Starting on haemodialysis: A qualitative study to explore the experience and needs of incident patients

Dialysis can be very stressful with the initial months onto treatment being highly critical in terms of both adaptation and mortality. This qualitative study aimed to explore the lived experiences of incident haemodialysis patients in Singapore. Topics related to the end-stage renal disease diagnosis and haemodialysis treatment were raised with 13 incident haemodialysis patients in the form of semi-structured interviews, and interpretative phenomenological analysis was undertaken as the framework for data analysis. Emotional distress, treatment-related concerns and social support emerged as main issues following a critical review of themes. Our study revealed that incident haemodialysis patients have emotional and informational needs, highlighting the importance of intervention programmes in particular to this patient group to promote better psychosocial adjustment to the disease and its treatment.     

Child Protection and Psychology Education in Australian Universities

Child maltreatment is a significant problem in Australia. Psychologists in a wide range of occupations play an important role in the identification and prevention of child abuse and neglect, the provision of interventions to children and families, and the development and conduct of research in related areas. Psychology graduates must be adequately prepared to work in this field; however, little is known about the extent to which child abuse and neglect related contents are taught in current university curricula. A purpose‐developed curriculum‐mapping survey was used to examine Australian undergraduate, fourth year, and postgraduate Australian Psychology Accreditation Council‐accredited programmes available in 2008. Results showed that students in the majority of programmes were exposed to child protection‐related content; however, the extent of exposure was limited. Three postgraduate units specifically addressed the prevention, identification, and response to child abuse and neglect. Course coordinators reported that child maltreatment content was mostly integrated into general units throughout the programme, typically within developmental psychology units in the undergraduate curriculum and in ethics, research, or professional issues units in the fourth year and postgraduate programmes. Results suggest the need for child protection content to be included in minimum national standards and accreditation guidelines for universities.     

Ethnicity differences in child and parental outcomes following involvement the PACE program

This study investigated ethnic differences in the extent to which engagement (i.e., attendance and quality of participation) in the PACE (Parenting our Children to Excellence) program predicted positive child and parent outcomes. PACE is an 8-week preventive intervention aimed at parents of preschool children. The study investigated the relation of engagement to outcomes in an ethnically diverse sample of 298 African American and 280 European American parents. Overall results demonstrated that engagement in PACE significantly improved child and parent outcomes for both African American and European American participants. Some improvements were evident at post-assessment already and were maintained or became stronger at a one-year follow-up assessment, whereas others only became evident at follow-up. Specifically, results revealed that attendance in PACE significantly improved child coping competence and parenting stress for both the African American and European American samples. PACE attendance also significantly improved child behavior problems, parental satisfaction and parental efficacy for the European American sample. Findings indicate that PACE is a promising intervention for parents of African American and Caucasian preschoolers; although further research and program refinement is necessary in order to understand the mechanisms with the PACE intervention that seem to vary for African American compared to Caucasian families.     

What's mine is yours: The crossover of day-specific self-esteem

This diary study examines the daily crossover of self-esteem within working couples. By integrating self-esteem research into the crossover framework, we hypothesized that the day-specific self-esteem experienced by one partner after work crosses over to the other partner. Furthermore, we proposed that this daily crossover process is moderated by the other partner's general level of self-esteem and empathic concern. We conducted a diary study over five consecutive working days among 102 working couples. Multilevel analyses using the actor-partner interdependence model supported our hypotheses. Day-specific self-esteem experienced by one partner after work crossed over to the other partner in the evening, particularly when this partner had a generally low level of self-esteem and a generally high level of empathic concern.     

Couples' cultural values, shared parenting, and family emotional climate within Mexican American families

This study tested a model of shared parenting as its centerpiece that incorporates cultural values as predictors and family emotional climate as the outcome variable of interest. We aimed to assess the predictive power of the Mexican cultural values of familismo and simpatia over couples' shared parenting practices. We anticipated that higher levels of shared parenting would predict family emotional climate. The participants were 61 Mexican American, low income couples, with at least one child between 3 and 4 years of age, recruited from a home-based Head Start program. The predictive model demonstrated excellent goodness of fit, supporting the hypothesis that a positive emotional climate within the family is fostered when Mexican American couples practice a sufficient level of shared parenting. Empirical evidence was previously scarce on this proposition. The findings also provide evidence for the role of cultural values, highlighting the importance of family solidarity and avoidance of confrontation as a pathway to shared parenting within Mexican American couples.     

