Sport Records Are Social Facts

In this paper I address the topic of sport records and concentrate on the ontology of sport records. I argue that sport records are social facts in the sense that sport records not only depend on the physical facts of sport competitions, but also on the attitude we take towards the phenomenon—our attitude is partly constitutive of the phenomenon of sport records. In particular, the Mieto–Wassberg incident and the Larsson–McKee incident show that performance records should also be regarded as social facts. Lastly, I show how my view sits with the view that sports are response-sensitive. I argue that the latter gives us further reason to believe that sport records, in particular performance records, are social facts.     

The assessment of surgery-related coping: The coping with surgical stress scale (COSS)

Abstract

Surgery can be regarded as a major stressor for any patient. High preoperative emotional arousal may negatively influence adjustment during surgery as well as the postoperative recovery rate. Consequently, the strategies individuals employ for coping with this stress are of prime importance for the quality of their adaptation. This paper reports the construction and empirical assessment of a new instrument for measuring strategies employed to cope with surgical stress. Factor analysis of this instrument, the Coping with Surgical Stress Scale (COSS), yielded five factors: Rumination, Optimism and Trust, Turning to Social and Religious Resources, Threat Avoidance, and Information Seeking. Internal consistencies of the corresponding subscales were satisfactory. Results concerning external relationships of the COSS with dispositional coping, state and trait anxiety, and indicators of perioperative adjustment showed that the COSS is a useful instrument for measuring surgery-related coping.     

Habitual Self‐Control: A Brief Measure of Persistent Goal Pursuit

Habitual self‐control is defined as a trait‐like personal resource factor that facilitates the enactment of difficult intentions. A 14‐item Habitual Self‐Control Questionnaire (HSCQ) was developed to assess this trait. Reliability, factorial validity, and criterion validity were assessed in five undergraduate student subsamples with an overall N of 2224. Internal consistency was .81 across the entire sample, and test–retest reliability was .83 over a one‐month interval. The HSCQ showed a theoretically meaningful pattern in terms of convergent and discriminant validity and criterion validity in predicting a variety of health behaviours that relate to self‐control, including exercise, dieting behaviour, binge eating and weight loss success. Further, the HSCQ contributed uniquely to the prediction of health behaviours beyond alternative self‐control scales. In a longitudinal part of the study, the HSCQ added to the prediction of action plan completion and satisfaction beyond motivation and moderated the relationship between motivation and enactment of action plans as theoretically expected. In sum, the results provided strong evidence for the reliability and validity of the HSCQ and highlighted some theoretically meaningful differences to already existing measures of self‐control. Theoretical implications are discussed. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Measuring Spiritual Fitness: Atheist Military Personnel,Veterans, and Civilians

This study investigated the impact of transcendent item phrasing (i.e., phrasing which assumes the respondent believes in certain sacred or supernatural concepts) on the validity of the U.S. Army’s Comprehensive Soldier Fitness (CSF) program’s spiritual fitness scale when administered to atheist military personnel, veterans, and civilians. Results indicated that the inclusion of transcendent phrasing led to reduced concurrent validity for the spiritual fitness scale when administered to atheist military personnel and veterans, reduced concurrent and predictive validity when administered to atheists’ but not Christians’ spiritual fitness. Notably, the removal of transcendent phrasing actually led to increased concurrent validity for Christian respondents. Taken together, these findings suggest the Revised scale, which is composed of items that do not rely on transcendent phrasing, produces better psychometric outcomes for both atheist and Christian respondents. Implications for the CSF program and the measurement of spiritual fitness are addressed.     

Patients' intentions in primary care: Measurement and preliminary investigation

Abstract

A questionnaire to assess patients' intentions in primary care was completed by 206 patients. Patients also rated the amount of help with their presenting problem which they thought could be provided by each of 11 secondary services. A principal components analysis of the intentions revealed 4 components: “Explanation and understanding,” “Support,” “Medical treatment” and “Information-seeking.” Individual patients' intentions were quantified on each of these dimensions. Requests for “Explanation and understanding” did not correlate with expectation of help from any of the 11 sources. In contrast, each of the remaining 3 types of request correlated with expectation of help from a number of sources. These results show, first, a way of measuring patients' intentions on multiple independent dimensions. Secondly, they indicate that patients look solely to the general practitioner for general information and reassurance about their problems. For emotional support they look to additional, mainly psychiatric, sources. This calls into question the view that general practitioners are seen by patients as more appropriate providers of emotional support than specialist services.     

