions of both phenomena. Contributions of classical evidence-based medicine, the humanistic turn in medicine, as well as the phenomenology and narrative theories of suffering and pain, together with certain conceptions of the person beyond them (the mind-body dichotomy, Cassel’s idea of persons as “intact beings”) are critically discussed with such purpose.

Methods

A philosophical methodology is used, based on the review of existent literature on the topic and the argumentation in favor of what are found as better definitions of suffering and pain.

Results

Pain can be described in neurological terms but cognitive awareness, interpretation, behavioral dispositions, as well as cultural and educational factors have a decisive influence on pain perception. Suffering is proposed to be defined as an unpleasant or even anguishing experience, severely affecting a person at a psychophysical and existential level. Pain and suffering are considered unpleasant. However, the provided definitions neither include the idea that pain and suffering can attack and even destroy the self nor the idea that they can constructively expand the self; both perspectives can b e equally useful for managing pain and suffering, but they are not defining features of the same. Including the existential dimension in the definition of suffering highlights the relevance of suffering in life and its effect on one’s own attachment to the world (including personal management, or the cultural and social influences which shape it). An understanding of pain and suffering life experiences is proposed, meaning that they are considered aspects of a person’s life, and the self is the ever-changing sum of these (and other) experiences.

Conclusions

The provided definitions will be useful to the identification of pain and suffering, to the discussion of how to relieve them, and to a better understanding of how they are expressed and experienced. They lay the groundwork for further research in all these areas, with the twofold aim of a) avoiding epistemological mistakes and moral injustices, and b) highlighting the limitations of medicine in the treatment of suffering and pain.

     

Optimism, Pessimism, and Hope in Durkheim

In Book Two, Chapter (1), of The Division of Labor in Society (1984) entitled "The Progress of the Division of Labor and Happiness", Emile Durkheim (1858–1917) stages a provocative encounter between the attitudes of optimism and pessimism, an encounter that reveals certain problematic assumptions regarding the status of hope in relation to the project of binding oneself to life under conditions of anomie. Durkheim's theoretical assault on the utilitarian-based optimism of his day is accomplished against the backdrop of a critical pessimism that is shown to be equally untenable. However, his critique leaves the question of the status of hope in relation to the question of human happiness unclarified and ambiguously framed, even as Durkheim defends hope against the despair of pessimism. The essay concludes with a critical appraisal of Durkheim's partial critique of pessimism and a few observations regarding the links between memory, expectation, pessimism, suicide, hope, and happiness.     

Hope, goal-blocking thoughts, and test-related anxieties

Based on Onwuegbuzie's 1998 findings pertaining to the relationship of lower scores on hope to higher ones on anxiety about statistics, a brief overview of the etiology of test-related anxieties in the context of Snyder's hope theory is given, and the utility of hope theory for helping students with test-related anxieties is explored.     

Conceptualizing Personal and Extrapersonal Associations

We recently introduced the term ‘extrapersonal associations’ and defined them as information that is available in memory but that does not contribute to one's attitudes toward a given object ( Olson & Fazio, 2004 ). Here, we review our conceptualization of the term, contrast it to our conceptualization of attitudes as personal associations, and briefly summarize evidence that the Implicit Association Test, as it is traditionally employed, is influenced by extrapersonal associations. We discuss recent critiques of the concept and in so doing, elaborate upon the essence of the personal versus extrapersonal distinction. We conclude with speculations on the nature of extrapersonal associations, their origins, and relationship to attitudes.     

Conceptualizing adult development

On the premise that human development is a lifelong process, and with awareness of certain limitations of the stage model, the authors conceptualize a new model based on developmental process. This model is offered as a basic model for the development of mental functions and structures in both childhood and adulthood.     

The Hope,Promise, and Possibility of Psychotherapy

In this paper, five values—diversity, science, education, practice, and spirit—(a) are examined within the professional context of psychotherapy, (b) are presented as forming the foundation of much if not all that is psychotherapy, and (c) are considered as binding values that join us as a community of practicing, theorizing, and researching psychotherapists. Some of the positives of each value are reviewed. Diversity has heightened our sensitivity to and respect for individual and cultural differences. Science has kept us focused on empirically challenging and empirically informing our practice. Education has maintained emphasis on providing solid training/supervision in psychotherapy and transmitting its culture. Practice has provided us with opportunities to increasingly implement and expand on our role as helpers and healers. Spirit has been the guiding light—the heart and soul—that supports, infuses and informs all of our therapeutic endeavors and gives them meaning. What follows is a celebration of sorts—(a) capturing some of what we have done and are doing right in psychotherapy, (b) reflecting some of the weight of those “right” efforts, and (c) conveying some of the inherent hope, promise, and possibility that forever guide us in our work.     

Coming Out Growth: Conceptualizing and Measuring Stress-Related Growth Associated with Coming Out to Others as a Sexual Minority

Coming out has long been depicted as a process that is conducive to personal growth. However, LGBTQ psychology has yet to conduct systematic, theoretically informed research to study how individuals experience coming out growth (COG) and the impact of such experiences on the lives of sexual minorities. The present investigation seeks to address these gaps in the literature through an examination of stress-related growth within the context of coming out as a sexual minority. Findings from a preliminary investigation of COG in a sample of 418 gay and lesbian adults are presented, including the development and initial validation of the coming out growth scale (COGS), and data addressing the relationship between COG and relevant constructs found in the literature on identity development and stress-related growth.     

Hope

Summary

The author describes her treatment of her first alcoholic client and observes how the process of providing hope to this client heightened the author's personal capacity to hope. Hope as an aspect of healing is considered and personal reflections on psychotherapeutic work with alcoholics are discussed.