Information Needs and Behavior of Catholic Priests in Croatia

This article presents a segment of the results gathered in a doctoral study that investigated information needs and behavior of Catholic priests in Croatia. The study focused on parish priests in particular and their information needs and behavior in the liturgy and care-giving role. The research was conducted with the help of quantitative and qualitative methodology. Print questionnaires were filled out by 327 respondents, while in the follow-up interviews 20 respondents took part. Research results show that respondents, in the care-giving role and liturgy, require information about theology, general culture, psychology, and pedagogy. More than half of respondents find information for liturgy on religious websites and in their personal parish libraries. However, in their care-giving role they seek information most often from their parishers, members in parish pastoral and economic boards, and from colleagues at their regular meetings organized by the (arch)diocese. Both in liturgy and care-giving role, respondents use religious publications to a much larger degree than secular books, magazines, or newspapers. The respondents explained that in liturgy they consult colleagues and parishers in order to exchange advices and ideas, while in the care-giving role some respondents also prefer to seek an advice from an expert in specific field. The results of this study can help Catholic Church and theological faculties when preparing the information literacy courses for future parish priests.     

African American Spirituals

ABSTRACT

This article endeavors to explore the following aspects of African American Spirituals: the African Legacy; the creation and evolution in the North American environment; basic content and purpose of texts, musical elements, the influence of the Spirituals, published collections and significant publications.     

Forgoing Debriefing in Deceptive Research: Is It Ever Ethical?

The use of deception in research is generally permitted so long as participants are debriefed at the conclusion of their participation. Several authoritative research ethics guidelines allow investigators to omit debriefing under certain circumstances, however. Here we examine various justifications for forgoing debriefing in deceptive research, including concerns about subject pool contamination, the risk that revealing the deception will be harmful or distressing to participants, and issues of practicability. We conclude that, contrary to current practice, omitting debriefing is ethically acceptable only when debriefing is impracticable, the deception is innocuous, and no reasonable person would object to involvement in the research.     

Costs and Utilities Perspective of Consumers' Intentions to Engage in Online Music Sharing: Consumers' Knowledge Matters

Online music sharing, deemed illegal for invading intellectual property rights under current laws, has become a crucial issue for the music industry in the modern digital age, but few have investigated the potential costs and utilities for individuals involved in such online misbehavior. This study aimed to fill in this gap to predict consumers' intentions to engage in online music sharing and further consider consumers' online music sharing knowledge as a moderator in the research model. The results of repeated measures analysis of variance of costs and utilities of online music sharing not only give more detailed information to grasp empirical implications but also provide some suggestions to the music industry in Taiwan.     

Testing the involvement of the prefrontal cortex in lucid dreaming: A tDCS study

Recent studies suggest that lucid dreaming (awareness of dreaming while dreaming) might be associated with increased brain activity over frontal regions during rapid eye movement (REM) sleep. By applying transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS), we aimed to manipulate the activation of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) during REM sleep to increase dream lucidity. Nineteen participants spent three consecutive nights in a sleep laboratory. On the second and third nights they randomly received either 1 mA tDCS for 10 min or sham stimulation during each REM period starting with the second one. According to the participants’ self-ratings, tDCS over the DLPFC during REM sleep increased lucidity in dreams. The effects, however, were not strong and found only in frequent lucid dreamers. While this indicates some preliminary support for the involvement of the DLPFC in lucid dreaming, further research, controlling for indirect effects of stimulation and including other brain regions, is needed.     

Adjustment to War Captivity: The Role of Sociodemographic Background,Trauma Severity,and Immediate Responses,in the Long-Term Mental Health of Israeli Ex-Pows

This study assessed the role of sociodemographic features, pre-captivity combat exposure, captivity severity, emotional responses and coping during captivity, and social support at homecoming, to the short- and long-term mental health of 164 Israeli POWs of the 1973 Yom Kippur War. The major contributors to the POWs' mental health were psychological responses during captivity, followed first by their education and ethnic status, and then by severity of captivity. Both traumatic stress of captivity and the results of the study were discussed in the light of Conservation of Resources (COR) theory.     

Coping style in predicting posttraumatic stress disorder among Israeli students

Abstract

Two possible motives for sensation seeking behavior, escape from self-awareness and compensatory self-regulation, were investigated in two studies. In Study I a questionnaire was developed to identify the putative escape and compensation motives suspected to contribute to sensation seeking behaviors. In Study II the factor structure of this new measure, called the Risk and Excitement Inventory (REI), was cross-validated using confirmatory factor analysis, and construct validity was examined. Together these studies suggest that the REI comprises two reliable factors, compensation and escape from self-awareness. Study II showed that these factors have a reasonable degree of construct validity. Limits of the measure and the model are discussed, and suggestions are offered for future research.     

Psychosocial Predictors of Health Status and Health Care Costs among People with Fibromyalgia

The purpose of the present study was to examine the effects of psychosocial characteristics on health status and the relationship between health status and health care use and costs in a group of people with fibromyalgia (FMS) over a 1-year period. The participants were 600 members of a large health maintenance organization. Demographic characteristics (age, education, employment status, ethnicity and income), need variables (comorbid conditions and baseline health status), and psychosocial variables (self-efficacy, helplessness, coping, and depression) were examined. Better health status at baseline, use of emotion-focused coping, and higher self-efficacy predicted better health status the following year. Higher health care use at baseline, being Caucasian, being older, and having more co-morbid conditions predicted higher health care use at 1 year. Only health care costs at baseline predicted health care costs the following year. Our results indicate that health care use and cost tend to be stable. Intense interventions focused on changing patterns of health care use and methods for coping with the change need to be developed and tested.     

The prediction of turnover intention by means of employee engagement and demographic variables in a telecommunications organisation

This study sought to determine the prediction of turnover intention by employee engagement and demographic variables in a large South African information and communication technology (ICT) organisation. Cross-sectional survey data was collected from the organisation. Using a sample of 2276 participants the Utrecht Work Engagement Scale (UWES) was employed to measure employee engagement, while the Intention to Stay Questionnaire (ISQ) measured turnover intentions. Employee engagement was significantly negatively related with turnover intentions. A factor analysis conducted on the UWES indicated that activation accounted for 10% of the variance in turnover intentions. Age and tenure had statistically significant negative relationships with turnover intentions, whilst qualification and race had significant positive relationships with turnover intentions. The results also confirmed the predictive model of employee engagement as well as the impact of the demographic variables of race, age, tenure on turnover intentions. The study has practical implications in relation to its ability to contribute to human resources activities in the form of differentiated remuneration and retention strategies based on differences in age and tenure.     

LOGICAL ANALYSES OF VIPASSANĀ MEDITATION

ABSTRACT

In this paper we propose logical analyses of Vipassanā Meditation as modus ponens or universal instantiation, as based upon identification, analysis, and interpretation of the meditation as a (spiritual) thought experiment (STE like e.g. huàtóus and kōans in Chan and Zen).*

The analyses consist in completing the unfinished enthymematic argument of the Sutta-nipāta by explication of hidden major. We speculate the thought experiment inference might be brought about by a faculty like mindfulness. The thought experiment analyses link the meditation to global cross-cultural theories and arguments in philosophy as Ibn Sīnā’s Flying Man and, notably, René Descartes’s Cogito. Last, we will give some indications how Vipassanā Meditation may be explained with help of western theories of consciousness.