Measuring QoL with SF-36 in Older Americans with TBI

This study demonstrated reliability and factor structure of the Medical Outcomes Study Short-Form Health Survey (SF-36) among older Americans with Traumatic brain injury (TBI), and evaluated effects of injury severity and race on SF-36's items and latent domains. A representative sample of 654 older, racially diverse patients with TBI was selected from the South Carolina Traumatic Brain Injury Follow-up Registry. Reliability and factor structure of SF-36 were evaluated using Cronbach’s alpha and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). Multiple-indicator multiple-causes (MIMIC) models were used to study effects of injury severity and race on items (differential item functioning, DIF) and latent domains (population heterogeneity) of SF-36. SF-36 was reliable and its current eightfactor structure was confirmed. While TBI severity did not impact latent domain scores of SF-36, race did. Blacks had higher vitality and lower role-emotional scores than whites. The measurement model was invariant to injury severity and race (free of DIF), and DIF did not contribute to the differences of vitality and role-emotional between black and white older TBI patients. SF-36 was valid to measure quality of life (OoL) after TBI in racially diverse elderly population. Blacks tend to assert to strong coping behaviors in the presence of physical stress while admitting low performance due to emotional stress. In QoL research where the primary outcomes are usually composite scores from instruments, MIMIC models have advantages over conventional multivariable regression models in testing the validity of the instruments and assessing covariate effects on latent traits of instruments while controlling for DIF effects.     

The criterion validity of the Borderline Personality Features Scale for Children in an adolescent inpatient setting

The purpose of the current study was to examine the criterion validity of the Borderline Personality Features Scale for Children (BPFS-C) by assessing the performance of the self-report and a newly developed parent report version of the measure (BPFS-P) in detecting a borderline personality disorder (BPD) diagnosis in adolescent inpatients. This study also examined parent-child agreement and the internal consistency of the BPFS subscales. An inpatient sample of adolescents (n = 51) ranging from ages 12-18 completed the BPFS and were administered the Child Interview for DSM-IV Borderline Personality Disorder (CI-BPD) by trained clinical research staff. ROC analyses revealed that the BPFS-C has high accuracy (AUC = .931; Se = .856; Sp = .840) in discriminating adolescents with a diagnosis of BPD, as measured by the CI-BPD, while the BPFS-P has moderate accuracy (AUC = .795; Se = .733; Sp = .720). Parent-child agreement on total scores was significant (r = .687; p < .005). Cronbach's alphas suggested internal consistency for the four subscales of the BPFS. These findings support the criterion validity of this measure, particularly the self-report version, in adolescent inpatient settings.     

Performance Management at the Wheel: Driving Employee Engagement in Organizations

Based on a study conducted in a large corporation (XINC, a pseudonym) and other research, it appears that performance management can be used to increase levels of employee engagement. We begin this article with a discussion of employee engagement, define engaged employees as those who feel involved, committed, passionate, and empowered, and demonstrate those feelings in work behavior. We then discuss an expanded view of performance management, conceptualizing it as five major activities that serve to organize relevant behaviors shown to be either direct or indirect predictors of employee engagement in the study at XINC. These major activities include setting performance and development goals, providing ongoing feedback and recognition, managing employee development, conducting mid-year and year-end appraisals, and building a climate of trust and empowerment. In turn, we briefly discuss how each of these major activities contributes to employee engagement, suggest which activities benefit from further research, and recommend possible studies. Although there is evidence for performance management as a driver of employee engagement, we conclude there is a need for additional research that clarifies for managers which of these activities have the strongest impact on employee engagement.     

Effects of event valence on long-term memory for two baseball championship games

We investigated how event valence affected accuracy and vividness of long-term memory for two comparable public events. In 2008, 1,563 fans answered questions about objective details concerning two decisive baseball championship games between the Yankees (2003 winners) and the Red Sox (2004 winners). Both between- and within-groups analyses indicated that fans remembered the game their team won significantly more accurately than the game their team lost. Fans also reported more vividness and more rehearsal for the game their team won. We conclude that individuals rehearse positive events more than comparable negative events, and that this additional rehearsal increases both vividness and accuracy of memories about positive events. Our results differ from those of prior studies involving memories for negative events that may have been unavoidably rehearsed; such rehearsal may have kept those memories from fading. Long-term memory for an event is determined not only by the valence of the event, but also by experiences after the event.     

Relationship of Adult Representations of Childhood Parenting and Personality Tendencies to Adult Stressors and Political Ideology

Undergraduate students in a Southeastern US University (n = 232) responded to an inventory that included retrospective measures of their parents’ style of parenting (authoritarian vs. authoritative) and their own childhood psychological tendencies (insecurity vs. confidence), as well as their adult stressors and political orientation. Authoritative parenting positively correlated with childhood confidence and negatively correlated with both childhood insecurity and adult stressors. Conversely, authoritarian parenting was positively associated with childhood insecurity and adult stressors but was not significantly correlated with childhood confidence. For the most part, parenting styles, early childhood tendencies, and adult stressors were unrelated to adult political ideology, contrary to previous longitudinal research reporting these connections.     

Race-related stress, racial identity status attitudes, and emotional reactions of Black Americans

The current study explored the relationship between race-related stress, racial identity status attitudes and emotional states among 229 Black Americans. Canonical correlation analyses revealed a shared variate between emotions and racial identity status attitudes in which anger, depression confusion and tension were related positively to Conformity and inversely related to Internalization status attitudes. Implications for research are discussed.     

Toddlers with Autism Spectrum Disorder are more successful at visual search than typically developing toddlers

Plaisted, O'Riordan and colleagues (Plaisted, O'Riordan & Baron-Cohen, 1998; O'Riordan, 2004) showed that school-age children and adults with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) are faster at finding targets in certain types of visual search tasks than typical controls. Currently though, there is very little known about the visual search skills of very young children (1-3-year-olds) - either typically developing or with ASD. We used an eye-tracker to measure looking behavior, providing fine-grained measures of visual search in 2.5-year-old toddlers with and without ASD (this representing the age by which many children may first receive a diagnosis of ASD). Importantly, our paradigm required no verbal instructions or feedback, making the task appropriate for toddlers who are pre- or nonverbal. We found that toddlers with ASD were more successful at finding the target than typically developing, age-matched controls. Further, our paradigm allowed us to estimate the number of items scrutinized per trial, revealing that for large set size conjunctive search, toddlers with ASD scrutinized as many as twice the number of items as typically developing toddlers, in the same amount of time.     

Contemplative Pedagogy: Frequently Asked Questions

Contemplative Pedagogy is a new and sometimes controversial pedagogical practice. Faculty often have basic questions about how to implement the pedagogy in their classrooms, in addition to questions that challenge the educational value and appropriateness of the practice. Assembled here are the most frequently asked questions about Contemplative Pedagogy, with responses from six contemplative professors, each from a different institutional and philosophical location. The respondents are founding members of the Contemplative Studies Consultation of the American Academy of Religion. The diversity of views expressed by the respondents invites the reader to see that there is no single theory or praxis of contemplative pedagogy.