Exploring Perceptions of Group Processes in Ice Hockey Officiating

Understanding factors that influence sport officials' performance is vital to ensuring fair sport competition. Through semistructured interviews (N = 17), we explored officials' perceptions of group processes that occurred among ice hockey officiating teams. Participant responses revealed numerous ways that group processes were present within officials' interactions, and two unique characteristics involved the transient nature of officiating groups (frequently performing with different officials) and intrateam competition pertaining to postseason assignments. In the discussion, we expand on the unique nature of officiating groups, synthesize activities in which officials seek to enhance groupness, and provide insights for future interventions and researchers.     

Bayesian inference for psychology. Part II: Example applications with JASP

Bayesian hypothesis testing presents an attractive alternative to p value hypothesis testing. Part I of this series outlined several advantages of Bayesian hypothesis testing, including the ability to quantify evidence and the ability to monitor and update this evidence as data come in, without the need to know the intention with which the data were collected. Despite these and other practical advantages, Bayesian hypothesis tests are still reported relatively rarely. An important impediment to the widespread adoption of Bayesian tests is arguably the lack of user-friendly software for the run-of-the-mill statistical problems that confront psychologists for the analysis of almost every experiment: the t-test, ANOVA, correlation, regression, and contingency tables. In Part II of this series we introduce JASP (http://www.jasp-stats.org), an open-source, cross-platform, user-friendly graphical software package that allows users to carry out Bayesian hypothesis tests for standard statistical problems. JASP is based in part on the Bayesian analyses implemented in Morey and Rouder’s BayesFactor package for R. Armed with JASP, the practical advantages of Bayesian hypothesis testing are only a mouse click away.     

Bayesian inference for psychology. Part I: Theoretical advantages and practical ramifications

Bayesian parameter estimation and Bayesian hypothesis testing present attractive alternatives to classical inference using confidence intervals and p values. In part I of this series we outline ten prominent advantages of the Bayesian approach. Many of these advantages translate to concrete opportunities for pragmatic researchers. For instance, Bayesian hypothesis testing allows researchers to quantify evidence and monitor its progression as data come in, without needing to know the intention with which the data were collected. We end by countering several objections to Bayesian hypothesis testing. Part II of this series discusses JASP, a free and open source software program that makes it easy to conduct Bayesian estimation and testing for a range of popular statistical scenarios (Wagenmakers et al. this issue).     

Fiction: Impossible!

I argue that modal realism is unable to account for fictional discourse. My starting point is an overview of modal realism. I then present a dilemma for modal realism regarding fictional characters. Finally, I provide responses to both horns of the dilemma, one motivating modal dimensionalism, the other motivating a disjunctive analysis of modality.     

The Ethics of Technology: Response to Critics

The Ethics of Technology: A Geometric Analysis of Five Moral Principles proposes five moral principles for analyzing ethical issues related to engineering and technology. The objections raised by several authors to the multidimensional scaling technique used in the book reveal a lack of familiarity with this widely used technique.     

What makes students feel authentic in an integrated RE classroom?

Abstract

The focus of this article is on 9th grade students’ (N = 9) perceptions on aspects that make them feel authentic in integrated religious education (RE) lessons among students of various faiths. All of the students had previously studied RE in segregated groups. The data was collected in a collaborative teaching experiment in Finland with student interviews. The students included young people between the ages of 15 and 16 from Lutheran RE, Orthodox RE and ethics instruction. The analysis identified five themes the students reported as having contributed to their sense of authenticity in RE: neutral pedagogical approach, approving social climate concerning diverse beliefs, space for different worldviews in instruction, group composition concerning beliefs and the position of the teacher regarding religion and his/her students.     

Transcultural histories of psychotherapy

Abstract

Both proponents of and critics tend to assume psychotherapy’s origin and status as a ‘Western’ practice. The history of the emergence of psychoanalysis and psychotherapy are far more complex than this picture allows for. Today as we enter a more multipolar era of world history, the easy identification of psychotherapy with ‘the West’ will become increasingly difficult to sustain, as Bangalore and Shanghai are likely to rival Hampstead and Manhattan as centres of influence for the development of therapeutic practice and theory in the coming decades. Adapting to this new world will necessitate a different conception of the role of ‘culture’ than we have been used to in recent discussions in psychotherapy. Rather than simply seeing ‘culture’ as a factor that needs to be added to discussions to counteract the alleged ethnocentrism of ‘Western’ psychotherapy, we will need to begin to pay more careful attention to the work that is done by appeals to the ‘culture concept’ in different contexts. In particular ‘culture’ can be constructed as an object of evaluation that makes it part of the ‘check-list’ of skills that characterise the reconception of psychotherapy in an era of neoliberal instrumental manualised therapy training and practice.