Cronbach's Alpha: Review of Limitations and Associated Recommendations

This paper discusses the limitations of Cronbach's alpha as a sole index of reliability, showing how Cronbach's alpha is analytically handicapped to capture important measurement errors and scale dimensionality, and how it is not invariant under variations of scale length, interitem correlation, and sample characteristics. In addition, the limitations and strengths of several recommendations on how to ameliorate these problems were critically reviewed. It was shown that the reliance on Cronbach's alpha as a sole index of reliability is no longer sufficiently warranted. This requires that other indices of internal consistency be reported along with alpha coefficient, and that when a scale is composed of large number of items, factor analysis should be performed, and appropriate internal consistency estimation method applied. This approach, if adopted, will largely minimize and guard against uncritical use of Cronbach's alpha coefficient.     

Causal Attribution: Analysis of Patterns and Influencing Factors Among Learners at a Higher Education Institution

The study explored the academic patterns and implications of academic attributions made by students who had been given test feedback at a higher learning institution in Zimbabwe. A random sample of 8 (female = 4; male= 4; mean age = 21.9, passed a test = 4; failed the test = 4) participants was purposefully selected from a class of second year students majoring in psychology and human resources management. Audio-taped semi-structured interviews were conducted to collect data. Thematic content analysis was used to analyse data. Results indicate that culture and gender moderate academic causal attributions.     

An approach to supervision in health care settings

This article describes a flexible approach to supervision which allows for the fact that integration may mean different things to different people under different circumstances. In the health contexts described the clinical mix which was found most helpful in the supervisory work combined psychodynamic, Jungian and humanistic perspectives. The application of this particular mix of clinical techniques is demonstrated with reference to the work with two supervisees. It is felt that the methods employed are consistent with the current notions of difference in counselling and psychotherapy.     

‘Rehabilitation' in schizophrenia: A psychoanalytic viewpoint

This is a study which investigates some difficulties people with schizophrenia have in the long term; looks at some of the psychoanalytical theories concerning the difficulties they have in keeping an internal caring maternal imago; the consequences for them; how the NHS can help by providing an external caring maternal imago.     

The Role of Schools in Building the Resilience of Youth Faced with Adversity

This study explored factors related to risk, resilience and health amongst South African teenagers. Grade nine students (N = 472; males = 210, females = 262, age range = 12 to 18 years) at seven schools in the Western Cape participated in the study. The California Healthy Kids Survey, which includes risk and resilience modules, was utilized. Focus group interviews were also conducted with the students to determine their needs and support at school. Questionnaires relating to the health promoting schools framework were administered to teachers. Quantitative and qualitative research methodologies were employed. The results indicated that the students were engaged in a variety of risk behaviors that threatened their well-being and that their external and internal assets were limited. A multi-faceted approach to reducing risk and enhancing resilience, involving family, peer, school and community support within a health promoting schools framework, is advocated.     

Book Reviews

Books reviewed:
Robert Clark, Mr. White's Confession
J. Wentzel van Huyssteen, The Shaping of Rationality: Toward Inter–disciplinarity in Theology and Science
Phil Hefner's, Errata from Dialog 41, no. 1 (Spring 2002)     

The trajectory of psychoanalysis: A prognosticationy3

I present an overview of the development to this point of psychoanalysis as a discipline'both as a theory of the mind and a treatment of the disorders of the mind' and offer a prediction concerning evolving development over its (near) future. My focus is on the coherence of psychoanalysis as a theoretical structure, starting with Freud's strenuous endeavours to maintain the psychoanalysis that he had single‐handedly created as a unitary and unified theory, tracing then the breakdown of this effort, even in Freud's lifetime, into the burgeoning theoretical diversity or pluralism that characterises worldwide psychoanalysis today, and then going on to the beginning appearance of evidences' not yet widely remarked' of growing convergences from within very disparate and even seemingly very opposed theoretical perspectives, at least at the level of technical interventions and experience‐near clinical theory, with implications, however, even for the level of experience‐distant general (metapsychological) theory. Such a development, if sustained, as I anticipate, would strengthen the credibility of psychoanalysis as a science of the mind, amenable to growth through empirical research in accord with the canons of scientific method.     

Interfaith Dialogue and the Science-and-Religion Discussion

The science-and-religion dialogue has so often assumed that the key issues for discussion are those that have arisen within the Western Christian religious and intellectual tradition that little interest has been devoted to the possible insights that the presence of non-Christian voices in the dialogue might bring. In the following I explore the benefits of a truly multireligious dialogue on science and religion and offer a model for integrating various religious perspectives into the science-and-religion dialogue. Of course, taking the multifaith perspectives of the religions seriously also means making a dialogue between religions a component of the science-and-religion dialogue, and I discuss how such a dialogue might unfold along with key ideas that might emerge in ever more interesting ways once the dialogue begins.     

解魅、分化与现代性

在前现代社会里,由于人们对生活采取一种一体化的、富有意义的态度,一元论的世界观产生了。在那个时代,人们不能清楚地区分不同的行动和不同的领域。随着世界的“解魅”,这种整体性的“世界图景”开始消解,行动的模式和标准出现分化,与行动相关的制度和系统也相应地分立,这便是现代社会的本质。并且,由于客观的价值秩序消亡了,我们的时代目睹了价值多元论的趋势,而这与自由主义的价值中立的原则紧密相关。     

儒家的宗教性及其与西方基督教精神之比较

本文力图从一个中西学术界争论颇多的问题———“儒家是否是宗教”的问题中发掘出问题背后所隐含的中西宗教文化交流的时代契机。作者首先对儒家“宗教性”的概念进行定义 ,然后从哲学、道德和超越性三方面阐释了儒家宗教性的具体体现 ,并比较分析了传统向度意义上的儒家和西方基督教在宗教精神方面的不同 ,包括超越意识、终极性宗教存在、对“人”的认识以及对“心灵”的认识。最后探讨了儒家与基督教对话的可能性和必要性。