Religious Involvement Measurement Model in a National Sample of African Americans

This study examined the factor structure of a brief measure of religious involvement developed previously in research with African American women. Telephone interview methods were used with a national sample of both African American women and men (N = 2,370). Confirmatory factor analyses supported the distinction between religious beliefs and religious behaviors factors and indicated that the factor loadings were equivalent for women and men. Women reported higher levels of religious involvement than men. These results support the validity of this relatively brief instrument for assessing these two dimensions of religious involvement for both African American women and men.     

Measurement Equivalence Across Racial/Ethnic Groups of the Mood and Feelings Questionnaire for Childhood Depression

As research continues to document differences in the prevalence of mental health problems such as depression across racial/ethnic groups, the issue of measurement equivalence becomes increasingly important to address. The Mood and Feelings Questionnaire (MFQ) is a widely used screening tool for child and adolescent depression. This study applied a differential item functioning (DIF) framework to data from a sample of 6th and 8th grade students in the Seattle Public School District (N = 3,593) to investigate the measurement equivalence of the MFQ. Several items in the MFQ were found to have DIF, but this DIF was associated with negligible individual- or group-level impact. These results suggest that differences in MFQ scores across groups are unlikely to be caused by measurement non-equivalence.     

Introduction: the human sciences and Cold War America

Studies of the history of the human sciences during the Cold War era have proliferated over the past decade--in JHBS and elsewhere. This special issue focuses on the connections between the behavioral sciences and the culture and politics of the Cold War in the United States. In the recent literature, there is a tendency to identify the Cold War human sciences with two main paradigms: that of psychocultural analysis, on the one hand, and of the systems sciences, on the other. The essays in the special issue both extend understanding of each of these interpretive frameworks and help us to grasp their interconnection.     

Helping Parents Cope with Suicide Threats: An Approach Based on Nonviolent Resistance

Parent training in nonviolent resistance was adapted to deal with situations of suicide threat by children, adolescents, and young adults. The approach aims at reducing the risk potential and the mutual distress surrounding the threat‐interaction. Parent training in nonviolent resistance has been shown to help parents move from helplessness to presence, from isolation to connectedness, from submission to resistance, from escalation to self‐control, and from mutual distancing and hostility to care and support. Those emphases can be crucial for the diminution of suicide risk. Parents show good ability to implement the approach and report gains on various areas over and beyond the reduction in suicide threat. A particular advantage is that the method can be used also in cases where the young person threatening suicide is not willing to cooperate.     

A temporally distinct role for group I and group II metabotropic glutamate receptors in object recognition memory

Recognition memory, involving the ability to discriminate between a novel and familiar object, depends on the integrity of the perirhinal cortex (PRH). Glutamate, the main excitatory neurotransmitter in the cortex, is essential for many types of memory processes. Of the subtypes of glutamate receptor, metabotropic receptors (mGluRs) have received less study than NMDA receptors; thus, the reported experiments examined the role of mGluRs in familiarity discrimination in the rat PRH. Experiments 1 and 2 assessed the effects of systemic administration of MPEP, a group I mGluR (specifically mGluR5) antagonist, and/or LY341495, a group II mGluR antagonist, on a spontaneous object novelty preference task. Simultaneous antagonism of both group I and II mGluRs impaired familiarity discrimination following a 24-h but not a 15-min delay, while antagonism of either mGluR subtype alone had no effect at either delay. The impairment was in acquisition, as in Experiment 3 coadministration of MPEP and LY341495 did not affect recognition memory performance when administered either after the sample phase or prior to test. The impairment in long-term recognition memory was mediated by mGluRs in the PRH, as localized intracortical antagonism of group I and II mGluRs also produced a deficit (Experiment 4). No evidence was found for an involvement of group III mGluRs in the acquisition of long-term familiarity discrimination (Experiment 5). These findings establish that glutamatergic neurotransmission in the PRH via group I and II mGluRs is crucial for the acquisition, but not for the consolidation or retrieval of long-term object recognition memory.     

College students’ perceptions of calling in work and life: A qualitative analysis

This study examined open-ended responses from 295 college students to questions regarding how they define the construct of calling, how having a calling influences their career development, and the extent to which the term “calling” may apply to areas of life other than work. Results indicated that students perceived a calling as originating from guiding forces, co-occurring with unique fit and well-being, having altruistic features, and extending to multiple life roles. These results largely support recent conceptualizations of calling in the career development literature, and suggest themes to explore in counseling with clients who desire to approach work as a calling.     

Probability logic,logical probability,and inductive support

This paper seeks to defend the following conclusions: The program advanced by Carnap and other necessarians for probability logic has little to recommend it except for one important point. Credal probability judgments ought to be adapted to changes in evidence or states of full belief in a principled manner in conformity with the inquirer’s confirmational commitments—except when the inquirer has good reason to modify his or her confirmational commitment. Probability logic ought to spell out the constraints on rationally coherent confirmational commitments. In the case where credal judgments are numerically determinate confirmational commitments correspond to Carnap’s credibility functions mathematically represented by so—called confirmation functions. Serious investigation of the conditions under which confirmational commitments should be changed ought to be a prime target for critical reflection. The necessarians were mistaken in thinking that confirmational commitments are immune to legitimate modification altogether. But their personalist or subjectivist critics went too far in suggesting that we might dispense with confirmational commitments. There is room for serious reflection on conditions under which changes in confirmational commitments may be brought under critical control. Undertaking such reflection need not become embroiled in the anti inductivism that has characterized the work of Popper, Carnap and Jeffrey and narrowed the focus of students of logical and methodological issues pertaining to inquiry.     

Modeling without representation

How can mathematical models which represent the causal structure of the world incompletely or incorrectly have any scientific value? I argue that this apparent puzzle is an artifact of a realist emphasis on representation in the philosophy of modeling. I offer an alternative, pragmatic methodology of modeling, inspired by classic papers by modelers themselves. The crux of the view is that models developed for purposes other than explanation may be justified without reference to their representational properties.