Reliability and validity of the Norwegian translation of the Child Eating Disorder Examination (ChEDE)

Frampton, I., Wisting, L., Øverås, M., Midtsund, M. & Lask, B. (2011). Reliability and validity of the Norwegian translation of the Child Eating Disorder Examination (ChEDE). Scandinavian Journal of Psychology 52, 196–199. The Child Eating Disorder Examination (ChEDE) is a valid and reliable semi‐structured interview, which measures eating‐disorder specific psychopathology in children and young adolescents. The instrument is an adaptation of version 12.0D of the original Eating Disorder Examination (EDE 12.0) for adults. The Norwegian translation of the ChEDE is currently the only instrument for assessing eating disorder psychopathology in Norwegian children and adolescents. This study aimed to investigate the psychometric properties of the Norwegian translation of the ChEDE 12.0. The Norwegian version of ChEDE 12.0 was administered to 15 Norwegian children with anorexia nervosa (AN), 15 children with diabetes mellitus type 1 (DM) and two groups of 15 age‐matched controls. The groups were compared using a matched pairs design. The results showed that the subscale scores of the AN group were significantly higher than those of the other groups, and the DM comparison group did not differ from its control group. The current AN group scored significantly higher on the Shape Concern subscale than the previous UK sample, with implications for construct validity or cross‐cultural effects worthy of further study. Inter‐rater reliability was generally high (r = 0.91 to 1.00), although there were significant differences between raters on specific items for individual participants. Alpha coefficients for each of the ChEDE subscales indicated a high degree of internal consistency. It was concluded that the Norwegian version of the ChEDE 12 has adequate psychometric properties and can be recommended for clinical and research use with young people with eating disorders in Norway.     

DEVELOPMENT OF MULTIPLE JOB PERFORMANCE MEASURES IN A REPRESENTATIVE SAMPLE OF JOBS

The goal of criterion development in Project A was to construct multiple measures of the major components of job performance such that the total performance domain for a representative sample of the population of entry-level enlisted positions in the U.S. Army was covered. These measures were to be used as criteria against which to validate both experimental and existing predictors of job performance. The initial model specified that performance is multidimensional within two major categories of dimensions designated as organization-wide and job specific. The development strategy involved describing the total domain of job content via extensive task analyses and critical incident analyses, generating the critical performance dimensions that constitute it, constructing measures for each dimension, and evaluating each measure using expert judgment and field test data. The specific measures developed consisted of rating scales, tests of job knowledge, hands-on job samples, and archival records. The major steps in the job analyses, content sampling, instrument construction, and instrument evaluation are described, and the final array of criterion measures is presented.     

Characteristics of on Organizational Environment which Stimulate and Inhibit Creativity*

The study investigated the characteristics of Brazilian organizations which affect creativity. A sample of 25 workers were interviewed. The respondents answered several questions about the characteristics of a work environment which promote and inhibit creativity, and about factors in their own work environment that contribute to the promotion or inhibition of creativity. Content analysis of the transcribed interviews indicated 10 categories of stimulants and 11 categories of obstacles to creativity. Among the most mentioned stimulant factors to creativity were organization support, organization structure, support from the boss, and colleagues' support. On the other hand, some of the most prevalent obstacles to creativity were organization structure, boss characteristics, personal relationships, and organization culture. Results are discussed in terms of the similarity with data obtained in other contexts.     

Do Health Care Workplaces Affect Treatment Environments?

Previous research has demonstrated that characteristics of the health care workplace influence staff outcomes such as morale and burnout, but the potential effect of health care workplaces on the treatment environment has been little studied. Building on a model proposed by Schaefer and Moos (1993), we propose that the workplace factors of supervisory work environment (e.g. support from supervisors, managerial control) and programme philosophical orientation (e.g. disease model of addiction, psychosocial learning model of addiction) predict four treatment environment elements: patient autonomy, staff control, staff sensitivity, and patient alienation. Multiple regression analysis of data drawn from a survey (response rate = 86%) of 327 staff members at 15 Veterans Affairs (VA) inpatient substance abuse treatment programmes revealed that greater managerial control over staff predicted greater patient alienation, lower staff sensitivity towards patients, and greater staff control over patients. Stronger disease model programme orientations predicted less patient alienation and greater staff sensitivity, whereas stronger psychosocial model programme orientations predicted less staff control. These results suggest that health care workplaces may influence treatment environments. Implications for further research and practice are discussed. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

