Adapting Strauss and Corbin's grounded theory in clinical case study research in the field of counselling

Case study can be adopted when aiming to understand an individual's lived experience. Such experience produces rich and complex qualitative data for analysis, conducive to counselling and psychotherapy research. Furthermore, grounded theory (GT) can be adopted to produce a theory from qualitative data, fitting well with case study research that explores complex experiences regarding social, psychological and phenomenological processes. This paper aims to guide the counselling researcher to incorporate Strauss and Corbin's model into the main arena of qualitative counselling research. In addition, this paper draws on a multiple case study that adopted Strauss and Corbin's method and identified various phases in the GT process. The aim is to inform the reader how to put the iterative process and pragmatic theoretical sampling into practice to produce a robust theory from clinical case study data.     

Does partisan media make a pawn of mistrust? Institutional trust and preventive COVID-19 health behaviors in a polarized pandemic

In a rapidly developing crisis such as the COVID-19 pandemic, people are often faced with contradictory or changing information and must determine what sources to trust. Across five time points (N = 5902) we examine how trust in various sources predicts COVID-19 health behaviors. Trust in experts and national news predicted more engagement with most health behaviors from April 2020 to March 2022 and trust in Fox news, which often positioned itself as counter to the mainstream on COVID-19, predicted less engagement. However, we also examined a particular public health behavior (masking) before and after the CDC announcement recommending masks on 3 April 2020 (which reversed earlier expert advice discouraging masks for the general public). Prior to the announcement, trust in experts predicted less mask-wearing while trust in Fox News predicted more. These relationships disappeared in the next 4 days following the announcement and reversed in the 2 years that follow, and emerged for vaccination in the later time points. We also examine how the media trusted by Democrats and Republicans predicts trust in experts and in turn health behaviors. Broadly we consider how the increasingly fragmented epistemic environment has implications for polarization on matters of public health.     

A sequential exploratory diagnostic model using a Pólya-gamma data augmentation strategy

Cognitive diagnostic models provide a framework for classifying individuals into latent proficiency classes, also known as attribute profiles. Recent research has examined the implementation of a Pólya-gamma data augmentation strategy binary response model using logistic item response functions within a Bayesian Gibbs sampling procedure. In this paper, we propose a sequential exploratory diagnostic model for ordinal response data using a logit-link parameterization at the category level and extend the Pólya-gamma data augmentation strategy to ordinal response processes. A Gibbs sampling procedure is presented for efficient Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) estimation methods. We provide results from a Monte Carlo study for model performance and present an application of the model.     

Economy of Shadows: The Effects of Restrictive Regulation on Religiosity in China

Religion is permitted in China, but its practice is tightly regulated by the state. This paper uses individual-level longitudinal data to investigate the association between religious regulation and religious outcomes in China. Measures of regulation are constructed from instances of state action against Christians as well as Christian perceptions of unfair treatment by the government. In summary, as regulation increases, an individual is less likely to identify with a religion and less likely to say that religion is important. For those individuals without religious identification in either wave, regulation is negatively associated with religious importance. Yet, for those individuals with identification in one or two waves, regulation is either unassociated or even positively associated with importance. These findings contribute to research on regulation of religion and religion in China. More broadly, they demonstrate the state can wield considerable power over people's private lives but also that this power has limits.     

Putting phonetic context effects into context: a commentary on Fowler (2006)

On the basis of a review of the literature and three new experiments, Fowler (2006) concludes that a contrast account for phonetic context effects is not tenable and is inferior to a gestural account. We believe that this conclusion is premature and that it is based on a restricted set of assumptions about a general perceptual account. Here, we briefly address the criticisms of Fowler (2006), with the intent of clarifying what a general auditory and learning approach to speech perception entails.     

Effects of search mode and intertrial priming on singleton search

There is no consensus as to what information guides search for a singleton target. Does the most salient display element capture attention, regardless of the observer's attentional set? Do observers adopt a default salience-based search mode? Does knowledge of the target's defining featural property (when available) affect search? Finally, can intertrial contingencies account for the disparate results in the literature? We investigated search for a shape singleton when (1) the target and nontarget shapes switched unpredictably from trial to trial, (2) the target feature remained fixed, and (3) the target was a singleton on only one third of the trials. We examined overall reaction times, search slopes, errors, and the magnitude of the slowing caused by a cross-dimensional singleton distractor. Our results argue against the idea that search is guided solely by stimulus-driven factors or that subjects adopt a singleton detection mode that is blind to feature information. They show also that intertrial contingencies, although potent, cannot account for the variety of results in the literature.     

English soccer teams' aggressive behavior when playing away from home

Speculation about key factors affecting home advantage still exists. The present study investigated aggressive behavior amongst English Football Premiership (soccer) players and its relation to home advantage. The frequency of aggressive behaviour, identified by the award of a penalty or disciplinary card (yellow for caution or red for dismissal) was analysed over 2000-2003. Chi-square analyses assessed whether a greater frequency of aggressive behavior was performed by teams away from home. In decided matches, teams playing away received significantly more cautions (yellow cards) than home teams. A further analysis of tied matches indicated that away teams received significantly more cautions (yellow cards) than home teams. No significant differences between home and away teams were found for dismissals and penalties awarded. Reasons for these findings are considered.     

Category and letter fluency in semantic dementia, primary progressive aphasia, and Alzheimer's disease

This study examined the impact of various degenerative dementias on access to semantic knowledge and the status of semantic representations. Patients with semantic dementia, primary progressive aphasia, and Alzheimer's disease were compared with elderly controls on tasks of category and letter fluency, with number of words generated, mean lexical frequency and errors recorded. The findings are consistent with the view that category and letter fluency rely on both common and unique cognitive processes. Fluency tasks, with the richness of data obtained, are valuable in distinguishing different dementia syndromes from one another.