Scale of Internalized Trans Oppression: Measure Development and Exploratory Factor Analysis

A growing amount of research uses the Minority Stress Model [Meyer, Psychological Bulletin, 129(5), 674–697 (2003). 10.1037/0033-2909.129.5.674] to explore the effects of discrimination on the well-being of transgender people. Most of this research focuses on the effects of overt discrimination and the anticipation of discrimination, but few studies have explored the internal aspect of minority stress for transgender people. This may be because current measurement options are limited. To address this oversight, our study developed the Scale of Internalized Trans Oppression (SITO). The SITO moves beyond current measures of internalized prejudice to, instead, assess for the ubiquitous effects of internalized oppression. Results from our exploratory factor analysis provide preliminary evidence of a four-factor structure. Reliability analyses have established high internal consistency for both the Self-Doubt from Oppression subscale and Openness about Gender Identity subscale. Additionally, the Horizontal Hostility from Oppression subscale and the Fortitude subscale showed good internal consistency. Finally, research and clinical implications are discussed for this preliminary version of the SITO.

     

The three-class ideal observer for univariate normal data: Decision variable and ROC surface properties

Although a fully general extension of ROC analysis to classification tasks with more than two classes has yet to be developed, the potential benefits to be gained from a practical performance evaluation methodology for classification tasks with three classes have motivated a number of research groups to propose methods based on constrained or simplified observer or data models. Here we consider an ideal observer in a task with underlying data drawn from three univariate normal distributions. We investigate the behavior of the resulting ideal observer’s decision variables and ROC surface. In particular, we show that the pair of ideal observer decision variables is constrained to a parametric curve in two-dimensional likelihood ratio space, and that the decision boundary line segments used by the ideal observer can intersect this curve in at most six places. From this, we further show that the resulting ROC surface has at most four degrees of freedom at any point, and not the five that would be required, in general, for a surface in a six-dimensional space to be non-degenerate. In light of the difficulties we have previously pointed out in generalizing the well-known area under the ROC curve performance metric to tasks with three or more classes, the problem of developing a suitable and fully general performance metric for classification tasks with three or more classes remains unsolved.     

Suicide in the army national guard: an empirical inquiry

Since 2004, suicides in the U.S. military have risen, most notably in the Army National Guard (ARNG). Data used in this study were obtained for suicides occurring from 2007 to 2010 and for a random sample of nonsuicides from the general ARNG population. Of the military-related variables considered, a few showed relationships to suicide. Rather, the primary variables associated with suicide were soldier background characteristics, including age (17-24 years), race (White), and gender (male). Cluster analysis revealed two distinct suicide groups: "careerists" (about one third of all suicides) and "first-termers" (about two thirds of all suicides), each group exhibiting different concurrent behavioral problems.     

Motivating Operations Affect Stimulus Control: A Largely Overlooked Phenomenon in Discrimination Learning

Several recent studies have explored what Michael (e.g., 1982) termed the value-altering effect and the behavior-altering effect of motivating operations. One aspect of the behavior-altering effect that has garnered no recent attention involves changes in stimulus control produced by motivating operations. To call attention to this aspect of the behavior-altering effect, we herein review 11 studies that are concerned with the influence of varying levels of food or water deprivation on stimulus generalization. These studies suggest that motivating operations influence stimulus control (a) by changing the evocative strength of not just an established discriminative stimulus, but also of stimuli that are physically similar to it; (b) by changing the range of stimuli that evoke the operant in question; and (c) by exerting these effects in a graded fashion. These findings are potentially of conceptual and applied significance, and it appears that further research examining how motivating operations alter stimulus control, including some studies suggested herein, is warranted.     

The eACS: Attentional control in the presence of emotion

We present a questionnaire – The Emotional Attentional Control Scale (eACS) – An adaptation of the original Attentional Control Scale (ACS) that assesses the voluntary control of attention. A low score on the ACS has been associated with high levels of anxiety and depression. As the ACS items are affectively neutral, some people scoring high on the ACS may still show low levels of attentional control (AC) in more emotionally-demanding situations. We propose that the eACS, which focuses on the emotional modulation of AC, may explain additional variance in AC deficits associated with psychopathology.     

