Interdependence and Social Identity in Youth Sport Teams

The degree to which team members believe that they rely on one another to perform successfully and achieve collective outcomes may relate to perceptions about the extent that they integrate the group within their own identity. This study examined the relationship between interdependence and social identity among 422 high school team sport athletes. Youth completed measures of task and outcome interdependence, as well as social identity. Multilevel analyses revealed that higher perceptions of outcome interdependence at an individual and team level predicted greater social identity. Results highlight the role of outcome interdependence on athletes’ perceptions of social identity in sport teams.     

Ethical Issues in HIV/STD Prevention Research With High Risk Youth: Providing Help,Preserving Validity

Many preventive intervention studies with adolescents address high-risk behaviors such as drug and alcohol use, and unprotected sex. Randomized controlled trials (RCT) are the gold standard methodology used to test the effectiveness of these behavioral interventions. Interventions outside the rigidly described protocol are prohibited. However, there are ethical challenges to implementing inflexible intervention protocols, especially when the target population is young, experiences many stressful events, and lives in a resource-poor environment. Teens who are at high risk for substance use or sexual risk behaviors tend to be at risk for other problems such as exposure to violence, sexual and physical abuse, depression, and homelessness. How should investigators deal with the psychological and social needs of teenagers in prevention programs in an ethically appropriate way and at the same time preserve the validity of RCT results? We have identified program characteristics, participant characteristics, interaction with parents, and problems with adolescents not in the study as sources of ethical dilemmas in RCT with at-risk adolescents. As a result of our experience, we recommend that every behavioral intervention study develop an ethics protocol, which should include rules for providing help to participants, has contact information for experts to provide guidance, and an emergency procedure for dealing with life threatening situations. In addition, studies should have a resource manual, train research staff in these ethical issues, and work with a data safety and monitoring board or ethics committee.     

Kingdom Education

Whether known as Christian or Kingdom education, its very nature is opened for examination in this article. From the assumption that Christ is to be at the center of Christian education, it assumedly would be patterned after his life and activities on earth. A review of the Scriptures about Jesus points to an education orientation that is not well represented in extant Christian/Kingdom education. Closer alignment with Christ is recommended.     

Disinhibition as a Mechanism in Sexual Victimization: A Prospective Study

Disinhibition was examined as a mechanism in revictimization using a prospective research design. Of the sample of 211 young adult women, 43.1% reported prior sexual victimization (birth to the time of our initial assessment) and 32.2% reported sexual assault during the 6-month follow-up. The findings suggest that disinhibition was a partial mediator. Prior sexual victimization was associated with increased disinhibition as well as increased future sexual assault. Greater disinhibition was associated with increased future sexual assault. Once disinhibition was accounted for, the original relationship between prior and future sexual assault was reduced. Disinhibition partially explained revictimization and these behaviors might serve as possible targets of change in sexual victimization prevention work.     

An Evaluation of Two Types of Cognitive Intervention in the Management of Chronic Tinnitus

Abstract

Fifty-four subjects with chronic distressing tinnitus were randomly allocated to one of four experimental treatment conditions: (1) attention control and imagery training (AC1); (2) cognitive restructuring (CR); (3) combined attention control and imagery training plus cognitive restructuring (ACI + CR); and (4) a waiting list control (WLC). Significant overall improvements were found on measures of distress associated with tinnitus, and on a number of other measures of cognition and coping strategies. These improvements were maintained at the six-month follow-up. Relative to the WLC, the three treatment conditions (combined) were associated with improvements in tinnitus-related distress, reductions in tinnitus-related dysfunctional cognitions and an increase in the frequency of use of coping strategies. There was a significant effect in favour of the ACI group compared to the CR group on the measure of irrational beliefs. The analyses also revealed that the combined treatment condition (ACI + CR) showed significantly greater improvement on a measure of psychological distress and achieved a higher clinical response rate compared to the two single treatments. There were significant improvements from pretreatment to follow-up on some measures, although the mean scores revealed that some of the gains had been lost at this stage on the main measure of tinnitus-related distress. There were no significant group X time effects for any of the dependent variables at the six-month follow-up. The results were interpreted as supporting the practice of combining the two cognitive approaches.     

More than just body weight: The role of body image in psychological and physical functioning

The current study examined BMI and body image dissatisfaction as predictors of physical and mental health-related quality of life (HRQL) and psychosocial functioning in a sample of 414 undergraduate students (mean age = 21.5, SD = 4.9; mean BMI = 23.6, SD = 5.2). In men and women, higher BMI was correlated with body image dissatisfaction and physical HRQL, but not with any measures of psychosocial functioning, whereas higher body image dissatisfaction was associated with poorer physical HRQL and psychosocial functioning. Furthermore, body image dissatisfaction was observed to mediate the relationship between BMI and physical HRQL in men and women. Interestingly, in this model, higher BMI predicted increased self-esteem. These findings suggest that body image dissatisfaction may be an important target for health interventions.     

Text and context in Fijian Hinduism: Uses of religion

The recent rise of militant religious nationalism in such places as Sri Lanka, Punjab, Iran, Egypt, Israel and elsewhere has created the impression that there is something wrong with religion in these parts of the world. The author of this article, reporting on his extensive interviews with a radical bhikkhu in Sri Lanka, concludes that the problem is with the Western ideal of secular nationalism. It does not easily fit with traditional political identities and it is sometimes seen as a vestige of cultural colonialism. The author presents four options in the relation of secular nationalism and religion, and raises the question of whether we, as secular Westerners, can adjust to a world increasingly filled with religious nationalists.     

Social Dominance Orientation and Right‐Wing Authoritarianism: Additive and Interactive Effects on Political Conservatism

It is commonly accepted that social dominance orientation (SDO) and right‐wing authoritarianism (RWA) are potent unique predictors of a variety of prejudice and prejudice‐related constructs. However, contrary to some predictions, there has been little evidence that these constructs interact to produce this outcome—they appear to be additive but not interactive in their prediction of prejudice. We extend the interaction hypothesis to consideration of another broadly relevant construct—political ideology. Drawing from 14 independent New Zealand–based samples, we show, through meta‐analysis and multilevel random coefficient modelling, that SDO and RWA additively and interactively predict levels of political conservatism operationalised in a variety of ways. Specifically, both constructs are associated with increasing political conservatism, and the lowest levels of conservatism (or highest levels of political liberalism) are found in those lowest in both SDO and RWA.