Decisional Capacity Among Minors With HIV: A Model for Balancing Autonomy Rights With the Need for Protection

The purpose of this article is threefold: (a) to describe the relevant ethical and legal issues associated with decisional capacity among minors and to discuss the importance of these concepts for children and adolescents living with HIV, (b) to provide a framework for assessing the decisional capacity of children and adolescents with HIV, and (c) to present a model for thinking about how to use this assessment data to guide action along the protection-autonomy continuum.     

Save It for God: Confession and the Irrelevance of the Judicial System with Special Attention to Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov

Confession is essential for spiritual growth, but the judicial system provides little room for it. The judiciary is particularly unequipped to help convicts grapple with their guilt. Dostoevsky was the first to raise this critique in The Brothers Karamazov.     

Age Discrimination in the Evaluation of Job Applicants

This study investigated the nature of age discrimination against older job applicants. One hundred fifty‐six participants (102 students; 54 organization based) evaluated a hypothetical job applicant's (aged 33–66 years) work‐related competences and likelihood of being hired. Applicant age affected hiring decisions for both samples where there was a preference for hiring applicants aged 42–48 years. Applicants at both the older and younger ends of the continuum were less likely to be hired, with the oldest applicants (over 54 years) being the least likely to be hired. Although the applicants' age negatively affected evaluations of their trainability and sociability, the effect of applicant age on hiring evaluations was not mediated by these work‐related competencies, suggesting that age discrimination occurs via direct bias against older workers.     

Academic attitudes and their antecedents

In today's competitive workplace, individuals who are best prepared will have the greatest chance of obtaining and retaining jobs. Students can better prepare by developing the maximum possible knowledge and skills during their college educations. Research has shown that attitudes and perceptual variables have significant effects on development activity in organizations. We extend that research by using structural equations modeling to examine influences on attitudes toward one's college education. We posited that Big Five personality factors influence personal growth, readiness to change, and the perceived instrumentality of a university education and that these factors influence attitudes toward education. Results supported the posited model. A better understanding of antecedents of attitudes can enhance educational intervention effectiveness.     

Evaluating the Safety and Effectiveness of the Weighted Blanket With Adults During an Inpatient Mental Health Hospitalization

The weighted blanket (WB) is a modality used to self-comfort, rest, sleep, and decrease anxiety. This exploratory, pilot study investigates the safety and effectiveness of the standardized use of the 30-pound WB with 30 adults during an acute inpatient mental health hospitalization. Safety measures include blood pressure, pulse rate, and pulse oximetry monitoring, with and without the 30-pound WB. The State Trait Anxiety Inventory-10 (STAI-10), a self-rating 0–10 anxiety scale, and electrodermal activity (EDA) readings measure effectiveness for anxiety reduction. No statistical differences in vital signs indicate WB safety. The STAI-10 and self-ratings indicate 60% had a significant reduction in anxiety using the WB. EDA readings were inconclusive.     

Social Support in Marriage

The current study examines the role of perceived adequacy of social support provided by spouses for both marital and individual functioning. Married individuals from a college sample (N = 177) recorded the adequacy of specific supportive behaviors provided by the spouse on a daily basis for 7 days. Perceived support adequacy was correlated in the expected direction with marital quality, depressive symptomatology, and perceived stress. Furthermore, hierarchical multiple regressions indicated that perceived support adequacy accounts for significant unique variance in marital quality, depressive symptomatology, and perceived stress, even after controlling for social desirability. Discussion focuses on limitations of the study and implications of the findings for clinical work with couples.     

Modeling Cyclical Patterns in Daily College Drinking Data with Many Zeroes

Daily college drinking data often have highly skewed distributions with many zeroes and a rising and falling pattern of use across the week. Alcohol researchers have typically relied on statistical models with dummy variables for either the weekend or all days of the week to handle weekly patterns of use. However, weekend versus weekday categorizations may be too simplistic and saturated dummy variable models too unwieldy, particularly when covariates of weekly patterns are included. In the present study we evaluate the feasibility of cyclical (sine and cosine) covariates in a multilevel hurdle count model for evaluating daily college alcohol use data. Results showed that the cyclical parameterization provided a more parsimonious approach than multiple dummy variables. The number of drinks when drinking had a smoothly rising and falling pattern that was reasonably approximated by cyclical terms, but a saturated set of dummy variables was a better model for the probability of any drinking. Combining cyclical terms and multilevel hurdle models is a useful addition to the data analyst toolkit when modeling longitudinal drinking with high zero counts. However, drinking patterns were not perfectly sinusoidal in the current application, highlighting the need to consider multiple models and carefully evaluate model fit.     

Toward the re‐enchantment of psychotherapy: Stories as container

Abstract

Storytelling by a therapist to clients may serve to increase clients’ ability to bear pain, to increase self‐complexity, and expand clients’ senses of the allowable. A model delineating the therapeutic impact of therapist storytelling in psychotherapy is proposed. Stories may change clients’ selves so that they may accommodate traumatic experiences and internal complexity. Stories increase clients’ capacity to tolerate painful experience and therefore serve as a container of tragic life experiences. The artistry of therapeutic story selection is defined as choosing stories consonant with clients’ strengths, rather than with the nature of the trauma. The power of story‐listening to alter consciousness in pleasant ways (storystoned) increases its usefulness as an intervention that is neither anxiety provoking nor re‐traumatizing.     

Improved training of football referees and the decline in home advantage post-WW2

ObjectivesResearch has identified a decline in home advantage (HA) in a number of professional leagues since World War 2 (WW2). The purpose of the current study was to identify whether the decline in HA in English and Scottish Professional Football Leagues is mirrored by the radical transformation in the training of referees post-WW2, thus providing a new insight into the cause of HA.DesignA longitudinal quasi-experimental design.MethodsHA was calculated for each team at the end of every season for the four English and the Scottish Premier League post-WW2. We also compiled a list of events, statements and quotations to illustrate the dramatic change in the way referees have been trained (physically and psychologically), and assessed over the same period.ResultsWe observed a systematic decline in HA in professional English and Scottish leagues post-WW2, but with the steepest decline observed in lower divisions with smaller crowds. Of the factors thought to influence HA, crowd support appears the most consistent with these observations. Crowds are known to influence referees' decisions to favour the home side. However we argue that improved training of referees since WW2 has contributed to an improved ability to make objective decisions and a greater resilience to crowd influence, which explains the decline in HA but also accounts for the steeper decline observed with smaller crowds.ConclusionsThe continued existence of HA, and the less steep decline observed in top leagues suggests that referees' judgements are still not immune to the influence of larger crowds.