Reliability of Ratings of Children’s Expressive Reading

This study examined ratings of fourth graders’ oral reading expression. Randomly assigned participants (n = 36) practiced repeated readings using narrative or informational passages for 7 weeks. After this period raters used the Multidimensional Fluency Scale (MFS) on two separate occasions to rate students’ expressive reading of four equivalent passages. Results of this generalizability study showed that a minimum of two and preferably three equivalent passages, two raters, and one rating occasion are recommended to obtain reliable ratings. This research substantiates the reliability of the MFS and demonstrates the importance of raters collaborating and finding texts at students’ independent reading levels.     

Moments of Spontaneity and Surprise: The Nonlinear Road to Something More

Moments of spontaneity and surprise create opportunities for change to occur through perturbations in the analyst-analysand system. These moments of authentic person-to-person contact violate anticipated patterns of intersubjective engagement. Mutative potential arises from the coconstruction of new relational configurations and the resultant modifications in the procedural memory system of both members of the analytic dyad. Three moments of spontaneity and surprise from the analysis of a man with a rigid character structure are presented and discussed.     

Review article

Paths to Spirituality

David N. Elkins. Beyond Religion: A Personal Program for Building a Spiritual Life Outside the Walls of Traditional Religion. Wheaton, IL: Quest Books, 1998, xi + 304 pp, $16.95, ISBN 0–8356–0764‐X     

How Much Distress Is Too Much on Deployed Operations? Validation of the Kessler Psychological Distress Scale (K10) for Application in Military Operational Settings

The aim of this study was threefold: (a) to assess the factor structure of the Kessler Psychological Distress Scale (K10) to determine whether interpreting the scale as a single dimensional measure of psychological distress is justified in military operational setting; (b) to validate the K10 for mental health surveillance in operational settings against self-reported occupational impairment; (c) to evaluate whether the K10 has better discriminatory power than de facto standards for mental health surveillance on deployment, namely the Patient Health Questionnaire and the Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Checklist, Civilian version. A convenience sample of Canadian Armed Forces personnel serving in Afghanistan (N = 1,264) completed self-report measures of psychological distress and occupational impairment. On examination of 6 competing models, the authors determined that interpreting the K10 as a measure of unspecified psychological distress is justified. Using receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve analysis, they identified new cutoff values for dichotomous and polychotomous scoring methods. After comparing the area beneath the ROC curves for each of the 3 mental health surveillance questionnaires, the authors determined that all measures perform well as predictors of self-rated occupational impairment, with values ranging from .86 to .90. These results highlight the importance of cross-setting validation and demonstrate that validating psychological screening questionnaires against self-report measures of occupational impairment can be a useful strategy for understanding the manifestation of psychological distress on deployed military operations.     

Understanding emotional display rules at work and outside of work: The effects of country and gender

This study examined the long-held, but empirically untested assumption that emotional display rules at work are different from more general display rules. We examined whether the effect of context (work vs. non-work) on display rules depended on rater gender, rater country (i.e., Singapore, United States), and discrete emotion (anger, contempt, disgust, fear, sadness, and happiness). Results revealed that display rules at work involved less expressivity of emotion than did display rules outside of work for all six emotions. Further, display rules in Singapore involved less expressivity of anger, sadness, and fear than display rules in the US, with no country differences being observed for the emotions of happiness, contempt, and disgust. These results were qualified by significant country-by-gender interactions for anger, contempt, and disgust, a significant country-by-context interaction for fear, and a three-way interaction (i.e., country-by-gender-by-context) for sadness.     

Development and Validation of the Xhosa Translations of the Beck Inventories: 1. Challenges of the Translation Process

This article describes the translation of the Beck Depression Inventory-II, the Beck Hopeless Scale, and the Beck Anxiety Inventory, into Xhosa the language spoken in the Eastern Cape of South Africa. The processes of translation, back-translation and committee discussion failed to yield trustworthy translations because of practical difficulties in working with translators. Critical words and phrases were identified which gave rise to lack of agreement. For each, a range of options was generated and the advantages and disadvantages evaluated in terms of criteria such as conceptual and idiomatic equivalence, and extensiveness of usage. Examples are given of the problems encountered and the way in which final decisions were made. A pilot clinical trial demonstrated the acceptability of the translated instruments. Two further articles report the psychometric evaluation of the translated scales.     

