IVR Test & Survey: A computer program to collect data via computerized telephonic applications

Several studies have demonstrated the advantages of using interactive voice response (IVR) technology to collect self-report data from research participants and recipients of psychological/medical services. IVR allows participants to phone a computer and respond to recorded questions by pressing the appropriate touch-tone keys on their telephone. Because this technology offers substantial benefits in terms of cost and efficiency, it is surprising that it has not been more widely utilized by researchers and practitioners. Along with the automation of the administration and scoring of tests or surveys, IVR provides for questioning to be adapted to the participants’ responses. One possible explanation for the failure to exploit this technology is the absence of easy-to-use software that does not require programming knowledge. This article describes IVR Test & Survey, a program to facilitate the administration, scoring, and analysis of information collected with the use of IVR technology.     

On becoming neutral: effects of experimental neutralizing reconsidered

Behaviour Research and Therapy 34 (1996) 889–898 found that writing out a negative thought produced anxiety and an urge to neutralize the thought, that instructing participants to neutralize the thought reduced anxiety/neutralization urge in the short run (i.e. within 2 min), but that in the control group 20 min without instruction was attended by the same reduction in anxiety/urge to neutralize (“natural decay”). The observations were made with pariticipants who scored high on “thought action fusion” and the experiment was set up as exerimental model of obsessions. We repeated the study with participants that were not selected on thought action fusion. All the findings reported by Behaviour Research and Therapy 34 (1996) 889–898 were replicated. Correlational analysis indicated that the strength of the effect was not related to scores on scales measuring “thought action fusion”. Behaviour Research and Therapy 34 (1996) 889–898 did not assess whether non-neutralizing was followed by immediate reductions in distress. We did assess this and found that the larger part of the immediate reduction of distress after neutralization also occurs when no neutralization instruction is given. The effects of neutralization instructions in the present type of experiment are considerably less powerful than suggested earlier.     

Religion, Denomination, and Education in The Netherlands: Cognitive and Noncognitive Outcomes After an Era of Secularization

After 1850, The Netherlands developed into a strongly pillarized or denominational society. Starting in 1965, however, a process of secularization and depillarization emerged and the influence of the institutionalized denominations declined greatly. Today, there are indications that the process of secularization has reached its peak. Remarkably enough, such secularization and depillarization has had little influence on the educational system in The Netherlands. In this article, the relations between the religious affiliations of parents, the denominations of the schools attended by their children, and both the cognitive and noncognitive educational achievement of their children are examined. A representative sample of nearly 8,400 kindergarten students from 432 elementary schools is studied. The results show that the denomination of the school does not appear to affect educational results. Effects of the religious affiliation of the parents on the cognitive achievement but not the self-confidence or well-being of their children were found. When the socioethnic background of the students was taken into consideration, however, the observed effects disappeared.     

Reconsidering Absolute Omnipotence

Philosophical debate about the problem of evil derives, in part, from differing definitions of almighty power or omnipotence. Modern atheists such as John McTaggart, J. L. Mackie, Earl Condee, and Danny Goldstick maintain that an omnipotent God must be able to accomplish anything, even if it entails a contradiction. On this account, the Christian God cannot be omnipotent and benevolent, for a benevolent, omnipotent God would have forced free agents to desist from evil and this prevented the introduction of suffering into the world. It does not matter if the idea of creating free agents that were forced to be good entails a contradiction. On this account, a God who is truly omnipotent can perform contradictory feats.
In this paper, I argue that the atheistic tradition is mistaken. In the first place, even an absolutely omnipotent God could, as an act of benevolence, create a world in which there is suffering. In the second place, I argue that the concept of absolute omnipotence is fatally flawed. An absolutely omnipotent God would lack, in a decisive sense, power. He would be weak rather than strong. So the atheist's argument fails when it is evaluated in light of a more rational account of omnipotence and when it is carefully considered on its own terms.     

The functions of freezing in the social interactions of juvenile high‐ and low‐aggressive mice

Selectively bred low‐aggressive mice are frequently observed to freeze on social contact, despite the fact that this behavior was never a direct target of selection. To elucidate this finding, the present research aimed to identify the possible functions freezing may serve in social interactions. It was hypothesized that freezing may modify social interactions through self‐regulatory mechanisms and/or via its modulating effects on the actions of social partners. These hypotheses were evaluated with respect to the sequential changes observed over the course of a 10‐min dyadic test in freezing, social reactivity, and approaches among juvenile (24–30‐day‐old) mice from the NC900 and NC100 high‐ and low‐aggressive lines. Analyses of the patterns of social interactions between subjects and partners revealed two primary results. First, freezing was more than an expression of fear; it also functioned as a regulator of emotional arousal, as suggested by the substantial reduction of reactive behaviors seen in animals that showed high levels of freezing. Second, freezing functioned to facilitate high levels of affiliative social interaction with social partners. The implications of these results for understanding how the differentiation of the NC900 and NC100 occurred within microevolution and development are discussed. Aggr. Behav. 27:463–475, 2001. © 2001 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.     

Can job seekers achieve more through networking? The role of networking intensity,self-efficacy,and proximal benefits

The authors develop and evaluate an online networking intervention, Building Relationships and Improving Opportunities (BRIO), built in conjunction with the networking literature and social cognitive theory (Bandura, 1986, 1999). A field experiment using 491 unemployed job seekers shows that the intervention increases networking intensity, networking self-efficacy, and proximal networking benefits. Further, the intervention generates higher quality reemployment through its positive effects on networking self-efficacy. Individuals who completed the intervention and were also lower in extraversion showed the most positive improvements in networking self-efficacy and reemployment quality. The study advances the literature by uncovering the mechanisms through which a networking intervention may result in improved reemployment success, and demonstrating the moderating role of individual differences in affecting intervention outcomes. The study helps practice by providing a publicly available, research-based training to improve job search networking.