Factors Associated with Psychological Distress among Women of African Descent at High Risk for BRCA Mutations

Little is known about psychological distress among women of African descent who are at high risk for a BRCA mutation. This is a group for whom breast cancer risk reduction is critical due to the group’s high rates of breast cancer mortality. Distress is important to consider as it may reduce the potential benefit of genetic counseling and negatively affect decision making related to risk reduction. The goals of the current study were to examine breast cancer-specific distress and depressive symptoms in women of African descent at who are at high risk for a BRCA mutation and to identify background factors associated with these outcomes. Participants were 148 high-risk African American and Caribbean women who were part of a larger study that offered participants BRCA counseling at no cost. Participants completed the Impact of Events Scale, which assessed breast cancer-specific distress, and the Center of Epidemiological Studies-Depression Scale, which assessed depressive symptoms. Results of analyses revealed that almost half of the sample achieved scores indicating high and clinically significant breast cancer-specific distress, while almost one-third had clinically significant depression scores. Results further showed that low income was significantly associated with cancer-specific distress, while having a cancer diagnosis was significantly associated with depressive symptoms. These results underscore the need for targeted psychological support throughout the genetic risk assessment process for this particular high-risk group.     

Individual Differences in Arousal and Accessibility to Information in Memory

The authors conducted 9 experiments to test the hypothesis (S. Schwartz, 1975) that arousal influences the accessibility of information stored in memory. They investigated the relationship between arousal levels (as indexed by personality types) and the type of stimuli or cues presented during study or test. They predicted that low-arousal individuals (stable extroverted individuals in Experiments 1-3 and 5-9 and high-impulsive individuals in Experiment 4) would be influenced by semantic stimuli, whereas high-arousal individuals (neurotic introverted individuals in Experiments 1-3 and 5-9 and low-impulsive individuals in Experiment 4) would be influenced by physical (i.e., graphic, phonetic, or both) stimuli. They tested the arousal-accessibility hypothesis by using a variety of tasks including verbal discrimination, false recognition, cued recall, and paired associates. With the exception of the finding that stable extroverted participants performed better than neurotic introverted participants on an incidental associative-matching task (Experiment 3), the results from the verbal discrimination studies (1-5) did not support the hypothesis. In Experiment 6, the authors tested the hypothesis by using a false-recognition task. False alarms varied as a function of phonetic and semantic stimuli, but personality types were not differentially sensitive to the manipulation. The same was true for the cued-recall studies (Experiments 7 and 8); personality types were not differentially sensitive to the semantic and phonetic stimuli. Experiment 9 (paired-associate learning) was a replication of Schwartz's study. The authors found some support for the Schwartz hypothesis: Extraverted participants were adversely affected by semantic similarity. Overall, the findings did not provide much support for the arousal-accessability hypothesis.     

Using Patient-Reported Outcome Measures for Quality Improvement in Clinical Genetics: an Exploratory Study

International advocacy of patient-centred healthcare delivery has led to emphasis on the (re)design and evaluation of healthcare processes and outcomes from a patient perspective. Patient-reported outcome measures (PROMs) have significant potential to inform such attempts. However there is limited understanding of the processes by which this can be achieved. This exploratory study followed attempts to utilise two different PROMs measures to support service quality improvement in clinical genetics. PROMs used were the Genetic Counseling Outcome Scale (GCOS-24), a well-validated clinical genetics-specific PROM and Euroqol (EQ-5D), a generic PROM favoured by the UK National Institute for Health and Excellence (NICE). Both of these PROMs enable pre/post intervention comparison. A service audit tool was also used, premised on a patient-reported experience measure. In addition, the study draws on interviews with clinical staff to identify challenges associated with the use of PROMs (response rate, data collection, analysis). Benefits are also explored and include the provision of insight into patients’ needs; complementing clinical judgement; identification of needs being met, evidencing the benefit of services provided; prompting consideration of areas requiring attention; and encouraging professional development.