Development and Validation of the Xhosa Translations of the Beck Inventories: 2. Item Analysis,Internal Consistency and Factor Analysis

The Beck Depression Inventory-II (BDI-II), the Beck Anxiety Inventory (BAI), and the Beck Hopelessness Scale (BHS) were translated into Xhosa, a language widely spoken in South Africa to yield translated scales referred to as the XBDI-I (Xhosa BDI-II), the XBAI (Xhosa BAI) and the XBHS (Xhosa BHS). These scales were administered to a sample of 122 Xhosa respondents which included students and patients. The psychometric properties of the translated scales were comparable to those of the original English versions. Measures of internal consistency were as high as those for the validation studies in the USA and good item-scale correlations were obtained. This suggests that the translation yielded clinically useful scales which tap symptoms that are largely culturally universal.     

The Changing Role of Fatherhood: The Father as a Provider of Selfobject Functions

Fatherhood is evolving. The way that men carry out their paternal role is reflective of the historical time era in which they live, social and cultural forces, both the mother and the father's expectations for fathering behaviors, as well as the father's own innate capabilities, wishes, and desires. Fatherhood is also greatly influenced by men's relationships with their own fathers, the quality of that relationship, and the extent to which the father was emotionally available. The ever-changing role of fathers has been a challenge for the psychoanalytic literature. There is no comprehensive theoretical body of knowledge about fatherhood that takes into account the changing nature of fathering, especially considering men's desires to be emotionally responsive and nurturing parents. This article examines the changing role of the father and suggests a model of paternal involvement that expands the nurturing and available father role to include the father as a selfobject. It discusses the importance of understanding men's relationships with their fathers, a central dynamic in shaping fathers’ involvement with their children. The residual impact of paternal deprivation is explored, followed by two clinical vignettes that symbolize the search for missing selfobject functions. This article concludes by outlining clinical implications and questions to pose to assess the selfobject relationship with one's father.     

THE QUEST FOR SELF-IDENTITY: TIME,NARRATIVE, AND THE LATE PROSE OF SAMUEL BECKETT

The long-standing problem of understanding self-identity has been most recently addressed as a matter of narrative form. Paul Ricoeur (1985a), as well as others, has examined how the discordant experience of time is structured by narrative form and can constitute an identity. This article attempts to extend his analysis to a reading of the late prose work of Samuel Beckett. While Beckett's approach to narrative identity shares similarity with Ricoeur's analysis, there are important distinctions. In contrast to Ricoeur's emphasis on the way narrative can order temporal experience, an examination of the works Stories and Texts for Nothing (1967) and How It Is (1964) serve to illustrate Beckett's experimentation with the generative power of the narrative voice. For Beckett, it seems that the very act of narration through time can give rise to problematic ambiguity and semantic multiplicity. It is argued that the literary works of Beckett complement that of Ricoeur's by attacking order and meaning; his texts show how narrating in time can distend, pull, and fragment in unexpected and generative ways. It is suggested that an appreciation of both the affirmative and negative aspects of narration are necessary for a complete understanding of self-identity.     

UNDERMINING AND CONSTRUCTING COHERENCE IN TRADITIONAL NARRATIVE PARADIGMS: CONTEMPORARY VIEWS

Using both images and metaphor proved an effective qualitative method in our study with adolescent girls who use crystal methamphetamine. The combination increased the depth of learning by inviting less calculated responses and the breadth of learning by allowing for consideration of societal and contextual dimensions of experience. In this article, we demonstrate how combining images and metaphors in qualitative inquiry can enable researchers to resist the tendency to distill complex experiences down to manageable forms. In so doing, we offer a contextualized perspective of how change may occur, thus reconceptualizing our roles as practitioners.