How Religious Coping is Used Relative to Other Coping Strategies Depends on the Individual’s Level of Religiosity and Spirituality

Results from empirical studies on the role of religiosity and spirituality in dealing with stress are frequently at odds, and the present study investigated whether level of religiosity and spirituality is related to the way in which religious coping is used relative to other coping strategies. A sample of 616 university undergraduate students completed the Brief COPE (Carver in Int J Behav Med 4:92?C100, 1997) questionnaire and was classified into groups of participants with lower and higher levels of religiosity and spirituality, as measured by the WHOQOL-SRPB (WHOQOL-SRPB Group in Soc Sci Med 62:1486?C1497, 2006) instrument. For participants with lower levels, religious coping tended to be associated with maladaptive or avoidant coping strategies, compared to participants with higher levels, where religious coping was more closely related to problem-focused coping, which was also supported by multigroup confirmatory factor analysis. The results of the present study thus illustrate that investigating the role of religious coping requires more complex approaches than attempting to assign it to one higher order factor, such as problem- or emotion-focused coping, and that the variability of findings reported by previous studies on the function of religious coping may partly be due to variability in religiosity and spirituality across samples.     

Counsellor-delivered HIV risk reduction intervention addresses safer sex barriers of people living with HIV in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa

This study developed an HIV risk reduction intervention for people living with HIV (PLWH) obtaining care at primary healthcare clinics in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa by (1) conducting elicitation research to understand the dynamics of risk behaviour among PLWH, (2) modifying an existing HIV risk reduction intervention based on research findings and (3) conducting a pilot study to evaluate feasibility, acceptability and fidelity of the modified intervention implemented by trained lay counsellors at a rural clinic in KwaZulu-Natal. A total of 61 healthcare providers and 77 HIV+ patients from four primary healthcare clinics participated in 14 focus groups and 20 individual interviews to identify informational, motivational and behavioural skills (IMB) factors contributing to PLWH's sexual risk behaviour. Elicitation research findings were incorporated into a revised version of Options for Health, an evidence-based risk reduction intervention for PLWH in clinical care. In a 5-day training, lay counsellors learned strategies to address IMB barriers to safer sex identified in elicitation research. The revised intervention, which was implemented by six counsellors with 39 patients, was feasible to implement, acceptable to patients and counsellors, and implemented with good fidelity. This study makes an important contribution towards development of a theory-based HIV risk reduction intervention for PLWH linking prevention with treatment in South Africa.     

The Dimensional Structure of the Perceived Behavioral Control Construct1

Following concerns in the literature about the conceptualization and operationalization of the perceived behavioral control (PBC) construct within the Theory of planned behavior (Ajzen, 1985, 1991). 2 studies were conducted to examine whether questionnaire items explicitly assessing perceived difficulty and perceived control issues would attract a different pattern of responses. In applications of the theory of planned behavior to the reduction of red meat consumption and the reduction of potato chip (French fries) consumption, Principal Components Analysis showed that items reflecting perceived difficulty and items reflecting perceived control loaded onto different components. Furthermore, measures of perceived difficulty and not measures of perceived control contributed independent predictive effects in multiple regressions of respondents' behavioral intentions to make the dietary changes.     

Decision strategies for the two-alternative forced choice reminder paradigm

The decision strategy adopted by an observer in a psychophysical procedure may be established by comparing estimates of sensitivity obtained by using detection-theoretic models based on each of the available decision strategies. Estimates of sensitivity obtained from 10 observers on auditory-level discrimination tasks using the yes/no, two-alternative forced choice (2AFC), and 2AFC with reminder (2AFCR; sometimes called duo-trio) procedures were compared in order to determine the decision strategy used by the judges in the 2AFCR procedure. 2AFCR permits at least three decision strategies: differencing, likelihood ratio, and comparison of distances. The latter strategy has frequently been assumed in the analysis of duo-trio data in the sensory evaluation literature. The present study demonstrates that the comparison-of-distances strategy was not used by 9 of the 10 observers in this auditory experiment. The nature of the instructions given to the observers had no measurable impact on the decision strategy that they adopted.