NON-DISCURSIVE EXPRESSIVE ELEMENTS AND THEIR ROLE IN THE CONSTRUCTION OF MEANING IN THE ANALYTICAL SITUATION

The author discusses the role of non‐discursive expressive elements in the construction of the analytical situation, using three examples to illustrate the problems with which he is concerned. His claim is that the issue in question necessarily involves the subject of affects, and he proceeds to discuss the difficulties associated with this subject. In addition, he considers the contributions of Green and Imbasciati, and Kleinian developments of this theme, including also the contributions of Bion—in particular the latter's theories concerning thought, in which emotion comes to assume an essential place in the origin of thinking. The author resumes the discussion by taking up his clinical examples, using them to put forward the view that non‐discursive expressive elements may well play a decisive role in the construction of meaning in the analytical situation. He suggests also that the meaning of an emotional experience may be thought of as a construction contributed to by a number of symbolic forms which both interfere with and interact with the symbolic system of language. Following examination of his third example, the author reflects on ‘musicality’, a notion sometimes referred to informally in clinical data in connection with the ‘emotional climate’ of the session. He proposes that the complex problem of meaning in music be extended to cover the construction of meaning in the psychoanalytic setting, and in so doing returns to ideas put forward by Suzanne Langer. His underlying view here is that essential elements of the musical phenomenon and essential elements of particular forms of emotional life give rise to the same emotional matrices—perhaps to what Meltzer calls ‘musical deep grammar’. Finally, the author considers various symbolic forms that contribute to the particular configuration of analytical situations, suggesting that the mental condition of ‘free‐floating attention’ requires the broad availability to the analyst's mind of a multiplicity of symbolic forms, his conversion of these into new expressions of meaning, and the possibility of their verbal communication by him to the patient.     

Perception of Occupational Gender Typing: A Replication on European Samples of Shinar's (1975) and Beggs and Doolittle's (1993) Studies1

College students' perceptions of the gender typing of 129 occupations were gathered from Spanish and French samples and compared with those reported by Shinar (1975) and Beggs & Doolittle (1993). Questionnaires were completed by 202 females and 158 males. As in the American studies, a continuum of the perception of occupations from feminine to masculine was replicated. The results indicate that (a) general mean ratings are closer to the masculine pole than to the feminine pole of the response scale, (b) European mean ratings are more gender‐neutral than are American mean ratings, (c) linear correlations between all four sets of ratings are very high, and (d) the linear association between French ratings and official employment figures for women in France is high.     

The selectivity of nonmaterial beliefs in interpreting life events

An experimental study addresses the propositions that nonmaterial beliefs, including supernatural powers and transcendental moral laws, function to enhance comprehension of life events, and perform this function selectively. Informal surveys of newspaper articles and two pilot experiments consistently indicated that the beliefs in fate, God, luck, chance, just reward, and just punishment are elicited to explain life events that are difficult to explain in material terms, and are more or less specialized in the life events they explain. In a final experiment, a sample of U.S. university students (N=103) was presented with 12 life event cases designed to match the belief specializations and asked to interpret freely. Analysis of the reliably coded spontaneous comments confirmed both predictions. In addition, subjects who personally held a given nonmaterial belief used it more selectively than those who did not. Finally, employing the same design and measures, a sample from North India replicated the major U.S. findings. © 1997 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Psychological Battle for Control: A Qualitative Study of Health-care Professionals' Understandings of the Treatment of Anorexia Nervosa

This paper reports a qualitative, idiographic study, which intensively examines a multidisciplinary team of clinicians' subjective understandings and experiences of treating young people with anorexia nervosa. The study employs semi-structured interviews and interpretative phenomenological analysis, these methods enabling individual clinicians' perspectives to be explored in depth and retained within the analysis. The analysis focuses on the salient higher-order theme of control which emerges as central to understanding the treatment of the anorexic child. Three control-related themes are used to illustrate the multiplicity of meanings and experiences which are relevant to this team of health-care professionals. It is suggested that this paper makes three important contributions to the current eating disorder literature: illuminating the multi-faceted nature of the construct control; highlighting the importance of therapists' subjective understandings and experiences; and illustrating the value of qualitative methods for clinically relevant research. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Mapping European social psychology: Co-word analysis of the communications at the 10th General Meeting of the EAESP

This study aims to provide a picture of the present European research topics in Social Psychology, using the 339 papers presented at the 1993 General Meeting of the EAESP. The most frequent themes of research are analysed and the structure of the association of those themes are described in a two-factor structure. The first factor differentiates research in terms of level of analysis and the second factor contrasts types of applied research.     

Effects of Playing Violent Computer Games on Emotional Desensitization and Aggressive Behavior1

This study analyzed the effects of playing a violent computer game on emotional desensitization and aggressive behavior. College students (N = 58) were randomly assigned to play a violent game (VG) or a nonviolent game (NVG), and then were exposed to a set of emotional pictures. Participants' physiological responses were recorded, and the Self‐Assessment Manikin scale was used to assess affective valence and arousal while viewing the pictures. Participants were then asked to replay the game, after which aggressive behavior was measured. Participants' violent game habits (VGH) were also measured. We found that VG playing interacted with participants' VGH to influence aggression, and that self‐reported valence mediated this effect by lowering the feelings of pleasure and displeasure toward emotional stimuli.