The Hall index of mystical spirituality: an exploration in constructing a short scale of mystical spirituality

ABSTRACT

The aim of this study was to propose a new nine-item measure of mystical spirituality which would be [as easy as possible] for “ordinary” people (those with little or no theological education) to complete. The measure was developed and tested on data provided by 602 participants within an on-line survey. The Hall Index of Mystical Spirituality displayed excellent properties of internal consistency reliability (reporting an alpha coefficient of .93) and good construct validity, in terms of its location within the four components of psychological space, defined by psychological type theory (reporting a correlation of .30 within the measure of intuition). As a new measure of mystical spirituality further research is needed to test the usefulness of this short scale.     

Do your Dark Side Traits Fit? Dysfunctional Personalities in Different Work Sectors

This study investigates differences in “dark side” traits between those in the public and private sectors, as well as between managers in three distinct industries. In all, 5,693 British adults were tested, roughly half of whom clearly worked in public sector jobs and half in the private sector. We also tested three groups of people (total 1,102) working in very different sectors: finance, insurance, and emergency services. They all completed the Hogan Development Survey (HDS; Hogan & Hogan, 1997), which is a measure of dysfunctional personality styles or potential management derailers. It has 11 dimensions and three higher order factors. Multivariate and univariate analyses of co‐variance (controlling for sex, age, and social desirability) and logistic regressions showed many significant differences, with private sector employees scoring higher on the factor Moving Against/Cluster B and lower on the factor Moving Away/Cluster A. The analysis of the three groups showed that those in the emergency services differed on most traits while Finance and Insurance industry personnel were very similar.     

Interactive Effects of Chronic Health Conditions And Financial Hardship On Episodic Memory Among Older Blacks: Findings From The Health And Retirement Study

Previous research links chronic health conditions and financial hardship to cognitive outcomes among older Blacks. However, few studies have explored the moderating effect of financial hardship on chronic disease burden and specific cognitive domains. This study examined whether financial hardship (as measured by difficulty paying monthly bills) modifies the impact of self-reported chronic health conditions (e.g., diabetes, stroke) on episodic memory among 871 older Blacks (50+ years) in the 2006 Health and Retirement Study . Financial hardship modified the association between chronic disease burden and episodic memory performance such that individuals who reported very little difficulty paying their monthly bills had significantly lower memory scores at high levels of disease burden compared to those reporting high financial difficulty after controlling for age, gender and education (F 2, 49 = 5.03, p = .010). This cross-sectional study suggests that both financial and physical wellbeing may have joint effects on cognitive health in older Blacks.