Engaging religious experience in stroke rehabilitation

In this article, I respond to the problem of engaging with religious experience in health care environments. In particular, I illuminate the relational aspects of religious experience in the context of stroke rehabilitation by providing a commentary on data gathered from existing qualitative research and personal narratives in the acute and rehabilitation phases of stroke recovery. In so doing, I address the necessary balance of empathy and alterity in the art of resonant listening. I also provide some critical reflections on interdisciplinary approaches to engaging with religious experience with reference to a largely overlooked group of health care professionals—hospital chaplains.     

A randomized wait-list controlled analysis of the implementation integrity of team-initiated problem solving processes

Members of Positive Behavior Interventions and Supports (PBIS) teams from 34 elementary schools participated in a Team-Initiated Problem Solving (TIPS) Workshop and follow-up technical assistance. Within the context of a randomized wait-list controlled trial, team members who were the first recipients of the TIPS intervention demonstrated greater implementation integrity in using the problem-solving processes during their team meetings than did members of PBIS Teams in the Wait-List Control group. The success of TIPS at improving implementation integrity of the problem-solving processes is encouraging and suggests the value of conducting additional research focused on determining whether there is a functional relation between use of these problem-solving processes and actual resolution of targeted student academic and social problems.     

The burden of social proof: shared thresholds and social influence

Social influence rises with the number of influence sources, but the proposed relationship varies across theories, situations, and research paradigms. To clarify this relationship, I argue that people share some sense of where the "burden of social proof" lies in situations where opinions or choices are in conflict. This suggests a family of models sharing 2 key parameters, one corresponding to the location of the influence threshold, and the other reflecting its clarity--a factor that explains why discrete "tipping points" are not observed more frequently. The plausibility and implications of this account are examined using Monte Carlo and cellular automata simulations and the relative fit of competing models across classic data sets in the conformity, group deliberation, and social diffusion literatures.     

Youth Group Cliques: How Religious Goals Can Disguise Discriminatory Group Dynamics

This paper provides an in-depth, qualitative analysis of two Christian youth groups. Researchers conducted personal interviews with participating youth and their youth ministers and collected extensive field notes on participant observations of youth group events. Findings indicate the presence of youth group cliques with clear delineations about which participants are youth group insiders and which are outsiders. Results show that insider participants are typically socioeconomically-advantaged youth, while outsiders are typically youth from disadvantaged backgrounds. Despite the existence of these exclusionary practices within both groups, leaders in the two cases demonstrate differing levels of awareness of and response to these dynamics. This paper explores the specifics of both cases, illuminating who is targeted for exclusion within these groups and how this targeting varies across the two congregational contexts. Implications of these findings are that religious youth groups may perpetuate broader socioeconomic divisions. Specifically, the analysis reveals that rather than forming benign cliques, youth group members may be discriminating against others based on their relative socioeconomic advantage.