Personality and emotional intelligence in teacher burnout

This paper aims to investigate the relationship between teacher's personality types, emotional intelligence and burnout and to predict the burnout levels of 147 teachers in the city of Mashhad (Iran). To this end, we have used three inventories: Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI), NEO Five Factor Inventory (NEO-FFI), and Emotional Quotient Inventory (EQ-I). We used Homogeneity Analysis and Multiple Linear Regression to analyze the data. The results exhibited a significant relationship between personality types and emotional intelligence and the three dimensions of burnout. It was indicated that the best predictors for emotional exhaustion were neuroticism and extroversion, for depersonalization were intrapersonal scale of emotional intelligence and agreeableness, and for personal accomplishment were interpersonal scale and conscientiousness. Finally, the results were discussed in the context of teacher burnout.     

Forgiveness, Empathy and Gender—A Malaysian Perspective

Recent theorising has suggested that in non-Western collectivist contexts, the need for social harmony may play a greater role than empathy in motivating forgiveness, and that women may be more impacted than men by this cultural value. In this study, a sample of 233 Malaysian undergraduate students, 100 males and 133 females, recruited from four English-mediated universities completed the Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI) and the Transgression-Related Interpersonal Motivations Inventory-12 (TRIM-12) to assess dimensions of empathy and forgiveness. Women exhibited greater empathic concern than men, but not greater perspective-taking. Men were less forgiving in terms of revenge-seeking behaviour, but men and women did not differ in avoidance of transgressors. The relationships between empathic concern and both facets of forgiveness were similar for men and women, as was the relationship between empathic concern and avoidance. However, the relationship between perspective-taking and avoidance was stronger among men than women. We found little support for the prediction that in this collectivist cultural context, perspective-taking would play a greater role than empathic concern in forgiveness. Further research is recommended to explore empathy and forgiveness in non-Western populations, with a need to take into account cultural factors.     

National Ambulatory Medical Care Survey: Tobacco intervention practices in outpatient clinics

Tobacco use remains the leading cause of preventable death. The outpatient medical clinic represents an important venue for delivering evidence-based interventions to large numbers of tobacco users. Extensive evidence supports the effectiveness of brief interventions. In a retrospective database analysis of 11,827 adult patients captured in the 2005 National Ambulatory Medical Care Survey (of which 2,420 were tobacco users), we examined the degree to which a variety of patient demographic, clinical and physician-related variables predict the delivery of tobacco counseling during a routine outpatient visit in primary care settings. In 2005, 21.7% of identified tobacco users received a tobacco intervention during their visit. The probability of receiving an intervention differed by gender, geographic region and source of payment. Individuals presenting with tobacco-related health conditions were more likely to receive an intervention. Most physicians classified as specialists were less likely to intervene. The provision of tobacco intervention services appears to be increasing at a modest rate, but remains well below desirable levels. It is a priority that brief interventions be routinely implemented to reduce the societal burden of tobacco use. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved).     

Impact of Religious Activities on Quality of Life and Cognitive Function Among Elderly

Journal of Religion and Health - Religiosity and spirituality have previously been found to have significant effects on mental and physical health. This study aimed to compare...     

Sex Reassignment Technology: The Dilemma of Transsexuals in Islam and Christianity

The birth of people with confused or ambiguous sex makeup as a biological fact since the annals of history has posed the challenge of accommodating them within the binary gender of sociocultural systems. In this process, the role of religion as a defining factor in social engineering has been paramount. Major religions, such as Islam and Christianity, have addressed this issue within the frame of their God-ordained laws by devising a set of moral and legal imperatives specific to the “third gender.” Modern developments in medicine and biology, however, have made sex reassignment possible for this category of people, today called transsexuals. The question is: How do Islam and Christianity respond to it. After presenting an analytical view of both Muslim scholars and Christian religious authorities on the legitimacy of sex reassignment for transsexuals, this paper attempts to explore if such a dilemma can be resolved.     

