Likening stairs in buildings to climbing a mountain: Self-reports of expected effects on stair climbing and objective measures of effectiveness

Objectives

Health promotion agencies advocate use of mountain climbing goals to encourage regular stair climbing, a current public health target. This paper tests effects of a mountain climbing campaign on objective measures of stair use for the first time.

Design

Field interview and quasi-experimental, interrupted time-series study.

Method

In field interviews, a convenience sample (n = 1350) responded to questions about different goals, i.e., heights of climb, to encourage stair use in buildings. Subsequently, a point-of-choice intervention with the main message ‘Take the stairs to the top of this building once a day and in a year, you would have climbed Mount Everest almost twice’ was tested in a 12-floor worksite. A no-message baseline was followed by installation of the intervention.

Results

Stair ascent (n = 62,716) and descent (n = 61,218) at the ground floor was measured with automated counters at baseline (11 days) and during the intervention (18 days). The majority of interviewees (60%) chose a message based on climbing Mt. Everest as the most motivating, with only 5% of interviewees not motivated by any climbing goal. Nonetheless, the subsequent intervention using the mountain climbing goal had no effect on stair climbing (OR = 0.96). As the campaign specifically targeted stair ascent, it failed to influence the behaviour with the greater public health dividend.

Conclusion

The discrepancy between pre-testing and the campaign may reflect the fact that performance goals can only be achieved at the end of the task and may not be continually rewarded during accumulation of behaviour towards the goal.     

企业中的上级信任：作为一种行动意愿

组织信任已成为管理学领域的热点研究议题, 虽然研究者开发了多种信任测量工具, 但多数信任测量工具与当前主导的组织信任定义不一致, 缺乏针对意愿的信任测量, 更没有研究探讨不同形态信任之间的关系及相应测量工具的适用范围。本研究以上级信任为切入点, 试图回答上述问题。研究1将信任视为一种行动意愿, 基于信任行为理论框架和开放性问卷结果, 开发了包含6个题目、“依赖”和“表露”两个维度的《企业员工对直接上级信任问卷》。研究2以553名企业员工为被试, 通过潜变量路径分析考察了不同形态信任之间的关系。结果显示：信任(意愿)受认知和情绪因素的共同影响; 可信度在信任基础和信任(意愿)间起部分中介作用; 信任(意愿)在可信度和工作满意的关系中起完全中介作用; 作为意愿的信任, 相对于信任基础(认知和情感信任)和可信度, 与信任结果变量(工作满意)关系最近, 能更直接、有效地测量信任水平。     

An Inkblot for the Implicit Assessment of Personality: The Semantic Misattribution Procedure

Misattributions people make about their own reaction to ambiguous stimuli can be used to measure personality self‐concepts implicitly. On the basis of a semantic misattribution priming paradigm [semantic misattribution procedure (SMP)], we assessed the implicit personality self‐concept related to three dimensions included in the Big‐Five model: conscientiousness, neuroticism, and extraversion. Across three studies (N1 = 98, N2 = 140, and N3 = 135), the SMP was robustly related, in the expected direction, to individual differences in self‐reported personality questionnaires and managed to predict both self‐reported and objectively measured behaviours. The main advantage of SMP over classical explicit measures of personality is its higher resistance to social desirability tendencies, although its psychometric properties are somewhat lower than those pertaining to explicit measures of personality. Finally, comparisons of our results with studies that used other implicit measures of personality self‐concept indicate that the SMP has higher criterion validity. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Measuring Social Peer Rejection during Childhood: Development and Validation

This article defines the construct of social peer rejection and describes the development of the Social Peer Rejection Measure. Social peer rejection entails being rejected, excluded, ostracized, or criticized by one's peers; lack of active sympathy and active dislike on the part of one's peers; ignoring; preventing access to friends, playtime activities, toys, or important information; verbal aggression; commands; and blaming the rejected child. Evidence for the validity and reliability of the scale is presented. Results indicated strong content validity, construct validity, and criterion-referenced validity. Differences were found between females and males in terms of insult, accusation, and reported levels of physical attack.     

German version of the Multidimensional Body-Self Relations Questionnaire – Appearance Scales (MBSRQ-AS): Confirmatory factor analysis and validation

The Multidimensional Body-Self Relations Questionnaire (MBSRQ) is a widely used questionnaire that measures body image as a multidimensional construct. The Appearance Scales (AS) of the MBSRQ (Appearance Evaluation, Appearance Orientation, Body Areas Satisfaction, Overweight Preoccupation and Self-Classified Weight) are subscales which facilitate a parsimonious assessment of appearance-related aspects of body image. The current study tested the psychometric properties and factor structure of a German translation of the MBSRQ-AS. Participants were n = 230 female patients with the SCID diagnosis of an eating disorder and n = 293 female healthy controls. In a confirmatory factor analysis, convincing goodness-of-fit indices emerged. The subscales of the questionnaire yielded good reliability and convergent and discriminant validity coefficients, with most items showing excellent characteristics. Like the English version, the German adaptation of the questionnaire can be recommended for a multidimensional assessment of appearance-related aspects of body image in both research and clinical practice.     

