CAMP: A community‐based approach to promoting safe sex behaviour in adolescence

The primary goal of this study was to describe the development and assessment of the Community Awareness Motivation Partnership (CAMP) Teen Theatre intervention. Based on the behavioural ecological model, CAMP addressed the role of contraceptive use in safe sex behaviour through a brief informative, entertaining, and culturally responsive dramatization programme. Adolescents (N = 1613) between the ages of 11 and 18 (M = 13.31, SD = 0.76) received the intervention, and 961 participants completed both pre‐ and post‐tests. The majority of participants were Latino (78.5%, n = 1039), many of whom were first generation immigrants. Results indicated that the intervention increased participants' reported intentions to delay sex and use contraceptives. The intervention produced short‐term changes in safe‐sex behavioural intentions and knowledge. Suggestions for producing long‐term changes were discussed. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Simple and multiple P‐splines regression with shape constraints

In many research areas, especially within social and behavioural sciences, the relationship between predictor and criterion variables is often assumed to have a particular shape, such as monotone, single‐peaked or U‐shaped. Such assumptions can be transformed into (local or global) constraints on the sign of the nth‐order derivative of the functional form. To check for such assumptions, we present a non‐parametric regression method, P‐splines regression, with additional asymmetric discrete penalties enforcing the constraints. We show that the corresponding loss function is convex and present a Newton–Raphson algorithm to optimize. Constrained P‐splines are illustrated with an application on monotonicity‐constrained regression with both one and two predictor variables, using data from research on the cognitive development of children.     

Modelling non‐normal data: The relationship between the skew‐normal factor model and the quadratic factor model

Maximum likelihood estimation of the linear factor model for continuous items assumes normally distributed item scores. We consider deviations from normality by means of a skew‐normally distributed factor model or a quadratic factor model. We show that the item distributions under a skew‐normal factor are equivalent to those under a quadratic model up to third‐order moments. The reverse only holds if the quadratic loadings are equal to each other and within certain bounds. We illustrate that observed data which follow any skew‐normal factor model can be so well approximated with the quadratic factor model that the models are empirically indistinguishable, and that the reverse does not hold in general. The choice between the two models to account for deviations of normality is illustrated by an empirical example from clinical psychology.     

Myriad Philosophical Methodologies

This article offers an overview of philosophical methodologies. In an attempt to avoid a certain circularity, the article itself tries to avoid consciously or solely deploying and engaging with any current standard notion of what constitutes a philosophical method or philosophy itself. It hopes to find some of the possible places in which philosophy occurs, and this turns out to include (at least) such endeavours as literature, art, poetry, and linguistics. From here it considers how almost anything—for example, conversation, everyday life, and love—can also be philosophy. An attempt is made to identify some characteristic feature of philosophy as it occurs in all such forms. In the end, the simultaneous enacting of a peculiar optimism and particular humility both, in the search for knowledge, is put forward as potentially sufficient to at least begin to identify philosophy across its many guises.     

Young women with and without non-suicidal self-injury: A comparison of romantic relationship functioning

IntroductionThe interpersonal context of an individual struggling with non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI) is of critical importance.ObjectiveThe purpose of the current study is to offer, through a dyadic perspective, a unique portrait of the relevant indicators of romantic relationship functioning (i.e., romantic attachment, dyadic trust, dyadic coping, relationship satisfaction, and caregiving) that distinguish young women who have engaged in NSSI from those who have not.MethodParticipants consisted of 20 women who indicated having engaged in NSSI in the past six months and 20 women who indicated having never engaged in NSSI, along with their respective partner.ResultsResults revealed that women who engaged in NSSI were more likely to report subjective distress in the form of attachment anxiety and distrust, as well as lower relationship satisfaction and adaptive dyadic coping strategies, compared to women who had never engaged in NSSI. Findings also showed that partners of women who engaged in self-injury reported more attachment anxiety than partners of women who do not engage in NSSI.ConclusionThese results highlight the importance of romantic relationship dynamics and the potential associations with engagement in self-injurious behaviors, which has implications for the development of effective prevention and intervention strategies.     

Using unexpected questions to elicit information and cues to deceit in interpreter‐based interviews

We examined whether speech‐related differences between truth tellers and liars are more profound when answering unexpected questions than when answering expected questions. We also examined whether the presence of an interpreter affected these results. In the experiment, 204 participants from the United States (Hispanic participants only), Russia, and the Republic of Korea were interviewed in their native language by a native‐speaking interviewer or by a British interviewer through an interpreter. Truth tellers discussed a trip that they had made during the last 12 months; liars fabricated a story about such a trip. The key dependent variables were the amount of information provided and the proportion of all statements that were complications. The proportion of complications distinguished truth tellers from liars better when answering unexpected than expected questions, but only in interpreter‐absent interviews. The number of details provided did not differ between truth tellers and liars or between interpreter‐absent and interpreter‐present interviews.     

Unformulated experience,dissociation, and Nachträglichkeit

The paper is divided into two parts. The first part is an interpersonal/relational psychoanalytic account of some relationships between dissociation, time, and unformulated experience. Trauma, and the dissociation to which trauma leads, freezes time, which makes it impossible to formulate certain kinds of new experience. Instead, potential new meanings remain unformulated. The route of clinical access to frozen time is the interpersonal field: to thaw time and allow new experience, the ways in which the interpersonal field is itself frozen need to be addressed. A clinical illustration of these ideas is offered. The second part of the paper presents and explores a point of confluence between the views in Part 1 and certain aspects of French psychoanalysis, with particular reference to the concept of Nachträglichkeit in the work of Jean Laplanche and Haydée Faimberg.     

Ghosted?: Navigating strategies for reducing uncertainty and implications surrounding ambiguous loss

Ghosting is the unilateral dissolution process of ceasing communication through media. When ghosted, non‐initiators are often left without the ability to navigate the resulting uncertainty or impending dissolution processes. Utilizing uncertainty reduction theory and ambiguous loss, this investigation explores effective and ineffective strategies used to find answers, reduce uncertainty, and navigate post‐dissolution consequences. Employing two studies from Amazon's Mechanical Turk, a thematic analysis to delineate and affirm categories—7 effective and ineffective strategies and 11 categories of personal and relational implications after being ghosted—was used. These studies provide insight about non‐initiators process to resolve their uncertainty and highlight ramifications from ambiguity that non‐initiators experience after being ghosted. These findings discuss connections to knowledge acquisition, closure processing, and consequences of ghosting.