Posttraumatic spiritual growth: a phenomenological study of cancer survivors

A small but growing body of research has sought to investigate the specific role of religion and spirituality in posttraumatic growth. Recently, investigations have reported identifying spiritual growth following trauma, specifically that of cancer patients and survivors. The purpose of this qualitative study was to investigate how having cancer affects the spiritual growth of cancer survivors across a multidimensional conceptualisation of spirituality. The researchers investigated posttraumatic spiritual growth by studying the lived experience of 13 cancer survivors using phenomenological data analysis. Participants reported experiencing spiritual growth across the following domains of spirituality: (a) general spirituality, (b) spiritual development, (c) spiritual social participation, (d) spiritual private practices, (e) spiritual support, (f) spiritual coping, (g) spirituality as motivating forces, (h) spiritual experiences, and (i) spiritual commitment. Growth was not endorsed by participants in the following three domains of spirituality outlined in the model: (a) spiritual history, (b) spiritual beliefs and values, and (c) spiritual techniques for regulating and reconciling relationships. Two additional domains of growth emerged beyond the theoretical model that was used to guide this study from participants’ narratives, including evangelism and enhanced spirituality of family/friends.     

‘Serving Two Masters’: Protestant Churches in Korea and Money

Materialism or religio-economic entrepreneurship has been a primary impetus for the explosive growth of Protestant churches in Korea, especially since the 1960s, when rapid industrialisation began to propel Korean society into tremendous economic prosperity. However, since the early 1990s, there has been stagnation, even decline. The primary aim of this article is to identify the most pressing problems facing the Korean Protestant churches and show how these problems have begun to render them less vibrant and possibly to bring about decline in their membership. More specifically, the article identifies how materialism, having deeply penetrated Korean Christianity, led it first to grow and then decline; thus robbing it of its requisite or intrinsic organisational characteristics – being the light and salt of the world.     

Learning the Church: ecclesiological thought and ecclesial practice

This article illustrates how the ecclesiological ideas developed by Professor Daniel Hardy (1930–2007) have been received and used in the life of the Church of England's Diocese of Coventry. It highlights the importance of theological engagement for those in a position of oversight and leadership in the Church, and goes on to connect Hardy's language of intensity and extensity with the story, structure and ethos of Coventry Cathedral in general, and with the iconic Stalingrad Madonna in particular, illustrating the rich synthesis that can be achieved between systematic ecclesiology and the central ethos of a church. The article goes on to argue that certain practices in the Church of England in general, and Coventry Diocese in particular, resonate well with Hardy's idea of ‘socio-poiesis’. These include the nurture of virtuous ecclesial practice and use of measurement in parish life (notably through ‘Natural Church Development)’, the new form taken by ecumenism in British cities and the role of the Bishop within it, as well as the embeddedness of the Church of England in many of the nation's schools. In relating Hardy's key themes to these concrete practices, this article challenges the stale division between Church and Academy, advocating fruitful and animating dialogue between the two as the best response to the challenges faced by each today.     

Spontaneity: a psychoanalytic inquiry

Abstract

This paper examines the experience of consulting to experiential groups and endeavours to draw some conclusions about this significant element in training.     

Responses to the September 11, 2001, Terrorist Attacks: Experience of an Indirect Traumatic Event and Its Relationship With Perceived Benefits

Little is known about how people might benefit from an indirectly experienced traumatic event. The authors examined the relationship between perception of benefit and trauma symptoms in response to a relatively severe, but indirectly experienced, traumatic event. The authors sampled from 2 colleges located in the southeastern United States (N = 136). Individuals responded to questionnaires that assessed perceived benefits and trauma symptoms 1-2 weeks after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, and again approximately 10 weeks later. Participants did perceive benefits from witnessing this event, although their perception of benefit declined over time. Level of trauma symptoms correlated positively with perception of benefit, and experiencing a previous trauma also correlated positively with perceived benefits. Additional analysis indicated that level of trauma symptoms mediated the relationship between previous trauma and perception of benefit. These findings help to elucidate understanding of the development of perceived benefits in response to indirectly experienced events.     

Do Mindsets Shape Students’ Well-Being and Performance?

