A multilevel mediation model of stress and coping for women with HIV and their families

Families are influential systems and may be an important context in which to consider the stress and coping process. To date, many studies have focused on modeling the stress and coping process for the individual, isolated from the family. The purpose of this secondary analysis was to investigate a cross-sectional stress and coping model for HIV-positive African-American mothers recruited from HIV service facilities in South Florida (n=214) and their family members (n=294). Avoidance coping was hypothesized to mediate the relationship between stress and psychological distress. In addition, the family average of individual stress was hypothesized to moderate the relationship between avoidance coping and psychological distress. For all constructs, individuals reported on themselves and multilevel modeling techniques were used to account for similarities between members of the same family. The estimated mediation effect was significant. Aggregated family stress significantly moderated the relationship between avoidance coping and psychological distress. This study suggests that individuals exhibit different relationships between avoidance coping and psychological outcomes and that average stress reported by members of a family moderates the relationship between avoidance coping and psychological distress.     

The reciprocal relationship between nonverbal behavior and sports performance in a cross-lagged panel model

ObjectivesThe aim of the present research is to investigate the relationship between nonverbal behavior (NVB) and sports performance in a longitudinal design using cross-lagged panel models (CLPMs).MethodIn our study NVB and performance were measured at eight time points (n₁) in 48 basketball matches (n₂), resulting in N = 384 data points. Cross-lagged paths between NVB and performance were analyzed in multilevel models, with NVB at time point t-1 predicting performance at time point t and performance at time point t-1 predicting NVB at time point t. Performance was measured as the score difference between one team to the opposing team within a time point. NVB was rated on a scale from dominance to submissiveness by two blinded raters. Dependence of performance measures between time points was eliminated by two different approaches, resulting in two different measurements of performance.ResultsResults indicate an effect of NVB at time point t-1 on performance at time point t for one of the methods of performance. Contrary to our hypothesis and evidence from previous findings, there was no effect of performance at time point t-1 on NVB at time point t for neither method of measuring performance.ConclusionsThis study supports a positive relationship between NVB and sports performance, more so in the direction of NVB predicting performance.     

Do you feel happy when other members look happy? Moderating effect of community-level social capital on interconnection of happiness

One's happiness is expected to be affected by the happiness of surrounding others. This socio-psychological nature of happiness, however, has not been fully examined in the literature of social psychology. The current study examined if this “psychological interconnection of happiness” occurs when (i) individuals have strong personal social capital and/or (ii) individuals belong to a community where other members have strong social capital. We analysed a large social survey dataset sampled from 408 communities in Japan (N = 7295). The psychological interconnection of happiness was measured by calculating the correlation between individual happiness and perceived community happiness. The multilevel analyses revealed that the psychological interconnection of happiness was moderated by community-level social capital above and beyond individual-level social capital, while individual-level social capital did not have a significant moderation effect.     

Modeling the effects of within-person characteristic and goal-level attributes on personal project pursuit over time

The current study aims to overcome methodological constraints of previous goal pursuit research by exploring how people simultaneously rely upon person-level characteristic adaptations and unique goal-level attributes to pursue their personal projects. Undergraduate participants identified 10 projects they would pursue over an academic quarter and rated project meaningfulness, effort exerted, patience employed, and progress satisfaction at five time points. Multilevel structural equation models revealed the relative influence of person-level and project-level attributes on project appraisals. Person-level adaptations accounted for a large portion of variance in project pursuit appraisals, though significant project-specific trends were found over time as well, including mutual positive cross-lag influences between meaning, patience, and effort, and a negative predictive effect of progress satisfaction on meaning.     

A practical guide to understanding reliability in studies of within-person variability

This article concerns how to estimate reliability (defined as the internal consistency of responses to a scale) in designs that are commonly used in studies of within-person variability. I present relevant issues, describe common errors, make recommendations for best practice, and discuss unresolved issues and future directions. I describe how to estimate the reliability of scales administered in studies in which observations are nested within persons, such as daily diary and “beeper” studies and studies of social interaction. Multilevel modeling analyses that include a measurement level can estimate the occasionlevel (e.g., days or beeps or interactions) reliability of scales. In such models, items on a scale are nested within occasions of measurement and occasions of measurement are nested within persons.     

Positivity within teamwork: Cross-level effects of positivity on performance

This study has been designed to investigate, from a multilevel perspective, the relations among positivity and job performance. Analyses were conducted on a sample of 232 participants from three Italian organizations with the Group Actor-Partner Interdependence Model (Kenny & Garcia, 2012). Results corroborate previous findings attesting to the beneficial effects of positivity on organizational behaviours and in particular attest to the crucial role of others’ positivity in neutralizing an individual’s low positivity. People low in positivity performed better when other group members’ positivity was high.