How patients’ representations of cystic fibrosis-related diabetes inform their health behaviours

Background: Although diabetes is a frequent complication of cystic fibrosis (CF), patients’ behaviours tend not to comply with best practice recommendations. Using Leventhal’s Common-Sense Model, we address this issue by exploring patients’ representations of CF-related diabetes (CFRD) to better understand the discrepancy between patients’ expected and observed health behaviours.

Methods: Semi-structured individual interviews were conducted with patients (n = 39) in six CF clinics in Quebec, Canada. These interviews were part of a larger research project on screening and management practices for CFRD.

Results: Illness representations differed between two groups of interviewed patients: (1) one group had either CF without dysglycemia or CF with impaired glucose tolerance; and (2) the other group had CFRD. Both representations were internally consistent and encompassed Leventhal’s five dimensions of illness representation: illness identity, cause, timeline, consequences and control.

Conclusions: Patients require specific information on CFRD. The screening phase could be a crucial time to help patients adjust their representations to fit the reality of CFRD.     

Those Little Pieces of White Bread: Early Lutheran Initiatives among the Hungry Poor

Abstract : Martin Luther's theological and sacramental convictions shaped his commitments to social reform, especially the reform of social welfare and the distribution of money and goods in early modern northern Europe. His early critique of merchant capitalism, political lobbyists, and global economic monopolies prompts contemporary questions about the just distribution of wealth in a world where too many have too little.     

Education for Vocation in Public Life USA1

Abstract : The Lutheran sensibility is that life is a paradox, a dialectical tension, in the midst of which one must act and live. This sensibility informs an open and dialectical educational model for liberal arts education, which encourages a dynamic interaction of faith and learning. It supports a vocational understanding of public life that cultivates critical analysis while seeking to encourage citizenship for the common good.     

Differentiation,perceived stress and therapeutic alliance as key factors in the early stage of couple therapy

A sample of 168 couples were assessed at intake and over the first six sessions of treatment providing the opportunity to investigate not only the impact of client and common factors on initial levels of satisfaction, but also trajectories of change in satisfaction over time. The study used multi‐level modelling to examine changes in relationship satisfaction for both partners, thus enabling the couple to be maintained as the unit of analysis. We first examined changes in satisfaction and, having discovered differences there, we then investigated the impact of client factors of differentiation and stress in explaining these differences in relationship satisfaction. Finally we explored the additional influence of the common factor, therapeutic alliance, while controlling for the client factors, on relationship satisfaction.     

共同方法偏差检验：问题与建议

检验共同方法偏差(CMB)已经成为心理学实证研究中的一个环节。本文从数学模型角度分析方法变异(CMV)的影响,并讨论了CMB常用的检验法——Harman单因子法、控制未测量的潜在方法因子(ULMC)法、验证性因子分析(CFA)标签变量法的检验力。Harman单因子法检验力很低,ULMC法检验力中等,CFA标签变量法检验力虽然较高但问题也不少。提出一个好的检验法应当满足的三个特点：符合CMV的数学模型、评价标准不受非CMV来源的影响、对CMV、CMB的变化敏感。最后给出CMB检验的建议。     

Proposing,Pretending, and Propriety: A Response to Don Fallis

This note responds to criticism put forth by Don Fallis of an account of lying in terms of the Stalnakerian view of assertion. According to this account, to lie is to say something one believes to be false and thereby propose that it become common ground. Fallis objects by presenting an example to show that one can lie even though one does not propose to make what one says common ground. It is argued here that this objection does not present a problem for the view of lying as Stalnakerian assertion. Responding to the objection brings out important features of this view of discourse and of assertion.     

“Our Fellow Creatures”

This paper defends “moral individualism” against various arguments that have been intended to show that membership in the human species or participation in our distinctively human form of life is a sufficient basis for a moral status higher than that of any animal. Among the arguments criticized are the “nature-of-the-kind argument,” which claims that it is the nature of all human beings to have certain higher psychological capacities, even if, contingently, some human beings lack them, and various versions of the idea that there is a special form of life that all human beings share but of which no animal can be a full participant. The paper concludes that none of these arguments succeeds in demonstrating that there are moral reasons to permit animals to be treated less well than members of our own species whose psychological capacities and potential are no higher than those of the animals.     

Mystical Experience Among Tibetan Buddhists: The Common Core Thesis Revisited

In the study of mysticism the debate has centered on whether a universal experiential core exists regardless of religious interpretation. The current investigation combines Jamesian empiricist and social constructivist perspectives to argue that stable experiential facets load variously on factors to construct local interpretations. Local interpretations reflect a family resemblance—a mystical common core experienced across cultures. Results of confirmatory factor analyses, based on data from 240 Tibetan Buddhist adults, suggest statistical model fit and superiority for the three‐factor model compared to the unidimensional model. Pure experience can be distinguished explicitly from its context‐specific hermeneutical construal.     

How Does the Relationship Facilitate Productive Client Thinking?

My thesis is: a) that the primary client activity that facilitates change is their productive thinking, b) that one key way the therapeutic relationship is helpful is that it facilitates this kind of activity, and c) that if we look at the therapist–client dyad as a group, then we can further understand how the therapy dialogue facilitates productive client thinking through recent ideas about socially shared cognition.     

On Bayesian estimation in unrestricted factor analysis

It is shown that the common and unique variance estimates produced by Martin & McDonald's Bayesian estimation procedure for the unrestricted common factor model have a predictable sum which is always greater than the maximum likelihood estimate of the total variance. This fact is used to justify a suggested simple alternative method of specifying the Bayesian parameters required by the procedure.