“Mindsets (or implicit theories) are people’s lay beliefs about the nature of human attributes, such as intelligence or personality”. Individuals with a fixed mindset believe that intelligence is an unchangeable trait, whereas those with a growth mindset think of it as a malleable quality that can be increased and developed. This study explored the relationships among growth mindset, wellbeing, and performance in a sample of 1,240 students from a multi-campus private university located in 18 states across Mexico. Our results indicated that individuals who scored high in growth (vs. fixed) mindset showed increased levels of wellbeing and also performed better in school. Furthermore, we found that wellbeing mediated the relationship between growth mindset and performance and that the effect of growth mindset on grades was higher among younger students. These findings have interesting implications for psychology and education.     

On the Mathematical Relationship Between Latent Change Score and Autoregressive Cross-Lagged Factor Approaches: Cautions for Inferring Causal Relationship Between Variables

The present paper focuses on the relationship between latent change score (LCS) and autoregressive cross-lagged (ARCL) factor models in longitudinal designs. These models originated from different theoretical traditions for different analytic purposes, yet they share similar mathematical forms. In this paper, we elucidate the mathematical relationship between these models and show that the LCS model is reduced to the ARCL model when fixed effects are assumed in the slope factor scores. Additionally, we provide an applied example using height and weight data from a gerontological study. Throughout the example, we emphasize caution in choosing which model (ARCL or LCS) to apply due to the risk of obtaining misleading results concerning the presence and direction of causal precedence between two variables. We suggest approaching model specification not only by comparing estimates and fit indices between the LCS and ARCL models (as well as other models) but also by giving appropriate weight to substantive and theoretical considerations, such as assessing the justifiability of the assumption of random effects in the slope factor scores.     

Latent Growth Models with Floors,Ceilings, and Random Knots

In longitudinal/developmental studies, individual growth trajectories are sometimes bounded by a floor at the beginning of the observation period and/or a ceiling toward the end of the observation period (or vice versa), resulting in inherently nonlinear growth patterns. If the trajectories between the floor and ceiling are approximately linear, such longitudinal growth patterns can be described with a linear piecewise (spline) model in which segments join at knots. In these scenarios, it may be of specific interest for researchers to examine the timing when transition occurs, and in some occasions also to examine the levels of the floors and/or ceilings if they are not known and fixed. In the current study, we propose a reparameterized piecewise latent growth curve model so that a direct estimation of the random knots (and, if needed, a direct estimation of random floors and ceilings) is possible. We derive the model reparameterization using a 4-step structured latent curve modeling approach. We provide two illustrative examples to demonstrate how the proposed reparameterized models can be fitted to longitudinal growth data using the popular SEM software Mplus and we supply the full coding for applied researchers’ reference.     

Time-specific Errors in Growth Curve Modeling: Type-1 Error Inflation and a Possible Solution with Mixed-Effects Models

Growth curve modeling (GCM) has been one of the most popular statistical methods to examine participants’ growth trajectories using longitudinal data. In spite of the popularity of GCM, little attention has been paid to the possible influence of time-specific errors, which influence all participants at each timepoint. In this article, we demonstrate that the failure to take into account such time-specific errors in GCM produces considerable inflation of type-1 error rates in statistical tests of fixed effects (e.g., coefficients for the linear and quadratic terms). We propose a GCM that appropriately incorporates time-specific errors using mixed-effects models to address the problem. We also provide an applied example to illustrate that GCM with and without time-specific errors would lead to different substantive conclusions about the true growth trajectories. Comparisons with other models in longitudinal data analysis and potential issues of model misspecification are discussed.     

The relation between emotion regulation choice and posttraumatic growth

ABSTRACT

Previous research has examined emotion regulation (ER) and trauma in the context of psychopathology, yet little research has examined ER in posttraumatic growth (PTG), the experience of positive psychological change following a traumatic event. ER typically involves decreasing negative affect by engaging (e.g. reappraisal) or disengaging (e.g. distraction) with emotional content. To investigate how ER may support PTG, participants who experienced a traumatic event in the past 6 months completed a PTG questionnaire and an ER choice task in which they down regulated their negative emotion in response to negative pictures of varying intensity by choosing to distract or reappraise. Latent growth curve analyses revealed that an increase in reappraisal choice from low to high subjective stimulus intensity predicted higher PTG, suggesting that individuals who chose reappraisal more as intensity increased reported higher PTG. Findings suggest that reappraisal of negative stimuli following a traumatic event may be a key component of PTG.