Person‐Centred and Experiential Psychotherapy Scale: Development and reliability of an adherence/competence measure for person‐centred and experiential psychotherapies

Aims: This study aimed to assess the reliability of the Person‐Centred and Experiential Psychotherapy Scale (PCEPS), a new adherence/competence measure of person‐centred and experiential psychotherapies. The PCEPS consists of 15 items with two subscales: Person-Centred Process and Experiential Process. Method: One‐hundred twenty audio‐recorded segments of therapy sessions were rated independently by two teams of three raters using the PCEPS. Half of the segments were 10 minutes long and the other half were 15 minutes long. Six therapists were experienced therapists and four were counsellors in training. Seven of the therapists identified their work as ‘person‐centred’, and three identified their work as ‘process‐experiential’. Three raters were qualified and experienced person‐centred therapists and three raters were person‐centred counselling trainees in their first year of training. Results: Interrater reliabilities were good (alpha: .68–.86), especially when ratings were averaged across items (alpha: .87); interitem reliabilities were quite high (alpha: .98). Exploratory factor analyses revealed a 12‐item facilitative relationship factor that cuts across Person‐Centred and Experiential subscales (alpha: .98), and a nonfacilitative directiveness factor (3 items, alpha: .89). Conclusions/Implications: The PCEPS has potential for use in RCT research as well as in counselling training and supervision, but will require further testing and validation.     

A brief measure of attitudes towards qualitative research in psychology

The use and teaching of qualitative research methods in psychology is increasing, but to date no measure has been developed to identify and measure changes in attitudes towards qualitative research in psychology student, academic, and scientist‐practitioner populations. In this article, we present the development and initial validation of a new measure, Attitudes Toward Qualitative Research in Psychology. A pool of 46 items developed from previous qualitative research along with validation measures was administered via an online survey to a convenience sample of 288 psychology students, academics, and psychologists. Principal axis factoring with varimax rotation produced a four‐factor, 18‐item solution. All factors have acceptable internal reliability. Known‐groups validity analyses based on preferred research orientation, and convergent and divergent validity analyses based on measures of attitudes towards quantitative research and researcher/practitioner orientation, provide initial validation of the measure. This brief, internally reliable measure can be used in assessing attitudes towards qualitative research in psychology and measuring change over time.     

Bottom-up and top-down factors of motion direction learning transfer

Perceptual learning of motion discrimination has long been believed to be motion direction specific. However, recent studies using a double-training paradigm, in which the to-be-transferred condition was experienced through practicing an irrelevant task, found that perceptual learning in various visual tasks, including motion direction discrimination, can transfer completely to new conditions. This transfer occurred when the transfer stimulus was subconsciously presented, or when top-down attention was allocated to the transfer stimulus (which was absent). In the current study, observers were exposed subconsciously, or directed top-down attention, to the transfer motion direction, either simultaneously or successively with training. Data showed that motion direction learning transferred to the transfer direction, and suggest that motion direction learning specificity may result from under-activations of untrained visual neurons due to insufficient bottom-up stimulation and/or lack of top-down attention during training. These results shed new light on the neural mechanisms underlying motion perceptual learning and provide a constraint for models of motion perceptual learning.     

Development and Validation of a Military Training Mental Toughness Inventory

Three studies were conducted to develop and validate a mental toughness instrument for use in military training environments. Study 1 (n = 435) focused on item generation and testing the structural integrity of the Military Training Mental Toughness Inventory (MTMTI). The measure assessed ability to maintain optimal performance under pressure from a range of different stressors experienced by recruits during infantry basic training. Study 2 (n = 104) examined the concurrent validity, predictive validity, and test–retest reliability of the measure. Study 3 (n = 106) confirmed the predictive validity of the measure with a sample of more specialized infantry recruits. Overall, the military training mental toughness inventory demonstrated sound psychometric properties and structural validity. Furthermore, it was found to possess good test–retest reliability, concurrent validity, and predicted performance in 2 different training contexts with 2 separate samples.     

Attachment anxiety and implicit self-concept of neuroticism: Associations in women but not men

Previous research has shown that adult attachment-related anxiety is associated with the explicit self-concept of neuroticism. It remains to be clarified whether attachment anxiety is related to the implicit self-concept of neuroticism. There is evidence that gender can moderate the strength of correlation between implicit and explicit measures. The Experiences in Close Relationships scale and the NEO Five-Factor Inventory (NEO-FFI) were administered to 106 healthy adults along with an Implicit Association Test assessing neuroticism. Attachment anxiety correlated with NEO-FFI neuroticism, regardless of gender. Attachment anxiety was correlated with neuroticism as measured by the IAT in women but not men. Results from multiple regression analysis showed that gender was a moderator of the relationship between attachment anxiety and implicit neuroticism. Our data suggest that in the associative network of women with high attachment anxiety associative representations of the self are more strongly linked to attributes of neuroticism compared to women with low attachment anxiety.