Reliability and validity of a self-efficacy instrument specific to sickle cell disease

The psychometric properties of a new, 9-item scale measuring disease-specific perceptions of self-efficacy were investigated in a community-based sample of adults (N = 83) with sickle cell disease (SCD). The Sickle Cell Self-Efficacy Scale (SCSES) was comprised of nine questions relating to participants' perceptions of their ability to function on a day-to-day basis and to manage SCD symptomatology (e.g. episodes of pain). The SCSES demonstrated good internal consistency, discriminant validity, and convergent and predictive validity, both with previously validated measures of related constructs as well as with reported SCD symptomatology. Overall, the instrument appears to be reliable and valid for assessing clients' self-efficacy for engaging successfully in day-to-day activities despite having SCD. Future investigators may wish to examine temporal and causal links between alterations in self-efficacy and changes in adjustment to sickle cell disease; the SCSES provides a psychometrically sound tool with which to investigate these phenomena.     

Vertical versus horizontal spatial compatibility: Right-left prevalence with bimanual responses

For two-choice tasks in which stimulus and response locations vary along horizontal and vertical dimensions, the spatial compatibility effect is often stronger on the horizontal than vertical dimension. Umiltà and Nicoletti [(1990) Spatial stimulus-response compatibility (pp. 89–116). Amsterdam: North-Holland] attributed this right-left prevalence effect to an inability to code vertical location when horizontal codes are present simultaneously. Hommel [(1996) Perception & Psychophysics, 43, 102–110] suggested instead that it reflects a voluntary strategy. This study reports four experiments that examine this issue. Experiment 1 was a conceptual replication of Hommel's Experiment 1, with responses made on a numeric keypad and subjects instructed in terms of the vertical or horizontal dimension. The results replicated Hommel's findings that showed a right-left advantage with horizontal instructions; however, with vertical instructions, we found a benefit of vertical compatibility alone that he did not. This benefit for vertical compatibility alone was eliminated in Experiment 2 using a varied practice schedule similar to that used by Hommel. Experiment 3 showed right-left prevalence and a benefit of vertical compatibility alone, even with varied practice and vertical instructions, when subjects responded on perpendicularly arranged handgrips. These benefits were eliminated in Experiment 4 using Hommel's method of urging subjects to respond only in terms of the instructed dimension. With bimanual responses, right-left prevalence is a robust phenomenon that is evident when comparing across vertical and horizontal instructions and, when the right-left distinction is relatively salient, within the vertical instructions condition alone. Received: 4 February 2000 / Accepted: 5 May 2000     

Saul Alinsky: Therapist to the apathetic

Conclusion Controversy still flames around Alinsky. Its very heat makes a cool appraisal difficult. But the heat is also on the Church to forge a fair estimate of Alinsky's goals and tactics. This paper has presented the therapeutic perspective as an important element in that evaluation. It has demonstrated that striking parallels exist between Alinsky's approach to community problems and the psychotherapist's approach to individual problems. It has shown that much of what Alinsky does is psychologically sound. Nor is such a comparison alien to Alinsky's view of his own work. His own commitment to mental health is expressed in a speech:Those concerned with the mental health of our population must bear in mind that these slums and segregated ghettoes operate as enormous breeding grounds for mental pathology and psychoses on a mass basis. They are to mental disease as the swamps were to malaria. It is for this reason that this address has concentrated upon citizen action to the end of ridding ourselves of these conditions which inevitably result in mental disease.It seems distinctly possible that in Saul Alinsky the Church has an obstinate but valuable ally in the search for wholeness and health in individual and community life.     

Whither Christian sexual morality?

Pastoral Psychology -