Hoping to Live a “Normal” Life Whilst Living with Unpredictable Health and Fear of Death: Impact of Cystic Fibrosis on Young Adults

This study aimed to explore the hopes and fears of young adults with cystic fibrosis (CF). Fifteen young adults with CF, aged 18–29, were interviewed about their hopes and fears using a grounded theory approach. Five themes were identified during the analysis: perceptions of living with unpredictable health and fear of death and dying; hopes for normality; hopes for a normal relationship and/or marriage; hopes for having children; and hopes for a normal work life. Participants feared the unpredictable nature of CF and the suffering that they believed they would have to endure due to ill health before premature death. Despite their fears, participants hoped to live a “normal” life by achieving their hopes of having long-lasting relationships, having children and pursuing a career. The findings highlight the need to help alleviate the fears of young adults with CF and to enable them to plan to achieve their hopes, hence giving them a sense of control over their condition.     

Association Between Religiosity and Happiness Among a Group of Muslim Undergraduate Students

The association between religiosity and happiness has been the focus of much recent research. The majority of them report a positive correlation between a religious attitude and behavior and the level of happiness. However, different findings have been reported. The aim of the current study was to test link between religiosity and happiness among a group of undergraduate Muslim students. Two hundred and seventy-one health-related students agreed to participate and completed Oxford Happiness Index and a religious belief questionnaire. It was found that higher score on religious belief was significantly linked to the level of happiness (r = .256, P = .01). The result confirms that individuals with a more religious attitude experience more happiness. The result of this study should be considered in programs designed to improve overall well-being of university students.     

Book reviews

Eamon Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars, Traditional Religion in England 1400–1580. New Haven, CT, Yale University Press, 1992, 654 pp. ISBN 0–300–053425–8.

Harvey Ferguson, Religious Transformation in Western Society: The End of Happiness. London and New York, Routledge, 1992, xvi, 269 pp. ISBN 0–415–02574–5.

Religiones Latinoamericanas 1 (Religiones: Cuestiones Tcoricometodoiogicas), Mexico City, Asociación Latinoamericana para el Estudio de las Religiones. January‐June 1991.

Revista de Estudios Budistas I, 1, Mexico City, Asociación Latinoamericana de Estudios Budistas. April 1991.

Koichi Shinohara and Gregory Schopen (eds), From Benares to Beijing: Essays on Buddhism and Chinese Religion. Canada, Mosaic Press, 1992, 304 pp. ISBN 0–88962–443–7.

Robert E. Buswell, Jr and Robert M. Gimello (eds), Paths to Liberation: The Mārga and its Transformations in Buddhist Thought. Honolulu: Kuroda Institute, University of Hawaii Press, 1992, ix, 525 pp.

Susan Grossman and Rivka Haut (eds), Daughters of the King: Women and the Synagogue. New York, The Jewish Publication Society, 1992, i‐340 pp. ISBN 0–8276–0395–9.

Akbar S. Ahmed, Resistance and Control in Pakistan. London, Routledge, 1991. 2nd edition, first published in 1983 under the tide Religion and Politics in Muslim Society. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, xx + 207 pp., £12.99 (paperback). ISBN 0–415–05797–3.

Garry Wills, Under God: Religion and American Politics. New York and London, Simon and Schuster, 1990, 445 pp., £17.99 (hardback), £9.99 (paperback).

J. Andrew Overman and Robert S. MacLennan (eds), Diaspora Jews and Judaism: Essays in Honor of and in Dialogue with, A. Thomas Kraabel. South Florida Studies in the History of Judaism 41, Atlanta, GA, Scholars Press, 1992, xviii + 368 pp., no price given. ISBN 1 55540 696 3.

Christine Trevett, Women and Quakerism in the 17th Century. York, Sessions Book Trust, The Ebor Pess, 1991, 171 pp.

Jan Peter Schouten, Revolution of the Mystics: On the Social Aspects of Viraiaivism. Kampcn, The Netherlands, Kok Pharos Publishing House, 1991, xiii + 331 pp. ISBN 90 242 3425 5.

