Conceptual clarity in international collaborations: A point of departure for policy-relevant research on discrimination

A workshop was conducted as part of the International Metropolis Conference held in Vienna, Austria in September 2003. The Metropolis Project is meant to facilitate research in the area of migration that can optimally inform policy. In this context, a workshop was conducted with the objective of discussing how policy-relevant research on discrimination could be conducted internationally. Four broad areas were addressed: ‘key stakeholder’ involvement, obtaining ethical and other forms of approval, international, national and local funding opportunities, and qualitative and quantitative methodology and questionnaire development. Viewpoints represented included those of non-governmental organizations, researchers, health professionals, and policy-makers/implementers. Countries represented in the discussions included Australia, Austria, Canada, Germany, Norway, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Key conceptual differences included how best to define discrimination, societal acknowledgement of discrimination, the meaning of ‘race’, ‘racism’, ‘national’, and ‘migrant’, and perceptions of national identity.     

Well-being vocabulary in media language: An analysis of changing word usage in Norwegian newspapers

Well-being is a widely discussed topic in research, policy, and media. This study was aimed at examining usage patterns of core terminology related to well-being in Norwegian newspapers during the past two decades. Specifically, we investigated occurrence across time of 39 words describing well-being facets from four theoretical perspectives: affective approaches, cognitive or life satisfaction approaches, eudaimonic and humanistic approaches, and character strengths. Four major newspapers were selected in order to capture sociocultural and regional variation. Evidence of significant changes in usage frequency was detected for about half of the search terms. Affective words showed variable trends, while usage of words referring to satisfaction declined. The most notable magnitude of change concerned the increase in eudaimonic words related to mastery, motivation, and self-development. Findings suggest that core vocabulary of well-being belongs to a changeable field of linguistic practice. Implications for positive psychology are proposed.     

Social and personal predictors of test anxiety among Norwegian secondary and postsecondary students

Social Psychology of Education - This study examined predictors of test anxiety in a sample of 2528 Norwegian upper-secondary and postsecondary students by means of structural equation modeling....     

Baptism in a Secular Age

In the Western world, the cultural conditions for interpreting and practicing baptism have changed radically in recent decades. An increasing level of religious plurality is one cultural trend that the theology of baptism must take seriously. One option for responding to this challenge is to interpret baptism as a rite of drastic communal transition whereby one enters into the church and leaves the world—with all its plurality—behind. Another option is to view baptism as a rite that, by bringing us into the church's fellowship with God in Christ, draws us into communion with all living creatures and calls upon us to engage in openness toward others.     

The Incredible Years Teacher Classroom Management Programme in Kindergartens: Effects of a Universal Preventive Effort

The purpose of this study was to identify preventive effects of the Incredible Years (IY) teacher classroom management (TCM) programme, which is employed in Norwegian kindergartens for 3-year-old to 6-year-old children. IY TCM is a universal preventive intervention intended to reduce the frequency of inappropriate types of behaviour and support children’s social- and emotional competence in kindergartens and schools. IY TCM was implemented in 46 kindergartens and compared to 46 matched kindergartens that did not receive the intervention. A total of 1049 children took part in the trial, 511 from the IY TCM group and 538 from the comparison group. Children’s behaviours were measured using well-validated instruments at the beginning and end of a school-year cycle, approximately 9 months later. Findings showed promising reductions in aggression, internalising and attention problems, and increases in social competence in the IY TCM kindergartens. In a sub-sample comprising children who scored equal to or above the 90th percentile on aggressive behaviour before the intervention, promising developments were found in social competence among the children in IY TCM kindergartens. The IY TCM lead to promising preventive effects in young children’s aggressive behaviours, internalisation, attention problems, and social competence in kindergartens in Norway. However, even if the changes were statistically significant, effect sizes were small. For children with severe behaviour problems, few positive results were found.     

Conceptualizations of Personality Disorders with the Five Factor Model-count and Empathy Traits

Previous research has long advocated that emotional and behavioral disorders are related to general personality traits, such as the Five Factor Model (FFM). The addition of section III in the latest Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) recommends that extremity in personality traits together with maladaptive interpersonal functioning, such as lack of empathy, are used for identifying psychopathology and particularly personality disorders (PD). The objective of the present study was to measure dispositions for DSM categories based on normal personality continuums, and to conceptualize these with empathy traits. We used a validated FFM-count method based on the five personality factors (neuroticism, extraversion, openness, agreeableness, and conscientiousness), and related these to 4 empathy traits (emphatic concern, perspective-taking, fantasy, and personal distress). The results showed that FFM-based PD scores overall could be conceptualized using only two of the empathy traits, low emphatic concern and high personal distress. Further, specific dispositions for personality disorders were characterized with distinct empathy traits (e.g., histrionic with high fantasy, and paranoid with low perspective-taking). These findings may have both theoretical and practical implications in capturing potential for personality disorders with ease and efficiency.     

Exemplars in the mist: the cognitive substrate of the representativeness heuristic

The idea that people often make probability judgments by a heuristic short-cut, the representativeness heuristic, has been widely influential, but also criticized for being vague. The empirical trademark of the heuristic is characteristic deviations between normative probabilities and judgments (e.g., the conjunction fallacy, base-rate neglect). In this article the authors contrast two hypotheses concerning the cognitive substrate of the representativeness heuristic, the prototype hypothesis (Kahneman & Frederick, 2002) and the exemplar hypothesis (Juslin & Persson, 2002), in a task especially designed to elicit representativeness effects. Computational modelling and an experiment reveal that representativeness effects are evident early in training and persist longer in a more complex task environment and that the data are best accounted for by a model implementing the exemplar hypothesis.     

Self-reported emotional and behavioral problems in Swedish 14 to 15-year-old adolescents: a study with the self-report version of the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire

The psychometric properties of the Swedish self-report version of the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ-s), and the prevalence of emotional and behavioral problems as measured by the SDQ-s, were studied in 14 to 15-year-old adolescents. The psychometric properties were found to be similar to those found in other language versions, in terms of similar factor structure and acceptable test-retest stability, but low internal consistencies for some of the subscales. There was evidence of good convergent and discriminant validity. The results with regard to gender differences replicated previous findings in other countries, the girls reporting more emotional symptoms and more prosocial behavior, and the boys reporting more conduct problems and tending to report more peer problems. It is concluded that the results are in favor of using the Swedish SDQ-s as a screening instrument for adolescents, despite the low internal consistencies of some of its subscales.     

A test of the validity of the motivational interviewing treatment integrity code

To evaluate the Swedish version of the Motivational Interviewing Treatment Code (MITI), MITI coding was applied to tape-recorded counseling sessions. Construct validity was assessed using factor analysis on 120 MITI-coded sessions. Discriminant validity was assessed by comparing MITI coding of motivational interviewing (MI) sessions with information- and advice-giving sessions as well as by comparing MI-trained practitioners with untrained practitioners. A principal-axis factoring analysis yielded some evidence for MITI construct validity. MITI differentiated between practitioners with different levels of MI training as well as between MI practitioners and advice-giving counselors, thus supporting discriminant validity. MITI may be used as a training tool together with supervision to confirm and enhance MI practice in clinical settings. MITI can also serve as a tool for evaluating MI integrity in clinical research.