FOCUSING ON PARTICIPANTS

This article presents a model developed and assessed by a women's health research team to enhance sensitivity and increase readability of a survey to be used with community-based women. The survey consisted of quantitative measures of AIDS-related attitudes and behaviors, developed and used with traditional-aged college populations, and included questions of a highly personal nature. In Study 1, 30 women with English reading levels of third grade and above from two targeted community populations completed a survey in two waves of focus groups and gave feedback about readability, length, format, content, emotional responses, truthfulness in responding, and opinions about the research. Problem areas and changes that made the survey more readable, understandable, emotionally sensitive, and effective are reviewed. In Study 2, pre- and postmodification versions of nine scales are compared in 430 traditional-aged college women (pre) and 793 community-based women (post), the latter broken into subsamples for more refined comparisons. Results of five psychometric analyses demonstrate that psychometric integrity does not have to be hurt by such changes. In addition, this process illustrates how researchers can gain a better understanding of participants and their reactions to the research process through qualitative research methods.     

Processing fearful and neutral sentences: Memory and heart rate change

Abstract

Thirty college student subjects were instructed to process fearful or neutral sentences on cue. Cue tones were presented randomly within a repetitive series of non-signal tones (1 every 6sec). A change in tone frequency (higher or lower) was the signal to recall either the fearful or the neutral member of a previously memorised sentence pair. At the first signal for retrieval, and depending on group assignment, subjects engaged in one of three text processing tasks: null task (i.e. subjects were told not to process the sentence at this first cue), silent articulation of the sentence, or imagery of the text content. A second retrieval signal followed the first, at which time all subjects did the imagery task. Fearful sentences resulted in greater heart rate acceleration than neutral sentences. This affective discrimination was greatest for imagery (during both processing periods), but it was also apparent during articulation, and even to some extent during null sentence processing. This result was interpreted as evidence of spread of activation from language propositions to response propositions, consistent with the associative network structure of fear described in bio-information processing theory.     

光孝寺药师佛像拓片考

1995年,商承祚先生的亲属向深圳博物馆捐赠了一幅药师佛像拓片。入馆之际,拓片已装裱为立轴,纸本纸裱,画心为一药师立佛拓片,左侧有其像座圆式铭文。铭文云:"大康六年八月十六日东作使张扬刺生得小男师留此上铸药师佛父见在法界有情生生见佛世世闻法道心坚固乃至菩提不墯恶趣。     

民间寺庙与中国宗教经济——对宗教经济理论的探讨

国外宗教经济理论能否适用于中国宗教研究备受关注。香港城市大学梁景文教授及罗斯教授等对此问题也做出了回应。从1980年代后期到2004年,他们对广东和浙江八座黄大仙庙进行了研究,并得出结论:中国的寺庙在吸引信众方面存在竞争,并在宗教经济中扮演积极的角色。在最成功的新寺庙中,管理者制定了选址、推销、推广、革新和公共活动等一系列战略决策,以增加他们寺庙的吸引力。宗教经济模型能够有效地用来研究中国社会中的民间寺庙。