Beliefs do not come in degrees

Philosophers commonly say that beliefs come in degrees (or that beliefs are graded or that there are partial beliefs). Drawing from the literature, I make precise three arguments for this claim: an argument from degrees of confidence, an argument from degrees of firmness, and an argument from natural language. I show that they all fail. I also advance three arguments that beliefs do not come in degrees: an argument from natural language, an argument from intuition, and an argument from the metaphysics of degrees. On the basis of these arguments, I conclude that beliefs do not come in degrees.     

Aggression against middle and high school teachers: Duration of victimization and its negative impacts

Prior research indicates that student aggression against teachers is widespread, and it has negative impacts on victimized teachers’ emotional and physical well-being and job performance. However, little is known about the relationship between the recency and duration of victimization and teachers’ thoughts about quitting the teaching profession and related job dissatisfaction and disconnectedness to school. Analyses of data from a longitudinal study of 1,236 US teachers fills these gaps. The study found that many teachers experienced theft/vandalism and sexual harassment victimization that was limited to just 1 year. In contrast, sizeable proportions of teachers experienced verbal abuse and nonphysical contact aggression that occurred over 2 years. Multiple regression analyses showed that teachers who reported recent or multiyear victimization had lower levels of connectedness to school, less job satisfaction, and more thoughts about ending their teaching careers. These results may indicate that unless victimization recurs, negative effects of victimization are contemporaneous and are less likely to persist. Additional research is needed to examine victimization over longer than 2 years, investigate the effects of the frequency of different types of aggression against teachers, and identify school policies and interventions that weaken the connection of victimization to negative outcomes.     

The Role of Job Crafting and Perceived Organizational Support in the Link between Employees’ CSR Perceptions and Job Performance: A Moderated Mediation Model

Current Psychology - This study aims to test the mediating effect of job crafting on the relationship between employees’ corporate social responsibility (CSR) perceptions and job performance,...     

Functional Generalized Structured Component Analysis

An extension of Generalized Structured Component Analysis (GSCA), called Functional GSCA, is proposed to analyze functional data that are considered to arise from an underlying smooth curve varying over time or other continua. GSCA has been geared for the analysis of multivariate data. Accordingly, it cannot deal with functional data that often involve different measurement occasions across participants and a large number of measurement occasions that exceed the number of participants. Functional GSCA addresses these issues by integrating GSCA with spline basis function expansions that represent infinite-dimensional curves onto a finite-dimensional space. For parameter estimation, functional GSCA minimizes a penalized least squares criterion by using an alternating penalized least squares estimation algorithm. The usefulness of functional GSCA is illustrated with gait data.     

Pedagogy for teaching and learning cooperatively on the Web: a Web-based pharmacology course.

The Internet is becoming a preferred place to find information. Millions of people go online in the search of health and medical information. Likewise, the demand for Web-based courses grows. This article presents the development, utilization and evaluation of a web-based pharmacology course for nursing students. The course was developed based on 150 commonly used drugs. There were 110 year 1 nursing students took part in the course. After attending six hours face to face lecture of pharmacology over three weeks, students were invited to complete a questionnaire (pre-test) about learning pharmacology. The course materials were then uploaded to a WebCT for student's self-directed learning and attempts to pass two scheduled online quizzes. At the end of the semester, students were given the same questionnaire (post-test). There were a significant increase in the understanding compared with memorizing the subject content, the development of problem solving ability in learning pharmacology and becoming an independent learner (p ,0.05). Online quizzes yielded satisfactory results. In the focused group interview, students appreciated the time flexibility and convenience associated with web-based learning, also, they had made good suggestions in enhancing web-based learning. Web-based approach is promising for teaching and learning pharmacology for nurses and other health-care professionals.     

A social cure in the community: A mixed-method exploration of the role of social identity in the experiences and well-being of community volunteers

Cohesive, resilient communities are vital to the well-being of residents. Uncovering the determinants of successful community identities is therefore essential to progressing the community health agenda. Engaging in community participation through volunteering may be one pathway to building local community identity and enhancing residents’ health and well-being, but the group processes connecting them remain unexplored. We conducted two studies investigating these dynamics using the “Social Cure” perspective. First, we analysed 53 in-depth interviews with volunteers, finding that community relationships shaped their experiences and that volunteering influenced their sense of community belonging, support, and well-being. Second, a community survey (N = 619) revealed that volunteering predicts well-being through the serial mediators of community identification and social support. Our article demonstrates the Social Cure processes involved in community-based volunteering, their impact on community identity, support and well-being, and their implications for community health, and the provision and sustainability of community voluntary action and interventions.