Islamic Education and the UK Muslims: Options and Expectations in a Context of Multi-locationality

The article will discuss Islamic philosophy of education to explain the role and aims of education for the Muslim Ummah (Community). It will then debate the needs of the UK Muslims with regard to the education of their children in the context of multi-locationality, and associated challenges of bringing up children while living between two different ‘ways of life’. How their concerns shape their expectations from education in the UK and their educational choices, will be argued while drawing on relevant literature and research, followed by some suggestions to inform future policy regarding education of the UK Muslims.     

Examining the Internal Consistency Reliability and Construct Validity of the Authentic Happiness Inventory (AHI) among Iranian EFL Learners

Unlike other measures of happiness that have tended to capture current levels of happiness, the Authentic Happiness Inventory (AHI) (Peterson, 2005; Seligman et al. in The American Psychologist 60:410–421, 2005) assesses changes in happiness based on the creation of positive emotions (the pleasant life), engagement in activities that facilitate the utilization of one’s strengths (the engaged life), and serving a more worthwhile purpose than merely the self’s pleasures (the meaningful life). Nonetheless, there is little published data regarding the construct validation of the AHI. The present study, which is part of a larger research project in assessing the effectiveness of integrating happiness intervention programs in the foreign language teaching curriculum at private English institutes and universities in Iran, attempts an examination of the psychometric quality and the construct validation of the Persian version of AHI (hereafter AHI-PV) using data collected from 234 Iranian learners of English as a Foreign Language (EFL), mainly through employing the Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA). The AHI was translated into Persian to ensure item comprehension by the Iranian participants. The results show that the AHI-PV enjoys a high internal consistency (alpha?=?.93). Further, having determined a ‘marvelous’ factorability of the present sample through the Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO) test of Sampling Adequacy (.94) and Bartlett’s Test of Sphericity (p?Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and the Scree test indicated that, in contrast to earlier findings, a four-factor solution provides a more parsimonious grouping of the items in the inventory. Having analyzed the items on the scale, we labeled the four factors as ‘Meaningful and Purposeful Life’, ‘Pleasures and Positive Emotions’, ‘Engagement in Life Activities’, and ‘Interpersonal Connectedness’, hence the alignment of these new factors to Seligman’s (2002) conceptualization of authentic happiness.     

Capability development in knowledge intensive IT enabled services

Most of the call centre literature discusses cases where the customer support task is routine and low in complexity. Call centres are considered to be modern equivalents of factory sweatshops in this literature. Technical support, however, is an example of a knowledge intensive support service. The article presents a case study of a call centre providing remote technical support and illustrates the nature of capabilities required for consistent service performance. The practices adopted at this technical support call centre do not confirm to the sweatshop stereotype mentioned in the literature.     

Attentional disengagement deficit in nondemented elderly over 75 years of age

Healthy older adults in the age range of 60-75 years are moderately deficient in visuospatial attention when central location cues are used to shift attention, but not when peripheral cues are used. In contrast, older adults with dementia of the Alzheimer's type (DAT) exhibit an attention shifting (disengagement) deficit for both central and peripheral cues. If the effects of dementia and normal aging on visuospatial attention differ qualitatively, then peripherally cued shifts of attention should be unaffected even in very old nondemented persons. to examine this possibility, subjects in six age groups (17-24, 35-44, 45-54, 55-64, 65-74, and 75-85 years) were tested on a visuospatial attention task. Valid, invalid and neutral location cues preceded a letter target requiring, in separate conditions, either speeded detection or discrimination. Combined costs and benefits of cue validity on reaction time (RT) increased with age in the discrimination but not in the detection task. the oldest group (75-85) showed significantly larger RT costs and benefits than the next oldest group (65-74), for both central and peripheral cues. the 75-85 year-olds were significantly slower than the 65-75 year-olds on invalid trials (costs) but not on valid trials (benefits), pointing to a disengagement deficit, as reported previously for patients with either parietal lobe damage or DAT. the results suggest that in healthy nondemented subjects of advanced age (over 75 years), visuospatial attention is affected similarly to younger patients in the early, mild stages of Alzheimer's disease.