Sleep-Related Outcomes Following Early Intervention for Childhood Anxiety

A bidirectional relationship between sleep and anxiety is well-established whereby difficulties in one domain predict problems in the other. Interventions for childhood sleep-related problems also share considerable overlap with interventions for anxiety. Although anxious youth report high rates of sleep-related problems, it is relatively unknown whether anxiety-focused interventions for children produce improvements in sleep-related problems. The current study included N = 25 youth ages 7–16 (13 female; mean age 9.92 years ± 2.6) who participated in an early intervention program for anxiety as part of the Arizona Anxiety Resilience Building Project. Child and parent measures of sleep and anxiety symptoms were examined before and after the 12-week cognitive-behavioral intervention program. Statistically significant decreases in total sleep-related problems, bedtime resistance, sleep anxiety, and pre-sleep arousal were observed at post-intervention, though clinically meaningful change was apparent in only a small portion of the sample. Results suggest that purely anxiety-focused interventions may be useful for reducing certain types of sleep-related problems in anxious children, specifically those that occur during the bedtime/pre-sleep period. However, a lack of clinically meaningful change, in addition to post-intervention sleep-related problem scores above the clinical cut-off in a large proportion of the sample, suggest that the sleep-related problems of anxious youth may require direct attention as part of treatment.     

Measuring positive,psychological rewards: The validation of the Intrinsic Work Rewards Scale

This study sought to validate the Intrinsic Work Rewards Scale (IWRS) using a transnational sample. Respondents were 486 non-profit employees from Australia, South Africa and the United States of America (females = 72.0%; managerial/ supervisory job level employees = 57.4%). Data analysis included reliability testing, exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis, and concurrent validity testing with established measures to which the IWRS is theoretically linked. The scores from the IWRS obtained an overall acceptable reliability coefficient of 0.86. Factor analysis confirmed its five factor structure, and correlations indicated that intrinsic rewards are positively related to work engagement, and negatively related to intention to quit. The IWRS appears to yield reliable scores for human resource managers advising in the non-profit employment sector.     

Conceptualizing and Measuring Self-Criticism as Both a Personality Trait and a Personality State

Blatt's (2004 Blatt, S. J. (2004). Experiences of depression: Theoretical, clinical, and research perspectives. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.[Crossref] , [Google Scholar], 2008 Blatt, S. J. (2008). Polarities of experience: Relatedness and self-definition in personality development, psychopathology, and the therapeutic process. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.[Crossref] , [Google Scholar]) conceptualization of self-criticism is consistent with a state–trait model that postulates meaningful variation in self-criticism both between persons (traits) and within person (states). We tested the state–trait model in a 7-day diary study with 99 college student participants. Each evening they completed a 6-item measure of self-criticism, as well as measures of perceived social support, positive and negative affect, compassionate and self-image goals during interactions with others, and interpersonal behavior, including overt self-criticism and given social support. As predicted, self-criticism displayed both trait-like variance between persons and daily fluctuations around individuals' mean scores for the week; slightly more than half of the total variance was between persons (ICC = .56). Numerous associations at both the between-persons and within-person levels were found between self-criticism and the other variables, indicating that individuals' mean levels of self-criticism over the week, and level of self-criticism on a given day relative to their personal mean, were related to their cognitions, affect, interpersonal goals, and behavior. The results supported the construct validity of the daily self-criticism measure. Moreover, the findings were consistent with the state–trait model and with Blatt's theoretical analysis of self-critical personality.     

Linking Item Response Model Parameters

With a few exceptions, the problem of linking item response model parameters from different item calibrations has been conceptualized as an instance of the problem of test equating scores on different test forms. This paper argues, however, that the use of item response models does not require any test score equating. Instead, it involves the necessity of parameter linking due to a fundamental problem inherent in the formal nature of these models—their general lack of identifiability. More specifically, item response model parameters need to be linked to adjust for the different effects of the identifiability restrictions used in separate item calibrations. Our main theorems characterize the formal nature of these linking functions for monotone, continuous response models, derive their specific shapes for different parameterizations of the 3PL model, and show how to identify them from the parameter values of the common items or persons in different linking designs.     

Choosing Assessment Instruments for Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Screening and Outcome Research

Effect‐size results from Erford et al.'s ( 2016 ) meta‐analysis for the treatment of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) were used to compare 6 instruments' usefulness in measuring counseling treatment outcomes. Effect‐size comparisons indicated equivalent overall effect sizes using the Clinician‐Administered PTSD Scale, the Impact of Event Scale–Revised, the Posttraumatic Stress Diagnostic Scale, the PTSD Checklist, and the Structured Interview for PTSD. The Mississippi Scale for Combat‐Related PTSD yielded significantly more conservative (i.e., lower) effect‐size comparisons.     

Religious versus Conventional Internet-based Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Depression

The accessibility and efficacy of two Internet-supported interventions for depression: conventional cognitive behavioral therapy (C-CBT) and religious CBT (R-CBT) were investigated. Depressed participants (N = 79) were randomly assigned to either active treatment or wait-listed control group. Self-report measures of depression, anxiety, and life quality were collected before, immediately after, and 6 months after the intervention. Significant differences among the three conditions emerged at post-intervention with medium to large effect sizes (Cohen’s d between 0.45 and 1.89), but no differences between the R-CBT and C-CBT were found. However, the addition of religious components to CBT contributed to the initial treatment appeal for religious participants, thus increasing the treatment accessibility.     

Additional free reinforcers increase persistence of problem behavior in a clinical context: A partial replication of laboratory findings

Behavioral momentum theory is a quantitative framework used to characterize the persistence of behavior during response disruptors as a function of baseline stimulus–reinforcer relations. Results of several investigations have shown that alternative reinforcement can increase the resistance to change of a target response during extinction. In the present study, concomitant variable‐interval fixed‐time schedules of reinforcement for problem behavior were employed to simulate naturalistic situations involving the superimposition of response‐independent reinforcers on a baseline schedule of reinforcement for problem behavior, as in the common use of noncontingent reinforcement treatments. Resistance to change of problem behavior was assessed during postsession periods of extinction by comparing response rates in extinction following sessions with and without additional reinforcer deliveries arranged by fixed‐time schedules. For 2 out of 3 participants, problem behavior tended to be more resistant to extinction following periods in which additional fixed‐time reinforcers were delivered. These results are discussed in terms of potential effects of noncontingent reinforcement on problem behavior when the intervention is discontinued or implemented without good treatment integrity.     

Cultural and sex differences in aggression: A comparison between Japanese and Spanish students using two different inventories

Two self‐report inventories developed to assess different dimensions of aggression, the Aggression Questionnaire and the EXPAGG, were administered to a sample (N = 400) of men and women undergraduates in two Japanese and Spanish universities. The factor structure of scales was assessed using exploratory factor analysis. Both questionnaires showed high correlations between their respective scales. In both cultures, males reported more physical aggression, verbal aggression, and hostility as well as higher instrumental beliefs, whereas females reported more expressive representation than males. Japanese students reported more physical aggression than their Spanish counterparts, who reported more verbal aggression, hostility, and anger and more expressive representation of aggression. Aggr. Behav. 27:313–322, 2001. © 2001 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.