Expectancies of infant-feeding methods among mothers in three ethnic groups

Abstract

The psychometric characteristics and construct validity of an inventory of expectancy statements about breast- and formula-feeding were assessed to refine a measure of the predictors of breastfeeding initiation and maintenance. Respondents were a tri-ethnic sample of mostly lower income mothers within two days after delivery. Ninety-six expectancy items reflecting eight hypothesized domains in expectancies of breastfeeding (BF) and formula-feeding(FF) were submitted to maximum likelihood factor analysis. Four factors were determined: “Benefits of BF,” “Relative Advantages of FF,” “Inconveniences of FF,” and “Relative Inconveniences of BF.” All factors were significantly related to actual BF of the new infant in the expected directions using unweighted factor scores in a multiple logistic regression analysis. Predicted BF closely matched actual BF for all ethnicities combined with a total error rate for misclassification of only 14%. This match was high for Anglo- and Black-American mothers. Each of the factors was determined to be reliably estimated by the ten most highly loaded items without an appreciable loss of internal consistency. Further research must assess expectancies prior to delivery in order to assess their predictiveness of behavior. and must further clarify the meaning of the expectancy factors to facilitate intervention.     

Counting the Faithful: Measuring Local Religious Contexts in the United States

This study compares the estimates of religious composition of counties in the United States from three independent datasets: the 2010 Religious Congregational Membership Study (RCMS); the 2010 Infogroup Congregational membership data (INFO); and the Gallup Daily Poll—a large national survey with more than 1.3 million respondents. My analyses suggest that the estimates for most major religious groups from the three datasets are highly correlated to each other. In addition, the measures of local religious compositions from the three datasets successfully predict the religious composition of friendship networks in a large, nationally representative survey. These findings suggest that RCMS, the most widely used data source for measuring local religious composition in the United States, has a convergent and predictive validity. My analyses, however, also highlight important challenges in measuring geographic distributions of non‐Christian populations, as well as total religious populations in all religious traditions.     

Reliability measures in item response theory: Manifest versus latent correlation functions

For item response theory (IRT) models, which belong to the class of generalized linear or non‐linear mixed models, reliability at the scale of observed scores (i.e., manifest correlation) is more difficult to calculate than latent correlation based reliability, but usually of greater scientific interest. This is not least because it cannot be calculated explicitly when the logit link is used in conjunction with normal random effects. As such, approximations such as Fisher's information coefficient, Cronbach's α, or the latent correlation are calculated, allegedly because it is easy to do so. Cronbach's α has well‐known and serious drawbacks, Fisher's information is not meaningful under certain circumstances, and there is an important but often overlooked difference between latent and manifest correlations. Here, manifest correlation refers to correlation between observed scores, while latent correlation refers to correlation between scores at the latent (e.g., logit or probit) scale. Thus, using one in place of the other can lead to erroneous conclusions. Taylor series based reliability measures, which are based on manifest correlation functions, are derived and a careful comparison of reliability measures based on latent correlations, Fisher's information, and exact reliability is carried out. The latent correlations are virtually always considerably higher than their manifest counterparts, Fisher's information measure shows no coherent behaviour (it is even negative in some cases), while the newly introduced Taylor series based approximations reflect the exact reliability very closely. Comparisons among the various types of correlations, for various IRT models, are made using algebraic expressions, Monte Carlo simulations, and data analysis. Given the light computational burden and the performance of Taylor series based reliability measures, their use is recommended.     

Using Interactive Theater to Create Socioculturally Relevant Community-Based Intimate Partner Violence Prevention

This article describes the use of interactive theater, audience response assessment, and peer educators to create community-generated approaches for bystander interventions (i.e., actions taken by people who become aware of controlling, abusive and violent behavior of others) to prevent intimate partner violence (IPV) and to foster change in community norms. We include a case example of an ongoing university–community partnership, which mobilizes community members to develop and implement socioculturally relevant IPV prevention programs in multiple Asian communities. We used interactive theater at a community event—a walk to raise awareness about IPV in South Asian communities—and examined how the enacted bystander interventions reflect specific community contexts. We detail the challenges and limitations we have encountered in our attempts to implement this approach in collaboration with our community partners.     

人类为什么会好奇?人际好奇的概念、功能及理论解释

人际好奇是个体对他人的信息产生的好奇,其中包括对他人的生活经历、生活习惯和细节,以及想法、感受、动机产生的好奇。人际好奇受到个体性别、年龄、个体状态、人格和文化价值观等因素的影响,而且人际好奇在人际关系的建立与维持、人格判断、文化学习和维护社会规范等方面有积极影响。人际好奇可以用本能论、信息缺口理论、兴趣?剥夺理论和社会比较理论加以解释。目前对人际好奇研究较少,未来需从毕生发展的角度探索人际好奇,研究网络中的人际好奇现象,进一步完善人际好奇的测量方式,加强基础研究和实证研究,考虑文化因素的影响等。