The Development and Validation of the Health Proneness Questionnaire

This series of studies describes the development, validation and potential use of the Health Proneness Questionnaire (HPQ). Recent health, wellness and illness studies focus upon the dynamic interaction between psychological and physical well-being. This newly developed scale allows practitioners to quickly screen psychological characteristics related to health and a patient's perception of their quality of life. Participants were patients in university research clinics for vision problems. Through exploratory factor analysis three factors evolved related to the hypothesized psychological characteristics involved in health related quality of life: adaptability, self-efficacy and subjective well-being. In a confirmatory factor analysis, the best fit model yielded a higher-order health-proneness factor with the original three categories as sub-factors. Further criterion-related validity comparisons and discriminant and convergent validity studies indicated a psychometrically sound short survey for examining psychological characteristics of patients with mild chronic health conditions.     

On the Christian in Christian bioethics.

What is Christian about Christian bioethics? And is an authentically Christian bioethics a practical possibility in the world in which we find ourselves? In my essay I argue that personhood and the personal are so fundamental to the Christian understanding of our humanity that body, soul, and spirit are probably best understood as the components of a triune (as opposed to dual) aspect theory of personhood. To confess to a Christian bioethics is to admit that Christians cannot pretend fully to understand either cures or their meaning. However effective and "knowledge-based" contemporary medical interventions are, a Christian must humbly and honestly confess a lack of complete knowledge on both levels. At the same time, a Christian bioethicist must express a total personal commitment to Christian Faith.     

Explaining Away Excellence: The Biased Assault on Private-School Research

Research favoring private education runs counter to the agenda of some researchers and policy makers. Consequently, the ameliorative role of private school is apt to be explained away on methodological grounds. Dr. Erickson offers reasons for the effectiveness of private education beyond what can be accounted for by skimming superior students. Moreover, Dr. Erickson suggests how these explanatory features can enlighten all education—public education included.     

Psychotherapy as a moral enterprise

This article addresses the phenomenon of psychotherapy as a moral enterprise by discussing the notion of morality as it relates to the therapeutic task, enumerating ways in which the practices of psychotherapy can confuse a moral sense of things and by offering suggestions as to how psychotherapy can be undertaken as a moral enterprise.     

Early life events as discriminators of socialized and undersocialized delinquents

The relationship between early life events and the socialized and undersocialized dimensions of conduct disorder was investigated. Subjects were 40 incarcerated male delinquents and their mothers. The mothers were administered the Children's Life Events Questionnaire and the Developmental Questionnaire. Youths were administered the Adolescent Parent Relations Scale. The results indicated that the undersocialized delinquents had a greater number of stressful life events during their first 4 years of life than did the socialized delinquents. Discriminant function analysis indicated that stressful life events during the 2nd and 4th years were the most important predictors of membership in the undersocialized group. The discriminant function generated was able to classify 82.5% of the sample correctly. The remaining variables did not significantly discriminate the groups.     

COMPARISON OF MODELLING AND REINFORCEMENT PROCEDURES IN INCREASING QUESTION-ASKING OF MILDLY RETARDED CHILDREN1

Questioning is an important skill, particularly for retarded children with deficits in accumulated information. Recent strategies for modifying a variety of verbal behaviors have included both token reinforcement systems and modelling procedures. However, the relative effectiveness (i.e., the rate of behavior change) of certain reinforcement procedures, especially with low base-rate behavior (used alone) have recently been questioned. The present study, using an ABAB design, compared the effect of a Token reinforcement system, a Trainer-Model procedure, and a combination of the two procedures on increasing the rate of question-asking. Each condition was in effect for six sessions. Groups of four mildly retarded children (mean age: 10.1 yr) were prompted to ask questions about large photographs, and each of their questions was immediately answered. For the Model group, the Trainer modelled four questions for each subject for each photograph. For the Token group, each question earned the subject a point, which was exchangeable after the session for various items (e.g., candy, ice cream) from a “store”. For the Modelling plus Token group, the procedures were combined. The Model and the Control groups were yoked to receive the same amount of candy as the Token and the Model plus Token groups for behaviors other than question-asking (i.e., being polite). The results indicated that during Baseline conditions, performance across groups was comparable and that the performance of the Control group did not change across time. The Model procedure had only minimal effects on the rate of question-asking, while both the Model plus Token and the Token groups showed significant performance increments. The only significant difference between the Model plus Token and the Token groups was a faster rate of increase early in the first Training condition for the Model plus Token group. This difference, and the low level of performance change for the Model group, was interpreted as suggesting a facilitory effect of modelling procedures on reinforcement contingencies. The discrepancy between previous findings showing relatively minimal changes following reinforcement of low base-rate responses and the present results were discussed in terms of various procedural differences. Educational implications of the present results were also discussed.     

Psychotherapy and the locus of control

Underlying various actions of both the therapist and the patient are expectations about the measure to which an individual's experiences are the product of powerful external forces or of the person's own actions and decisions. While most of our anthropological theories support the notion that a person's experience is subject to an external locus of control, neither that view nor the opposite emphasizing freedom and autonomy is adequate for the therapeutic enterprise. THere are elements of truth in both positions that ned to be incorporated in therapeutic expectations if the enterprise is to proceed in an orderly fashion.     

Morality and the practice of psychotherapy

The morality of psychotherapy is challenged in terms of its effects on patients, their families, and the community. This paper discusses the issue of moral neutrality in therapy, the distinction between real and neurotic guilt, and offers suggestions as to how moral discourse might be incorporated in therapy.