Measuring the Contribution of Independent Christian Secondary Schools to Students' Religious,Personal, and Social Values

From the late 1960s independent Christian schools have emerged in England and Wales, initiated either by churches or by parents. Many of these new independent schools are linked through the Christian Schools Trust. The impact that these schools are exerting on their students may be of interest for the churches with which they are associated and of concern for wider society. The political debate concerning these schools has so far been informed by only a small number of empirical studies conducted in England and Wales. The present study extends previous research in three ways. It offers a comparative study by examining the responses of 271 year-nine and year-ten students (age 13 to 15 years) from 11 independent Christian schools with 20,348 students from 93 schools without a religious foundation. It examines a range of religious, social and personal values. It employs multilevel models to identify the contribution made by independent Christian schools after taking into account personal, psychological, and contextual differences within the students themselves. The hypothesis was that Christian schools were committed to developing distinctly Christian values among their students. The data supported this hypothesis. Even after allowing for differences in the religiosity of the students themselves, attendance at an independent Christian school was associated with higher self-esteem, greater rejection of drug use, lower endorsing of illegal behaviors, lower racism, higher levels of conservative Christian belief, and more conservative views on sexual morality (abortion, contraception, divorce, homosexuality, and sex outside marriage).     

How Best to Treat Deployment-Related Guilt and Shame: Commentary on Smith,Duax, and Rauch (2013)

We comment on Smith, Duax, and Rauch’s (2013--this issue) explication of their approach to treating perpetration-related guilt and shame using prolonged exposure (PE) therapy, with the aim of promoting a discourse about the mechanisms, techniques, and assumptions that underlie the treatment of moral injury in veterans and service members. We first discuss the theoretical foundation underlying PE and consider the extent to which it accounts for the phenomenology of moral injury. We then examine the treatment strategies used in the PE approach and the mechanisms by which these techniques ameliorate perpetration-related guilt and shame. We also briefly highlight points of similarity and contrast between PE and adaptive disclosure, a brief cognitive behavioral intervention targeting combat-related moral injury and traumatic loss.     

Women Court-Ordered for Domestic Violence: Improvements in Depression

A quasi-experimental design was employed to compare depression at intake and completion of a sample of primarily Latina women court-ordered to a batterer intervention program. Data were derived from the intake assessments of 112 women over 24 months. Overwhelmingly, women reported being abused by their current and former partners. Approximately 58% of the women in this sample were depressed at intake. When culturally competent, gender-appropriate treatment is given to court-ordered women, depression symptomatology may decrease to levels of normal functioning. Further research is needed to understand court-ordered women as well as how to meet their unique needs.     

Does intra-individual change predict offender recidivism? Searching for the Holy Grail in assessing offender change

Offender rehabilitation effectively reduces recidivism for treatment groups compared to control groups, but there is less evidence demonstrating that intra-individual changes are related to reductions in risk. We review and critique academic and government literature linking individual change scores to recidivism, focusing on three key treatment domains: cognition, violence, and substance misuse. Database searches identified 378 studies measuring change, but only 53 studies yielding 49 explicit tests of the relationship between intra-individual change scores and recidivism outcome. Of the 49 available tests, 26 effect sizes (53.1%) were significant, ranging from small (d = 0.06) to large (d = 1.48). Across all domains, change variables significantly related to recidivism included known dynamic risk factors: antisocial attitudes, antisocial beliefs, antisocial associates, antisocial personality, social support, and substance misuse. Two additional findings centered on changes in negative emotion and successful treatment process. This review further suggests there is a need to utilize better measurement strategies and more sophisticated constructs. Additional practical, theoretical, and methodological implications are discussed.     

Introducing the New Indices of Religious Orientation (NIRO): Conceptualization and measurement

The notion of religious orientation as proposed by Allport and refined by Batson has provided a useful tool for identifying and discussing individual differences in religiosity within Christian and post-Christian contexts. The present paper accepts the conceptual and empirical usefulness of distinctions between the three constructs of intrinsic, extrinsic, and quest religious orientations; reviews the conceptual and empirical strengths, weaknesses, and limitations of existing measures in this field; and proposes three new indices to assess these orientations. The New Indices of Religious Orientation (NIRO) are designed to be of equal length, to give equal empirical weight to three conceptual components within each construct, and to employ direct and accessible language. Data provided from a sample of 517 undergraduate students in Wales demonstrate the satisfactory psychometric properties of these new indices. A clear distinction is made between the appropriate use and the inappropriate misuse of these indices in future research.     

Psychological types of male and female Bible College students in England

A sample of 278 male and 213 female Bible College students in England completed Form G (Anglicized) of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI). The data demonstrated clear preferences for introversion over extraversion, for sensing over intuition, and for judging over perceiving among both male and female Bible College students. Among females there was also a clear preference for feeling over thinking. The two predominant types among female Bible College students emerged as ISFJ (23%) and ESFJ (17%). The two predominant types among male Bible college students emerged as ISTJ (15%) and ISFJ (13%).     

Clergy work-related satisfactions in parochial ministry: The influence of personality and churchmanship

The aim of this study was to test several hypotheses that clergy work-related satisfaction could be better explained by a multidimensional rather than a unidimensional model. A sample of 1071 male stipendiary parochial clergy in the Church of England completed the Clergy Role Inventory, together with the short-form Revised Eysenck Personality Questionnaire. Factor analysis of the Clergy Role Inventory identified five separate clergy roles: Religious Instruction, Administration, Statutory Duties (conducting marriages and funerals), Pastoral Care, and Role Extension (including extra-parochial activities). Respondents also provided an indication of their predispositions on the catholic–evangelical and liberal–conservative dimensions. The significant associations of the satisfactions derived from each of the roles with the demographic, personality, and churchmanship variables were numerous, varied, and, with few exceptions, small in magnitude. Separate hierarchical regressions for each of the five roles indicated that the proportion of total variance explained by churchmanship was, in general, at least as great as that explained by personality, and was greater for three roles: Religious Instruction, Statutory Duties, and Role Extension. It was concluded that clergy satisfactions derived from different roles are not uniform and that churchmanship is at least as important as personality in accounting for clergy work satisfaction.     

Positive and negative affect,depression, and cognitive processes in the Cognition in the Study of Tamoxifen and Raloxifene (Co-STAR) Trial

ABSTRACT

Objectives: This study examined the relationship between positive and negative affect, depressive symptoms, and cognitive performance. Methods: The sample consisted of 1479 non-demented, postmenopausal women (mean age = 67 years) at increased risk of breast cancer enrolled in the National Surgical Adjuvant Breast and Bowel Project’s Study of Tamoxifen and Raloxifene. At each annual visit, women completed a standardized neuropsychological battery and self-report measures of affect and depression. Data from three visits were used in linear mixed models for repeated measures using likelihood ratio tests. Separate analyses were performed to relate positive/negative affect and depression to each cognitive measure. Results: Higher positive affect was associated with better letter fluency (p = .006) and category fluency (p < .0001). Higher negative affect was associated with worse global cognitive function (p < .0001), verbal memory (CVLT List B; p = .002), and spatial ability (p < .0001). Depressive symptoms were negatively associated with verbal knowledge (p = .004), figural memory (p < .0001), and verbal memory (p’s ≤ .0001). Discussion: Findings are consistent with some prior research demonstrating a link between positive affect and increased verbal fluency and between depressive symptoms and decreased memory. The most novel finding shows that negative affect is related to decreased global cognition and visuospatial ability. Overall, this research in a large, longitudinal sample supports the notion that positive affect is related to increases and negative affect to decreases in performance on distinct cognitive measures.