An Examination of the “Greening of Christianity” Thesis Among Americans, 1993–2010

Some environmental and religious scholars, religious leaders, and media figures have claimed there has been a “greening of Christianity” in the United States since the mid‐1990s. Such a trend would be socially significant, as the integration of Christian values and environmental values may invigorate both domains. Using nationally representative data from the 1993 and 2010 General Social Surveys, we analyze how green self‐identified Christians in the U.S. general public are in their pro‐environmental attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors. Using structural equation modeling, we find no clear evidence of a greening of Christianity among rank‐and‐file Christians in the general public between 1993 and 2010. Indeed, the patterns of our results are quite similar to those from earlier decades, which documented that self‐identified Christians reported lower levels of environmental concern than did non‐Christians and nonreligious individuals. We did find evidence of some greening among evangelical Protestants, especially relative to mainline Protestants, between 1993 and 2010. We close by suggesting a few fruitful avenues for further research in this area via variable‐oriented, case‐oriented, and experimental studies and discussing some theoretical implications of our findings.     

The relevance of security: A latent domain of attachment relationships

In the present study an adult attachment dimension, latent to the constructs of security, anxiety, and avoidance, was hypothesized, wherein security was expected to occupy the most relevant position. Furthermore, the reciprocal functioning of attachment constructs and their interactions with self‐esteem were explored. Four hundreds and thirty‐four Italian university students responded to two adult attachment questionnaires (Attachment Style Questionnaire and Adult Attachment Questionnaire) and to the Rosenberg Self‐esteem scale. A Many‐Facet Rasch Measurement modeling approach was adopted. The main results can be summarized as follows: (a) security, anxiety, and avoidance are nested under one latent attachment dimension; (b) security occupies the most prominent position on the dimension; (c) security is positively associated with a moderate level of attachment anxiety and negatively related to avoidance; and (d) a positive interaction between self‐esteem and security, and a negative relation between self‐esteem and anxiety, were detected. Theoretical, clinical, and empirical implications of the results are further discussed.     

Paternal autonomy restriction,neighborhood safety,and child anxiety trajectory in community youth

Intrusive parenting, primarily examined among middle to upper-middle class mothers, has been positively associated with the presence and severity of anxiety in children. This study employed cross-sectional linear regression and longitudinal latent growth curve analyses to evaluate the main and interactive effects of early childhood paternal autonomy restriction (AR) and neighborhood safety (NS) on the trajectory of child anxiety in a sample of 596 community children and fathers from the NICHD SECYD. Longitudinal analyses revealed that greater paternal AR at age 6 was actually associated with greater decreases in child anxiety in later childhood. Cross-sectional analyses revealed main effects for NS across childhood, and interactive effects of paternal AR and NS that were present only in early childhood, whereby children living in safer neighborhoods demonstrated increased anxiety when experiencing lower levels of paternal AR. Findings further clarify for whom and when paternal AR impacts child anxiety in community youth.     

结构方程模型拟合评鉴：整体拟合、内部拟合与复核效度检验

该文主要介绍了评价和鉴定结构方程中构建的模型与数据拟合程度的三个方面：整体拟合、内部拟合及复核效度检验.整体拟合评鉴主要是结合拟合指数,当拟合指数处于临界值时,应同时参照其他检验结果并根据模型构建的理论依据进行综合判断;内部拟合从项目质量检验、测验信度、平均变异萃取量和效度四个角度进行检验;复核效度检验在多样本分析中可分为宽松复核、温和复核和严格复核,但如果为研究样本所限,可以通过ECVI来实现.     

Using topic modeling to develop multi-level descriptions of naturalistic driving data from drivers with and without sleep apnea

One challenge in using naturalistic driving data is producing a holistic analysis of these highly variable datasets. Typical analyses focus on isolated events, such as large g-force accelerations indicating a possible near-crash. Examining isolated events is ill-suited for identifying patterns in continuous activities such as maintaining vehicle control. We present an alternative approach that converts driving data into a text representation and uses topic modeling to identify patterns across the dataset. This approach enables the discovery of non-linear patterns, reduces the dimensionality of the data, and captures subtle variations in driver behavior. In this study topic models were used to concisely described patterns in trips from drivers with and without untreated obstructive sleep apnea (OSA). The analysis included 5000 trips (50 trips from 100 drivers; 66 drivers with OSA; 34 comparison drivers). Trips were treated as documents, and speed and acceleration data from the trips were converted to “driving words.” The identified patterns, called topics, were determined based on regularities in the co-occurrence of the driving words within the trips. This representation was used in random forest models to predict the driver condition (i.e., OSA or comparison) for each trip. Models with 10, 15 and 20 topics had better accuracy in predicting the driver condition, with a maximum AUC of 0.73 for a model with 20 topics. Trips from drivers with OSA were more likely to be defined by topics for smaller lateral accelerations at low speeds. The results demonstrate topic modeling as a useful tool for extracting meaningful information from naturalistic driving datasets.     

