No conflict control in the absence of awareness

Introduction  

In the present study we tested whether control over the impact of potentially conflicting information depends on awareness of that conflicting information.     

Piety among Tablīghī women

Islamic piety in Muslim women has been on the rise in the last three decades around the world. Much of it involves formerly nominal Muslim women becoming observant of Islamic rules, rituals and practices and taking their faith seriously. For these women, it is a journey of spiritual elevation. It is a new endeavour of Islamic awakening and self discovery. All this is occurring in an era characterized by a modernity which claims, among other things, that religion is the basis for women’s oppression in society. Thus, western and western-educated scholars and feminist theorists have argued for the “unveiling” of Muslim women as part of the process of weakening the hold of Islam and allowing women to become free thinking, liberal and independent. This article is an attempt to explore the continuous growth of Islamic piety in Muslim women around the world. Using the Tablīgh Jamā‘at in Australia as a case study, the article seeks to understand the role of Islamic piety in Muslim women. The article argues that Islamic piety in Muslim women is an attempt by Muslim women to find a religious response to modernity.     

Who Voted for Whom? Comparing Supporters of Obama and McCain on Value Types and Personality Traits

This study investigates the personalities and values of Obama and McCain supporters in the 2008 election. A total of 278 American participants completed the Big Five Inventory and the Portrait Values Questionnaire along with demographic items. For value types, Obama supporters were more likely to endorse universalism values and less likely to endorse tradition, conformity, and security values compared with McCain supporters. With regard to personality traits, Obama supporters scored higher on agreeableness and lower on conscientiousness than did McCain supporters. As predicted, logistic regression revealed that values were better predictors of voting preference than were personality traits. These findings demonstrate the importance of individual differences in political preferences and are discussed with regard to findings in other cultures.     

Developing and Testing a Spiritual Care Questionnaire in the Iranian Context

As most research exploring nurses?? perceptions on the topic of spiritual care was conducted in Western countries, these findings may not be applicable in Iran because of cultural and health system differences. Therefore, a new survey instrument was developed for the Iranian context. The study was conducted in two steps: (1) development and validation of items for perception scale and (2) distribution of the questionnaire among nursing students to determine scale reliability and construct validity. The preliminary scale consisted of 50 items designed to measure the participants?? perception of spiritual care. Construct validity of the scale was examined on the remaining 33 items. On interpretation of the items, the following four components were identified: (1) meeting patient as a being in meaning and hope, (2) meeting patient as a being in relationship, (3) meeting patient as a religious being, and (4) meeting patients as a being with autonomy. The results in this paper showed that preserving dignity in the nurses?? practice meant getting involved in interpersonal caring relationships, with respect for the involved peoples?? religious beliefs and their autonomy. Proper education and professionally led supervision with reflection on past and recent experiences may develop student nurses?? and nurses?? perceptions as well as their attitudes toward spiritual care and to achieve a realistic view of the profession.     

Co-morbid pain conditions and feelings of invalidation and isolation among women with vulvodynia

Many women with vulvodynia also suffer from other chronic co-morbid pain conditions. Alone, these pain conditions are associated with feeling invalidated by others and feeling socially isolated. It is unclear, however, how the presence of additional pain co-morbidities are associated with the psychosocial wellbeing of women with vulvodynia. We used data from a survey administered by the National Vulvodynia Association. Women reported clinician-diagnosed vulvodynia, presence of co-morbid pain, and how often they felt that they felt no one believed their pain existed (invalidated) and isolated. Analyses determined prevalence of feeling invalidated or isolated, and the difference in prevalence when co-morbidities existed. Forty-five percent of these 1847 women with vulvodynia reported having at least one of the following five chronic pain conditions, chronic fatigue syndrome, endometriosis, fibromyalgia, interstitial cystitis, or irritable bowel syndrome. Adjusted baseline prevalence among all women of feeling invalidated was 9% and of feeling isolated was 14%. Having a co-morbid condition with vulvodynia, as well as having an increasing number of co-morbid conditions with vulvodynia, was significantly associated with the presence of feeling both invalidated and isolated. Chronic fatigue syndrome was the co-morbidity most strongly associated with feelings invalidation and isolation. One or more co-morbid pain conditions in addition to vulvodynia were significantly associated with psychosocial wellbeing. However, the temporality of the association could not be elucidated and therefore we cannot conclude that these pain conditions cause poor psychosocial wellbeing. Despite this, future studies should explore the utility of promoting validation of women's pain conditions and reducing social isolation for women with chronic pain.     

A portable four-channel cassette recording system for short-term electroencephalogram in the field

A portable four-channel electroencephalogram (EEG) cassette recording system has been designed which offers good performance, is simple to construct, and moderate in cost. The recorder is compatible with a commercially available, portable, battery-operated power source, and is therefore usable in the field where line power is unavailable. The system incorporates a small, lightweight, portable, battery-powered oscilloscope which provides monitoring and playback capability. While a few experimental portable EEG recorders have been reported in recent years with more channel capacity or perhaps lighter weight, the engineering details of these units are rarely published and, in any event, would require a substantial effort for most electronics support shops to reproduce. The recording system described here, however, should be within the capability of most electronics support groups to assemble in a very short time and provide good performance.     

Book reviews

Unfolding Islam. P. J. Stewart. xiii + 252 pp. hb., £24.00, London, Ithaca Press, 1994, ISBN 0 86372 194 X; pb. London, Garnet Publishing, 1995, ISBN 1 85964 046 X.