Michael L. Budde, The Two Churches: Catholicism and Capitalism in the World System. Durham, NC, Duke University Press, 1992, 172 pp., £25.00. ISBN 0–8223–1229–8.

Teun Goudriaan (ed.), Ritual and Speculation in Early Tantrism: Studies in Honor of André Padoux. SUNY Series in Tantric Studies, Albany, NY, State University of New York Press, 1992, xv + 359 pp. ISBN 0–7914–0898–1.

Robert S. Shepard, God's People in the Ivory Tower: Religion in the Early American University. Brooklyn, Carlson, 1991, 174 pp. $50.00. ISBN 0–926019–56–2.     

Tel Aviv Mizrah

Before immigrating to Israel, first-generation Iraqi Jews were deeply attached to their identity as Mizrahi Jews. Their mother tongue was Arabic and they had grown up in an oriental environment. Therefore, it was not easy for them to adopt the Euro-Israeli identity that the dominant Ashkenazi-European stratum in Israel compelled them to accept. Despite strong Westernizing tendencies in Israeli society, the first generation of Iraqi Jewish immigrants maintained strong links to the Iraqi customs and traditions they had acquired in Iraq, particularly with regard to the musical folklore and oriental cuisine. On the other hand, second-generation Iraqi Jews were more familiar with Israeli society than their parents; they grew up in Israel and learned Hebrew in Israeli schools along with Ashkenazi Jews and other ethnic groups. This paper establishes connections between the historical realities of Iraqi Jewish immigrants and the literary representation of their world in the trilogy Tel-Aviv Mizrah (Tel Aviv East) written in 2003 by the Iraqi Jewish author Shimon Ballas, through a comparison of Ballas's literary vision with the historical realities of Iraqi Jewish identity in Israel over the course of two generations.     

Examining patience as a psycho-religious construct in Iranian patients with cardiovascular diseases: a pilot study

The current study aimed to compare patience and its components in cardiovascular patients (CVPs) with healthy individuals. Ninety-one patients with cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) referring to the clinic of Imam Reza in the city of Shiraz in Iran, and 91 healthy individuals were recruited by convenience sampling method. They completed demographics questionnaire and the Patience Scale. The data were analysed by sets of analysis of covariance. Results showed significant difference between CVPs and healthy participants on patience (M?=?85.92, SD?=?12.69 vs. M?=?90.45, SD?=?11.33); patients had less patience mean than their healthy peers (F?=?9.423, η²?=?.050, p?=?.002). The results also indicated that cardiac patients had significantly lower scores on patience components of transcendence, persistence, and delay than the healthy group (all p’s?p?>?.05). According to the results of the present study, it can be inferred that less patience may play a key role in vulnerability to physical illnesses such as CVDs.     

The Oxford Happiness Questionnaire: Transformation from an Ordinal to an Interval Measure Using Rasch Analysis

The scientific study of happiness requires accurate measurement of the construct that satisfies assumptions of parametric statistics and thus allows both researchers and clinicians to make reliable and valid comparisons with the relevant data sources. The 29-item Oxford Happiness Questionnaire (OHQ) is a widely-used scale for assessment of personal happiness. While its psychometric properties are acknowledged to be acceptable, it presents scores on an ordinal scale and may thus not discriminate precisely between individual happiness levels. The current study aimed to improve precision and item functioning of the OHQ by applying Rasch analysis to a sample of 281 participants. To correct disordered thresholds items were rescored in a uniform fashion. Four items displayed poor relationships with the latent trait of happiness and were removed. Best fit to the unidimensional Rasch model was achieved after locally dependent items were combined into subtests and adjusted for personal differences. Using the ordinal-to-interval conversion tables published here, ordinal OHQ scores can now be transformed to interval level data and thus subjected to parametric statistical analysis without violating fundamental assumptions. The precision of the instrument can be improved significantly by these minor modifications without the need to modify the original response format.     

