Parenting Adolescents: Examining the Factor Structure of the Alabama Parenting Questionnaire for Adolescents

The Alabama Parenting Questionnaire (APQ) is a well studied assessment of parenting practices for school-age children, especially in relation to child externalizing behaviors. Given the developmental changes between school-age children and adolescents and subsequent changes to parenting approaches during that time, the utility of a public-accessed measure to span across a broad age range is of high clinical and empirical importance. This study investigated the psychometric properties of the APQ in a community sample of 376 parents of adolescents. In an Exploratory Factor Analysis the data suggested a 4-factor solution similar in composition to the original 5-factor model. Proposed factors for the APQ when given to parents of adolescents included Positive and Involved Parenting, Parental Monitoring, Discipline Practices, and Discipline Process.     

What’s it all about? A qualitative study of meaning in life for counseling psychology doctoral students

The interviews of 10 female counseling psychology doctoral students regarding their views about meaning in life (MIL) were analyzed using consensual qualitative research. The participants defined MIL as goals or purposes, were actively involved in searching for meaning, and believed that MIL had been stimulated by life-changing experiences and culture. On a personal level, they gained meaning from relationships, personal growth, and religion/spirituality. On a professional level, they gained meaning from providing therapy, conducting research, and teaching. As therapists, participants approached MIL indirectly by asking about client goals/motivations or by focusing on other clinical problems that if resolved would enhance MIL. Implications for doctoral training and for psychotherapy are offered.     

Technology and the Polytheistic Mind: From Global to Planetary Theologies

Abstract: Assuming that human beings are, among other things, techno‐sapiens, natural‐cultural; and that technology‐nature‐culture are a part of the same emergent process of life (e.g., Martin Heidegger, Donna Haraway, Phil Hefner), this paper argues for a move from global to planetary technologies. According to Gayatri Spivak, the process of globalization is the imposition of sameness over the face of the globe. In contrast, she argues, what we need is a planetary vision of the world: one that pays attention to multi‐perspectivalism and difference; and connects peoples, places, and things through those differences rather than in spite of them. In this article I argue that theological technologies of monotheism have tended to support globalization. As such, I explore the possibilities for polytheistic (or at least) polydox theological technologies of planetary becoming.     

RELIGION,SCIENCE, AND NATURE: SHIFTS IN MEANING ON A CHANGING PLANET

Abstract This article explores how religion and science, as worlding practices, are changed by the processes of globalization and global climate change. In the face of these processes, two primary methods of meaning making are emerging: the logic of globalization and planetary assemblages. The former operates out of the same logic as extant axial age religions, the Enlightenment, and Modernity. It is caught up in the process of universalizing meanings, objective truth, and a single reality. The latter suggests that the processes of globalization and climate change break open any universalizing attempt at meaning onto a proliferation of different, evolving planetary contexts. Both science and religion are affected by these changes, and the ways in which they shape our understandings of and relationship to the rest of the natural world are changed.     

To Join or Not to Join: School Counselors as a Case Study in Professional Membership

School counselors were surveyed regarding their choice to join or not join their professional organization. Members and nonmembers differed on the following: whether participants' graduate program emphasized professional membership, membership status of colleagues, the belief that professional organizations advance the field, and the belief that being a professional means joining professional associations. A model is proposed that includes major themes in the decision‐making process identified in the qualitative comment data. Implications for professional counseling organizations are discussed.     

Psychometric equivalence of a translated circadian rhythm questionnaire: implications for between- and within-population assessments

The fidelity of an English-to-Japanese translation of a circadian rhythm questionnaire was examined through simultaneous factor analysis in several populations (J?reskog, 1971a). Results indicate significant differences in item responses between populations, although between-population convergence was obtained on one factor. Back translations revealed both major and minor content discrepancies between the original and translated scales, which preclude clearly separating linguistic or semantic and population differences in item responses. Within-population results based on classic measurement techniques were compared with results based on structural equation techniques (in the American sample only); each technique led to different data-based conclusions. On the basis of the structural equation results, refinements in the source (English) scale items are suggested.     

Time allocation on concurrent schedules with asymmetrical response requirements

Pigeons were trained on concurrent schedules in which key pecking was required by both schedules (concurrent variable-interval variable-interval schedules) and on concurrent schedules in which key pecking was required by only one of the schedules (concurrent variable-interval variable-time schedules). The distribution of reinforcements was systematically varied with both types of concurrent schedules. The distribution of time between the schedules depended on the reinforcement distribution and was independent of the symmetry of the response requirement. The relation between time and reinforcement distributions appears to be invariant over a wide range of manipulations of responding maintained by concurrent schedules.     

A Panel Study of Subjective Expected Utility for Adolescent Sexual Behavior1

The relationship between subjective expected utility (SEU) for intercourse and sexual behavior was examined in a 3-year panel study of adolescents. Linear structural equation models were used to evaluate the causal priority of these variables for 225 junior high school students. Panel data allowed this examination, which is not possible in more common cross-sectional studies. It was found that SEU had a significant relationship to subsequent sexual behavior in each of the 1-year intervals, but intercourse was significantly related to subsequent SEU in only the first interval. This pattern was explained as a result of the process of development of utility during adolescent initial experience with sexual behaviors.