The Basics 2: Islam. Roland Machatschke, 1995. London, SCM Press, 89 pp., pb. £5.95, ISBN 0 334 02603 2.

Voices of Islam. John Bowker 1995. Oxford, Oneworld, 188 pp., pb. £8.95, ISBN 1 85168 095 0.

Abraham, A Symbol of Hope for Jews, Christians and Muslims. Kakl‐Josef Kuschel, 1995. London, SCM, xxix + 286 pp., pb. £14.95, ISBN 0 334 02567 2.

Petrus Alfonsi and his Medieval Readers. J Tolan, 1993. Gainesville, University Press of Florida, 288 pp., pb. £15.00, ISBN 0 8130 1239 2; hb, £31.00, ISBN 0 8130 1238 4.

Islamic Science and Engineering. Donald R. Hill, 1993. Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press, 250 pp., pb. £16.95, ISBN 0 7486 0455 3.

Islam: the view from the edge. Richard W. Bulliet, 1994. New York, Columbia University Press, 236 pp., pb. $16.95, £11.95, ISBN 0 231 08219 3.

Pioneers of Islamic Revival. Ali Rahnema (Ed.), 1994. London, Zed Books, 279 pp., hb. £36.95, ISBN 1 85649 253 2; pb. £14.95, ISBN 1 85649 254 0.

Freiheit der Religion: Christentum und Islam unter dem Anspruch der Men‐schenrechte [Freedom of Religion; Christianity and Islam tinder the claims of human rights]. Johannes Schwartländer (Ed.), 1993. Mainz, Matthias Grünewald Verlag, 474 pp., DM 48.

Religion, Law and Society: A Christian‐Muslim Discussion. Tarek Mitri (Ed.), 1995. Geneva, WCC Publications and Kampen, Kok Pharos, 154pp, pb. £9.95, ISBN 2 8254 1148 5 (WCC) and 90 390 0514 1.

Muslims in Western Europe. J?rgen Nielsen, 1995 (2nd Edition). Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press, 190 pp., £14.95, ISBN 0 7486 0617 3.

From Ta'izz to Tyneside: an Arab community in the north‐east of England during the early twentieth century. Richard I. Lawless, 1995. Exeter, University of Exeter Press, 292 pp., pb. n.p., ISBN 0 85989 460 6.

The New Middle East. Shimon Peres with Arye Naor, 1993. Shaftesbury, Element Books, 224 pp., hb. £16.99, ISBN 1 85230 519 3.

The Palestinians: the road to nationhood. David McDowall, 1994. London, Minority Rights Group, 215 pp., hb. £15.95, ISBN 1 873194 70 6.

Mahdism in West Africa: the Ijebu Mahdiyya movement. P.B. Clarke, 1995. London, Luzac Oriental, 224 pp., hb. £30.00, ISBN 1 898942 06 4.

Assaulting with Words: popular discourse and the bridle of Shari^cah. A. A. Ibrahim, 1994. Evanston, IL, Northwestern University Press, 208 pp., hb. 859.95, ISBN 0 8101 1081 4.

The Vanguard of the Islamic Revolution: the Jama't‐i Islami of Pakistan. Seyyed Vali Reza Nasr, 1994. London, I. B. Tauris, 301 pp., hb. n.p., ISBN 1 85043 862 3; pb. £14.95, ISBN 1 85043 864 1.     

Measuring Attitudes in Test-Alien Cultures: When Illiteracy and Unfamiliarity Do Not Matter

This study reports the construction of an attitude scale called a "Shah attitude scale." This scale overcomes the problems of scale construction and attitude measurement in test-alien cultures peculiar to Western scales. The major problems with the use of these scales are the non-correspondence of the samples used in scale construction and attitude measurement, difficulty of their use with the illiterate and rural samples, unfamiliarity of their verbal character and the response modality. Our scale is simple to construct and can be easily used with every section of society. Its conceptualization and development is based upon the agreed upon bipolar definition of attitude and the ideas derived from well-known attitude scales. The scale is based upon trait adjectives and can be used easily in cross-cultural attitudinal studies.     

Activation and integration of motor components in a short-term priming paradigm

The aim of the present research was to study the processes involved in knowledge emergence. In a short-term priming paradigm, participants had to categorize pictures of objects as either "kitchen objects" or "do-it-yourself tools". The primes and targets represented objects belonging to either the same semantic category or different categories (object category similarity), and their use involved gestures that were either similar or very different (gesture similarity). The condition with a SOA of 100ms revealed additive effects of motor similarity and object category similarity, whereas another condition with a SOA of 300ms showed an interaction between motor and category similarity. These results were interpreted in terms of the activation and integration processes involved in the emergence of mental representations.     

A note on monotone likelihood ratio of the total score variable in unidimensional item response theory

This note provides a direct, elementary proof of the fundamental result on monotone likelihood ratio of the total score variable in unidimensional item response theory (IRT). This result is very important for practical measurement in IRT, because it justifies the use of the total score variable to order participants on the latent trait. The proof relies on a basic inequality for elementary symmetric functions which is proved by means of few purely algebraic, straightforward transformations. In particular, flaws in a proof of this result by Huynh [(1994) . A new proof for monotone likelihood ratio for the sum of independent Bernoulli random variables. Psychometrika, 59, 77–79] are pointed out and corrected, and a natural generalization of the fundamental result to non‐linear (quasi‐ordered) latent trait spaces is presented. This may be useful for multidimensional IRT or knowledge space theory, in which the latent ‘ability’ spaces are partially ordered with respect to, for instance, coordinate‐wise vector‐ordering or set‐inclusion, respectively.