Classroom engagement dynamics: examining the potency of reflective teaching approach among some selected universities in Ghana

The purpose of this research was to investigate the effectiveness of the use of reflective teaching approach by university lecturers in Ghana to achieve improved student learning outcomes. The research utilised a quantitative survey design involving 180 lecturers who were accidentally or haphazardly selected from four universities in Ghana to complete a reflective teaching survey (RTS) questionnaire. The results showed that participants frequently engaged in varied reflective teaching activities, and were successful in evaluating the effectiveness of their pedagogies. The research concluded that the approach should be an essential component of the teacher performance appraisal system.     

Immigration and Psychosis: an Exploratory Study

This qualitative study aimed to explore views (and related experiences) of healthcare providers regarding immigration and its relation to psychosis, such as schizophrenia, particularly to identify support needs and challenges of immigrants with psychosis and related challenges and enablers of their mental health service providers. The objectives of this study were to identify (1) barriers and enablers of mental health and other services for Canadian immigrants with psychosis and (2) barriers and enablers for their mental health service providers. The study used a phenomenological approach to elicit views of 12 mental healthcare providers with experience in providing mental healthcare to immigrants with psychosis. Semi-structured individual interview data obtained were coded and thematically analyzed. Six themes in relation to the experience of service provision to immigrants with psychosis were found: the immigration process, service availability and accessibility, social determinants of health, cultural context, psychosocial stressors, and enablers and facilitators of recovery. The most prominent challenges/barriers were related to cultural context, language, social and health services, and support. Most mental healthcare providers believed that immigration process precipitates the first episode of psychosis in a majority of immigrants and that psychosis was undetected/non-present when in the country of origin. This study demonstrated system challenges and related opportunities for service provision for immigrants with psychosis. We identified important areas for intervention to reduce disparities for immigrants with psychosis in their use of social and health services. Future directions for research in relation to immigration of people with psychosis are discussed.     

Multicultural Media Use and Immigrant Settlement: A Comparative Study of Four Communities in Ottawa,Canada

Multicultural media serve as important sources of information for immigrant settlement. However, little is known about the role of multicultural media in the process of immigrant settlement. Our aim was to address this gap and to advance understanding of multicultural media use and immigrant settlement through a detailed empirical study involving four ethnocultural and immigrant communities (EICs)—the Chinese, Spanish-speaking Latin American, Somali, and South Asian—in Ottawa, Canada. Using a conceptual framework combining notions of immigrant contexts of reception, and immigrant settlement and information seeking, we present and analyze the findings of a large survey data set (N?=?1212) comparing types of multicultural print, broadcast, and digital media use by immigration category, length of stay, and yearly household income. Based on our findings, we argue that variations exist in the use of multicultural media both within and across the four participating EICs; while factors such as availability of multicultural media as well as length of stay in Canada and, to some extent, household income play a role, immigration category is less significant. Furthermore, we advance that although EICs do use various types of multicultural media, they tend to favor digital media. These findings contribute to improved understanding of the role of multicultural media use in the everyday lives of EICs and provide directions for future research and for the development of relevant policies and practices to address immigrant information needs and facilitate their settlement process.     

The development and validation of the Arabic Scale Of Mental Health (ASMH)

The objective of this research was to develop and validate the Arabic Scale of Mental Health (ASMH) as a generic screening measure and research tool for adults and adolescents. Several samples of both sexes were recruited (N = 3,619). Their ages ranged between 15 and 71 years. The scale has two equivalent versions: Aravic and English. TheASMH comprises 40 brief statements plus 10 filler items. Principal components analysis yielded six components labeled: satisfaction, self-confidence, optimism, enjoyment, meaningful life, and stability. Item-remainder correlations ranged between .31 and .79. Reliabilities in these samples indicated good internal consistency (alphas= .94 to .96) and temporal stability (7- to 10-day test-retest r = .84 to .94). The ASMH significantly and positively correlated with measures of happiness, satisfaction with life, hope, optimism, love of life, and self-actualization, from which one salient component was identified. Therefore, initial convergent and factorial validities were adequate. Male undergraduates obtained a higher mean score than did both their female counterparts and male employed workers, but the effect size was small. It was concluded that the ASMH has good psychometric characteristics in its Arabic version. The English version merits investigation in a cross-cultural study.