Meaning in Life: A Qualitative Inquiry into the Life of Young Adults

The present study explores the relationship of meaning in life with subjective well-being among a sample of young adults launching their career. Using a qualitative approach, ten young adults were asked to share their life experiences using a semi structured interview schedule. A grounded theory analysis revealed that happiness forms a core concern for an individual where it depends not only on the cultural norm involving an individual where social relationships form an important part, but also goals and aims (s) he/she wishes to achieve in life. It exists in temporality but is impacted by the larger dimension of meaning in life which is relatively stable and covers a huge expanse of an individual’s existence. Finding a meaning in life involves both personal goals such as self growth and attainment of peace, and also professional goals like fulfillment of one’s academic aim. Meaning in life is also seen as being impacted by an individual’s past happenings, belief in self- worth and social responsibility.     

Therapy Process: A Reflective Account from Therapist’s Perspective

A case report is presented providing an account of therapy process and describing the therapist’s reflection on the process of therapy. It draws attention to the course of building hypothesis and clinical formulation, the core nucleus of any therapy. The paper highlights the change in therapy goals in different phases of therapy with the introduction of new information. It also underlines the fact that hypotheses in the formulation need to be constantly updated and checked against the ever changing information as therapy progresses. The importance of single case design is invaluable in the presentation of therapy process as it is more closer to clinical practice then group experimental design. Although attention to therapy process issues is important and there is no dearth of clinical material in India but there are very few published studies reporting therapy process using single case design. In the present paper, an attempt has been made to provide the account of therapy process and to share the reflections on the process of building hypothesis & formulation.     

Encounters with the Universal and Cultural in Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy

The role played by socio-cultural factors in psychoanalytic psychotherapy from the vantage point of both the client and the therapist is elucidated. The position conferred upon culture throughout the history of psychoanalysis from classical to contemporary perspectives is briefly reviewed with special reference to the practice of psychoanalysis in India. A case study having relevance to the present theme is discussed where ignorance of factors salient to Indian culture adversely affected the outcome. Attention is given to internal and external pressures that prompted the therapist to take the stand. It is argued that the therapist may tread the difficult path between cultural universalism and cultural relativism rather than committing to either of them in order to do justice to psychoanalytical clinical work.     

The <Emphasis Type="Italic">K</Emphasis>-INDSCAL Model for Heterogeneous Three-Way Dissimilarity Data

A weighted Euclidean distance model for analyzing three-way dissimilarity data (stimuli by stimuli by subjects) for heterogeneous subjects is proposed. First, it is shown that INDSCAL may fail to identify a common space representative of the observed data structure in presence of heterogeneity. A new model that removes the rotational invariance of the classical multidimensional scaling problem and specifies K common homogeneous spaces is proposed. The model, called mixture INDSCAL in K classes, or briefly K-INDSCAL, still includes individual saliencies. However, the large number of parameters in K-INDSCAL may produce instability of the estimates and therefore a parsimonious model will also be discussed. The parameters of the model are estimated in a least-squares fitting context and an efficient coordinate descent algorithm is given. The usefulness of K-INDSCAL is demonstrated by both artificial and real data analyses.     

Cohen’s Linearly Weighted Kappa is a Weighted Average of 2×2 Kappas

An agreement table with n∈ℕ_≥3 ordered categories can be collapsed into n−1 distinct 2×2 tables by combining adjacent categories. Vanbelle and Albert (Stat. Methodol. 6:157–163, 2009c) showed that the components of Cohen’s weighted kappa with linear weights can be obtained from these n−1 collapsed 2×2 tables. In this paper we consider several consequences of this result. One is that the weighted kappa with linear weights can be interpreted as a weighted arithmetic mean of the kappas corresponding to the 2×2 tables, where the weights are the denominators of the 2×2 kappas. In addition, it is shown that similar results and interpretations hold for linearly weighted kappas for multiple raters.     

Factor Analysis via Components Analysis

When the factor analysis model holds, component loadings are linear combinations of factor loadings, and vice versa. This interrelation permits us to define new optimization criteria and estimation methods for exploratory factor analysis. Although this article is primarily conceptual in nature, an illustrative example and a small simulation show the methodology to be promising.     

A Sandwich-Type Standard Error Estimator of SEM Models with Multivariate Time Series

Structural equation models are increasingly used as a modeling tool for multivariate time series data in the social and behavioral sciences. Standard error estimators of SEM models, originally developed for independent data, require modifications to accommodate the fact that time series data are inherently dependent. In this article, we extend a sandwich-type standard error estimator of independent data to multivariate time series data. One required element of this estimator is the asymptotic covariance matrix of concurrent and lagged correlations among manifest variables, whose closed-form expression has not been presented in the literature. The performance of the adapted sandwich-type standard error estimator is evaluated using a simulation study and further illustrated using an empirical example.