Formative evaluation of the transition to postgraduate study for counselling and psychotherapy training: Students' perceptions of assignments and academic writing

Background: Transition to postgraduate study has received little attention and it is often assumed that little adjustment is needed. Focus: This article focuses on the academic writing aspect of the transition to postgraduate study for counselling and psychotherapy students on a British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (BACP)‐accredited course. Method: A two‐year formative evaluation was used to elicit students' views on how they experienced the transition to postgraduate study, and to identify what was most and least helpful to students in managing this transition. Results: The findings showed that there was a significant transition, which 63% of students found difficult. Timetabled and integrated, subject specific, academic support is recommended to assist students with their learning needs.     

Assessing Phonemic Fluency in Multilingual Contexts: Letter Selection Methodology and Demographically Stratified Norms for Three South African Language Groups

Because of their global clinical utility, phonemic fluency tests are frequently incorporated into neuropsychological assessment batteries. However, in heterogeneous societies their use is complicated by the lack of careful attention to using letters of equivalent difficulty across languages, and the paucity of norms stratified by relevant sociodemographic variables. In accordance with the International Test Commission's guidelines for adaptation of test material in multilingual contexts, this study provides (1) an internationally replicable methodological template for selecting appropriate letter sets; (2) empirical evidence to substantiate the equivalence of a letter set across three languages; (3) a template for evaluating the relative impact of sociodemographic variables on phonemic fluency; and (4) appropriately stratified norms for the letter set SBL (English and Afrikaans) / IBL (Xhosa) in a sample (N = 512) of urban participants (7–25 years with 1–17 years of education) from the Cape Town region of the Western Cape province of South Africa.     

Unpacking East–West Differences in the Extent of Self‐Enhancement from the Perspective of Face versus Dignity Culture

The question of whether or not the need for self‐enhancement is culturally universal has been a controversial issue in cultural psychology. Though there have been numerous studies arguing that East Asians also have the need for self‐enhancement, the controversy remained. We contend that the field is ready to see a cohesive theory that integrates and explains when and why East Asians do and do not manifest their need for self‐enhancement. In this paper, we provide the theoretical logics of and rationales behind face and dignity cultures as the new theoretical proxies that integrate and explain East Asians' self‐enhancing behaviors, supplementing the former approach that uses the individualism‐collectivism dichotomy. In particular, four representative properties of face culture — humility, public (versus private) concern, prevention regulatory focus, and harmony — are discussed to explain cross‐cultural differences in the extent and ways of manifestations of self‐enhancement motivation between European Americans and East Asians. Theoretical corroborations and empirical findings supporting this approach are also discussed.     

Time-compressed spoken word primes crossmodally enhance processing of semantically congruent visual targets

Findings from three experiments support the conclusion that auditory primes facilitate the processing of related targets. In Experiments 1 and 2, we employed a crossmodal Stroop color identification task with auditory color words (as primes) and visual color patches (as targets). Responses were faster for congruent priming, in comparison to neutral or incongruent priming. This effect also emerged for different levels of time compression of the auditory primes (to 30 % and 10 % of the original length; i.e., 120 and 40 ms) and turned out to be even more pronounced under high-perceptual-load conditions (Exps. 1 and 2). In Experiment 3, target-present or -absent decisions for brief target displays had to be made, thereby ruling out response-priming processes as a cause of the congruency effects. Nevertheless, target detection (d') was increased by congruent primes (30 % compression) in comparison to incongruent or neutral primes. Our results suggest semantic object-based auditory–visual interactions, which rapidly increase the denoted target object’s salience. This would apply, in particular, to complex visual scenes.     

Models of Service Delivery for Cancer Genetic Risk Assessment and Counseling

Increasing awareness of and the potentially concomitant increasing demand for cancer genetic services is driving the need to explore more efficient models of service delivery. The aims of this study were to determine which service delivery models are most commonly used by genetic counselors, assess how often they are used, compare the efficiency of each model as well as impact on access to services, and investigate the perceived benefits and barriers of each. Full members of the NSGC Familial Cancer Special Interest Group who subscribe to its listserv were invited to participate in a web-based survey. Eligible respondents were asked which of ten defined service delivery models they use and specific questions related to aspects of model use. One-hundred ninety-two of the approximately 450 members of the listserv responded (42.7 %); 177 (92.2 %) had provided clinical service in the last year and were eligible to complete all sections of the survey. The four direct care models most commonly used were the (traditional) face-to-face pre- and post-test model (92.2 %), the face-to-face pretest without face-to-face post-test model (86.5 %), the post-test counseling only for complex results model (36.2 %), and the post test counseling for all results model (18.3 %). Those using the face-to-face pretest only, post-test all, and post-test complex models reported seeing more new patients than when they used the traditional model and these differences were statistically significantly. There were no significant differences in appointment wait times or distances traveled by patients when comparing use of the traditional model to the other three models. Respondents recognize that a benefit of using alternative service delivery models is increased access to services; however, some are concerned that this may affect quality of care.