Pathways to violence propensity: Results from a two-wave study of young males in urban South Africa

The aim of this study was to model pathways to violence propensity and violent behaviour among boys and young men in a high-violence community in South Africa. To that end, 284 young males (11 to 23 years old) from Khayelitsha, Cape Town self-reported risk for engagement in interpersonal violence and criminality; including within family, peer, and school domains, over a 12 month period. In Structural Equation Modelling, a pathway emerged through which an unstable home environment, influenced by deprivation and violence, affects the quality of parenting. In turn, early deviant associations and attitudes toward violence and gangs are cultivated and may have a deleterious effect on schooling, resulting in greater future substance abuse, greater violence propensity, and offending. These findings support the life course perspective approach, emphasising turning points and human agency in the aetiology of violence.     

CAREGIVER SENSITIVITY AND CONSISTENCY AND CHILDREN'S PRIOR FAMILY EXPERIENCE AS CONTEXTS FOR EARLY DEVELOPMENT WITHIN INSTITUTIONS

The current study addressed whether two institution‐wide interventions in St. Petersburg, Russian Federation, that increased caregiver sensitivity (Training Only: TO) or both caregiver sensitivity and consistency (Training plus Structural Changes: T+SC) promoted better socioemotional and cognitive development than did a No Intervention (NoI) institution during the first year of life for children who were placed soon after birth. It also assessed whether having spent less than 9 versus 9 to 36 months with a family prior to institutionalization was related to children's subsequent socioemotional and cognitive development within these three institutions. The Battelle Developmental Inventory (J. Newborg, J.R. Stock, L. Wnek, J. Guidubaldi, & J. Svinicki, 1988) was used to assess the socioemotional and cognitive functioning of children in NoI (n = 95), TO (n = 104), and T+SC (n = 86) at two to three time points during their first 6 to 12 months of residency. Results suggest that improving caregiver sensitivity can improve the cognitive development of infants in the first year of institutionalization whereas improving caregiver consistency in addition to sensitivity is more beneficial for socioemotional development than is sensitivity alone. Similarly, for children in T+SC, longer time with a family prior to institutionalization (consistent caregiver, unknown sensitivity) was associated with better socioemotional, but not cognitive, baseline scores and more rapid cognitive than socioemotional development during institutionalization. These results suggest caregiver sensitivity is more highly related to cognitive development whereas caregiver consistency is more related to socioemotional development in the first years of life.     

SEM Based CARMA Time Series Modeling for Arbitrary N

This article explains in detail the state space specification and estimation of first and higher-order autoregressive moving-average models in continuous time (CARMA) in an extended structural equation modeling (SEM) context for N = 1 as well as N > 1. To illustrate the approach, simulations will be presented in which a single panel model (T = 41 time points) is estimated for a sample of N = 1,000 individuals as well as for samples of N = 100 and N = 50 individuals, followed by estimating 100 separate models for each of the one-hundred N = 1 cases in the N = 100 sample. Furthermore, we will demonstrate how to test the difference between the full panel model and each N = 1 model by means of a subject-group-reproducibility test. Finally, the proposed analyses will be applied in an empirical example, in which the relationships between mood at work and mood at home are studied in a sample of N = 55 women. All analyses are carried out by ctsem, an R-package for continuous time modeling, interfacing to OpenMx.     

老年人认知功能的变化轨迹：基于潜变量增长模型的分析

摘 要 本研究采用中国老年健康影响因素跟踪调查（CLHLS）的4次数据（2002,2005,2008,2011）,对老年人认知功能的变化趋势以及影响因素进行了探讨。结果显示：（1）老年人认知功能在4次测查中呈非线性的下降趋势。（2）日常生活活动能力较低的个体其认知功能也较低;老年人读书年限越高,其认知功能水平越高;女性的认知功能水平低于男性;不饮酒的老年人认知功能低于饮酒的老年人。（3）读书年限与饮酒会正向预测模型的斜率。