A measure of perceived pain and tobacco smoking interrelations: pilot validation of the pain and smoking inventory

Mounting evidence indicates that pain can motivate cigarette smoking behavior, smokers have reliably endorsed the use of tobacco to cope with pain, and there is reason to suspect that pain may impede smoking cessation. Smoking-related outcome expectancies are among the best predictors of cigarette consumption and relapse, and the goal of this pilot study was to develop a standardized measure of how tobacco smokers perceive their pain and smoking behavior to be interrelated (i.e. pain as a motivator of smoking, expectancies for smoking as a means of coping with pain, and pain as a barrier to quitting). Participants (N = 75) completed an online survey that was designed to assess interrelations between pain and tobacco smoking. The nine-item Pain and Smoking Inventory (PSI) demonstrated excellent internal consistency (α = .95). As expected, PSI scores were higher among smokers with chronic pain (vs. no pain), and were positively associated with established indices of both pain and tobacco smoking dependence. These results corroborate the notion that smokers can effectively communicate perceptions of interrelations between their pain and smoking behavior. Future research is needed to establish reliability and validity of the PSI among larger, more diverse samples of smokers with varying levels of pain. Future work should also examine PSI scores as predictors of smoking cessation outcomes, and whether PSI data may usefully inform the development of tailored interventions for smokers in pain.     

Causal judgments about empirical information in an interrupted time series design

Empirical information available for causal judgment in everyday life tends to take the form of quasi-experimental designs, lacking control groups, more than the form of contingency information that is usually presented in experiments. Stimuli were presented in which values of an outcome variable for a single individual were recorded over six time periods, and an intervention was introduced between the fifth and sixth time periods. Participants judged whether and how much the intervention affected the outcome. With numerical stimulus information, judgments were higher for a pre-intervention profile in which all values were the same than for pre-intervention profiles with any other kind of trend. With graphical stimulus information, judgments were more sensitive to trends, tending to be higher when an increase after the intervention was preceded by a decreasing series than when it was preceded by an increasing series ending on the same value at the fifth time period. It is suggested that a feature-analytic model, in which the salience of different features of information varies between presentation formats, may provide the best prospect of explaining the results.     

Profiles of career adaptivity and their relations with adaptability,adapting, and adaptation

Career adaptivity is the first factor in a chain of putative effects posited in the career construction theory (CCT): Adaptivity → Adaptability → Adapting → Adaptation. Hitherto, research on adaptivity has chiefly used variable-centered strategies to investigate the independent effects of adaptivity-related traits on adaptability, adapting, and adaptation averaged over all individuals constituting a sample. The present research, comprising two studies, seeks to extend this work by using person-centered analytic strategies to identify distinct profiles of adaptivity based on combinations of the Big-Five personality dimensions. We also examine the associations of profile membership with adaptability, adapting, and adaptation from the CCT perspective. Latent profile analyses revealed that a comparable 3-profile solution, comprising so-called “adaptive ready”, “ordinary”, and “rigid” adaptivity profiles, fit best in both studies using distinct measures of the Big-Five. Furthermore, across both studies, the latent subgroups were found to differ on levels of adaptability measured using two distinct instruments. Adaptability was highest in the “adaptive ready” subgroup followed by the “ordinary” and “rigid” subgroups, respectively. Finally, Study 2 showed that the adaptivity profiles differed with respect to indices of adapting (viz., organized study behaviors) and adaptation (viz., academic and career-choice satisfaction) in line with expectations from the CCT. The present findings constitute the first evidence showing that career adaptivity can be adequately represented via trait interactions. The findings also add to the empirical literature underpinning the CCT. Furthermore, this research is an informative demonstration of the utility of finite mixture analyses.     

Living in Ambiguity: Mission Formation as Living among Counter‐communities

This article has been developed from a short response given to Prof Néstor Míguez's paper, “Mission Formation for Transforming Discipleship” (featured in this issue of IRM) at the Commission for World Mission and Evangelism's Consultation on Mission Formation, held in Matanzas, Cuba, from 10 to 15 September 2016. The article sets out to explore Míguez's concept of living in ambiguity as a call to mission formation to create transformative counter‐communities, which can equip people to live with the struggle of justice promised and justice denied. The paper explores this through a number of lenses. The letter of Jeremiah to the exiles in Jeremiah 29 offers a biblical context for creating communities which are counter to dominant and imperial values. The work of French philosopher Michel Foucault on heterotopias offers a philosophical framework for such communities.