Marital and Family Therapist’s Action Research in Light of Some Research Problems: A One-Cycle Example

Some major problems in marital and family therapy (MFT) research remain evident. Practitioners often see research as insufficiently related to their concerns and want it to be more applicable. Often-used integrative (or eclectic) practices in MFT and their idiographic nature make the applicability of research even more problematic. Greater use of action research, which often has been overlooked in MFT, could be useful for addressing some of these problems. There are many types of action research; one of the most common uses repeating cycles of the four basic steps (observing and gathering information, reflecting, planning, and acting). In this article the authors’ use of these four steps for studying MFT is presented and discussed in the light of some research trends and problems. A one-cycle case example is used to illustrate the process.     

Spanish adaptation of the Need for Closure Scale

The Need for Cognitive Closure (NCC) refers to the motivation to seek and maintain a definitive answer to a given problem. This mental closure allows people to avoid confusion, ambiguity and uncertainty. The NCC plays a critical role in a variety of processes of diverse nature, including intra-personal (e.g., the higher the NCC, the less generation of hypothesis), inter-personal (e.g., decreased empathy), intra-group (e.g., increased desire for consensus), and inter-group (increased in-group favouritism) phenomena. The goal of the present research was to provide a Spanish adaptation of Antonio Pierro and Arie Kruglanski's Revised NCC Scale (2005, Rev NfCS), examining the reliability and the validity of participants' scores. In the present studies, it was found that the Spanish version of the scale had acceptable internal reliability and adequate factor structure (Study 1), as well as acceptable test-retest reliability and adequate discriminant validity with regard to the scores in another measure of individual differences such as the Need for Cognition (NC, Study 2).     

Latin-American immigrant women and mental health: differences according to their rural or urban origin

Spain is one of the EU countries that receive most immigrants, especially from Latin America. The process of migration implies a high level of stress what may have repercussions for the mental health of immigrants. The purposes of this study were: (a) to determine whether the degree of mental health of immigrant women differs according to their rural or urban origin, (b) to compare the mental health of immigrant women with that of the female normative sample of host population (Spain). A sample of 186 Latin American immigrant women (142 from urban areas and 44 from rural areas) was recruited in Barcelona by means of a consecutive case method. A structured interview and the SCL-90-R were administered. The results indicated that the immigrant women from rural origin reported higher levels of psychological symptomatology than those from urban areas. Immigrants reported higher levels of psychological symptomatology than the native female population and in most of the psychological symptoms exceeded 90% of the native Spanish population. Migration is a powerful stressor which may lead to psychological distress. Being female of rural origin and being in an illegal situation is related with an increase in symptomatology.     

Facilitation of the equivalence--equivalence responding

Equivalence-Equivalence responding, based on equivalence class formation, is a key concept of the functional-analytic model of analogical reasoning held by RFT theorists. Relational stimulus control is supposed to play an important role in this arbitrary relational response. Previous research showed that mere training of the prerequisites for equivalence class formation is not always enough for the derivation of equivalence-equivalence responding, even in adults. In the first experiment, with 12 adult participants, we designed a matching-to-sample training and testing procedure that, although it provided all necessary conditions, did not lead to Equivalence-Equivalence responding in most participants, so that the efficacy of a facilitation procedure could be assessed. In Experiment 2, with 32 valid participants, a matching-to-sample procedure based on non-arbitrary relations was introduced to assess its efficacy in enhancing stimulus control by the relational properties of sample and comparisons. Results showed a moderate effect: 40.6% of the participants passed the test after being exposed to a non-arbitrary relational matching task (but none without it). This research underlines the importance of non-arbitrary relational responses in the derivation of more complex repertoires.     

Math anxiety: A review of its cognitive consequences,psychophysiological correlates,and brain bases

A decade has passed since the last published review of math anxiety, which was carried out by Ashcraft and Ridley (2005). Given the considerable interest aroused by this topic in recent years and the growing number of publications related to it, the present article aims to provide a full and updated review of the field, ranging from the initial studies of the impact of math anxiety on numerical cognition, to the latest research exploring its electrophysiological correlates and brain bases from a cognitive neuroscience perspective. Finally, this review describes the factors and mechanisms that have been claimed to play a role in the origins and/or maintenance of math anxiety, and it examines in detail the main explanations proposed to account for the negative effects of math anxiety on performance: competition for working memory resources, a deficit in a low-level numerical representation, and inhibition/attentional control deficit.     

Researchers discover what they already knew about validity: The case of the family-of-Origin Scale

This article is concerned with two recnet studies of the Family-of-Origin Scale (FOS), Gavin and Wamboldt (1992) and Ryan, Kawash, Fine, and Powel (1994). The external validity analyses conducted for the FOS in these studies assumed the scale to be a unidemsional measure. The present discussion centers on methodological decisions and interpretive strategies that may have prevented a more complete understanding of the scale's dimensional structure and theoretical meaning. It is concluded that a unidimensional view of the FOS is an oversimplification that is inconsistent with the available data. A case is made for a more comprehensive and technically adequate evaluation of the FOS. Specific suggestions are offered.     

Whose depression relates to discrepancies? Testing relations between informant characteristics and informant discrepancies from both informants' perspectives

This study examined whether mothers' and children's depressive symptoms were each uniquely related to mother-child rating discrepancies on a multidimensional dyadic construct: domains associated with parental monitoring (i.e., Child Disclosure, Parental Knowledge, and Parental Solicitation). Participants included a community sample of 335 mother/female-caregiver and child dyads (182 girls, 153 boys; 9-16 years old). Children's depressive symptoms were consistently related to each of the three domains of mother-child discrepancies. Mothers' depressive symptoms were related to perceived discrepancies in two domains (Child Disclosure and Parental Knowledge). Furthermore, these relations could not be accounted for by other informant characteristics (maternal stress, child age, child gender, child ethnicity). Findings provide important empirical support for theory suggesting that both informants' perspectives meaningfully contribute to their discrepancies in perceived behavior. Consideration of both informants' perspectives leads to valuable information as to whether any particular characteristic is an important correlate of discrepancies.     

Effects of the iodine deficiency on intellectual variables among children

An association between severe iodine deficiency and poor mental development has been found in many studies. We examined the relationship between moderate or mild iodine deficiency and intellectual capacity in order to determine whether problems common to severe iodine deficiency (including mental retardation) also emerge in a more subtle form. We also wished to know whether the classic methodology (comparing iodine-deficient zones with nondeficient zones) is the most adequate, and propose to combine this grouping by zones with urinary iodine presented by individuals in each zone. We measured IQ, manipulative and verbal capacity, attention, visual motor ability and disruptive behaviour, variables that have barely been studied in this kind of investigations. The sample comprised 760 schoolchildren from the province of Jaén (southern Spain). Our results show that children with low levels of iodine intake and with urinary iodine concentration lower than 100 microg/litre had a lower IQ and displayed more disruptive behaviour than children with high levels of the criteria. The other variables were not associated with iodine deficiency.