Secular or nonreligious? Investigating and interpreting generic ‘not religious’ categories and populations

In research dealing with religious affiliation, generic nonreligious categories – ‘no religion’, ‘not religious’, ‘nonreligious’, ‘nones’ – are frequently used to measure secularity and secularisation processes. Analysis of these categories is, however, problematic because they have not received dedicated methodological attention. Using qualitative research conducted in the UK, this article investigates what nonreligious categories measure and, specifically, whether they indicate non-identification or disaffiliation as assumed or an alternative form of cultural affiliation. Findings suggest that generic nonreligious categories are sometimes used to express substantive positions and public identities, and that these are diverse. These findings flatten distinctions between religious and nonreligious categories as ‘positive’ and ‘negative’ respectively and indicate problems therefore in using nonreligious identification to measure secularity and secularisation. They suggest nonreligious identification is, however, a useful indicator of the advance of nonreligious cultures and the ‘nonreligionisation’ of societies.     

Towards a Pan‐cultural Personality Structure: Input from 11 Psycholexical Studies

The purpose of the present study is to find the common kernel of different trait taxonomic studies and find out how the individual structures relate to this common kernel. Trait terms from 11 psycholexically based taxonomies were all translated into English. On the basis of the commonalities in English, the 11 matrices were merged into a joint matrix with 7104 subjects and 1993 trait terms. Untranslatable terms produced large areas with missing data. To arrive at the kernel structure of the joint matrix, a simultaneous component analysis was applied. In addition, the kernel structures were compared with the individual taxonomy trait structures, obtained via principal component analysis. The findings provide evidence of a structure consisting of three components to stand out as the core of the taxonomies included in this study; those components were named dynamism, affiliation, and order. Moreover, the relations between these three kernel components and those of a six‐component solution (completing the six‐factor model) are provided. Copyright © 2014 European Association of Personality Psychology     

Psychotherapy across languages: beliefs,attitudes and practices of monolingual and multilingual therapists with their multilingual patients

Aims: The present study investigates beliefs, attitudes and practices of 101 monolingual and multilingual therapists in their interactions with multilingual patients. Method: A mixed‐method approach was adopted using an online questionnaire with closed questions, and informed questions in interviews with one monolingual and two multilingual therapists. Results: A principal component analysis yielded a four‐factor solution accounting for 41% of the variance. The first dimension, which explained 17% of variance, reflects therapists' attunement towards their bilingual patients (attunement versus collusion). Further analysis showed that the 18 monolingual therapists differed significantly from their 83 bi‐ or multilingual peers on this dimension. The follow‐up interviews confirmed this result. Discussion: Recommendations based on these findings are made for psychotherapy training and supervision.     

Associations between attention,affect and cardiac activity in a single yoga session for female cancer survivors: An enactive neurophenomenology-based approach

Yoga practice is reported to lead to improvements in quality of life, psychological functioning, and symptom indices in cancer survivors. Importantly, meditative states experienced within yoga practice are correlated to neurophysiological systems that moderate both focus of attention and affective valence. The current study used a mixed methods approach based in neurophenomenology to investigate associations between attention, affect, and cardiac activity during a single yoga session for female cancer survivors. Yoga practice was associated with a linear increase in associative attention and positive affective valence, while shifts in cardiac activity were related to the intensity of each yoga sequence. Changes in attention and affect were predicted by concurrently assessed cardiac activity. Awareness of breathing, physical movement, and increased relaxation were reported by participants as potential mechanisms for yoga’s salutary effects. While yoga practice shares commonalities with exercise and relaxation training, yoga may serve primarily as a promising meditative attention-affect regulation training methodology.     

A Cross-Classified CFA-MTMM Model for Structurally Different and Nonindependent Interchangeable Methods

Multirater (multimethod, multisource) studies are increasingly applied in psychology. Eid and colleagues (2008) proposed a multilevel confirmatory factor model for multitrait-multimethod (MTMM) data combining structurally different and multiple independent interchangeable methods (raters). In many studies, however, different interchangeable raters (e.g., peers, subordinates) are asked to rate different targets (students, supervisors), leading to violations of the independence assumption and to cross-classified data structures. In the present work, we extend the ML-CFA-MTMM model by Eid and colleagues (2008) to cross-classified multirater designs. The new C4 model (Cross-Classified CTC[M-1] Combination of Methods) accounts for nonindependent interchangeable raters and enables researchers to explicitly model the interaction between targets and raters as a latent variable. Using a real data application, it is shown how credibility intervals of model parameters and different variance components can be obtained using Bayesian estimation techniques.     

Grounded Theory methods in child psychotherapy research

This article considers the place of qualitative research in psychoanalysis and child psychotherapy. It discusses why research methodology for many years occupied so small a place in these fields, and examines the cultural and social developments since the 1960s which have changed this situation, giving formal but also qualitative methods of research much greater significance. It reflects on the different pressures to develop explicit research methods which arise both from outside the psychoanalytic field, as a condition of its continued professional survival, and from within it, where its main aim is the development of fundamental psychoanalytic knowledge. It suggests that the conduct of mainly quantitative research into treatment outcomes is largely a response to these external pressures, whilst the main benefits to be gained from the development of qualitative research methods, such as Grounded Theory, are in facilitating the knowledge-generating capacities and achievements of child psychotherapists themselves. The paper describes Grounded Theory methods, and explains how they can be valuable in the recognition of hitherto unrecognised meanings and patterns as these are made visible in clinical practice. Finally, it briefly describes three examples of completed doctoral studies, all of which have added significantly to the knowledge-base of child psychotherapy, and which demonstrate how much can be accomplished using this method of research.     

Robust Methods for Moderation Analysis with a Two-Level Regression Model

Moderation analysis has many applications in social sciences. Most widely used estimation methods for moderation analysis assume that errors are normally distributed and homoscedastic. When these assumptions are not met, the results from a classical moderation analysis can be misleading. For more reliable moderation analysis, this article proposes two robust methods with a two-level regression model when the predictors do not contain measurement error. One method is based on maximum likelihood with Student's t distribution and the other is based on M-estimators with Huber-type weights. An algorithm for obtaining the robust estimators is developed. Consistent estimates of standard errors of the robust estimators are provided. The robust approaches are compared against normal-distribution-based maximum likelihood (NML) with respect to power and accuracy of parameter estimates through a simulation study. Results show that the robust approaches outperform NML under various distributional conditions. Application of the robust methods is illustrated through a real data example. An R program is developed and documented to facilitate the application of the robust methods.     

Career counseling meets motivational interviewing: A sequential analysis of dynamic counselor–client interactions

Motivational Interviewing (MI) is a client-centered communication style with the aim to resolve client ambivalence within a change-related counseling. Its potential benefit for career counseling has been discussed by several scholars but no empirical research has investigated MI in this context so far. The current study used process measures from MI to investigate dynamic interactions within a career counseling intervention. Overall, we analyzed two videotaped sessions of 14 unique counselor–client dyads. Verbal behavior of counselors and clients were coded with two observational coding schemes from MI (one for counselors and one for clients, respectively). Behavior profiles of counselors were compared with benchmarks of good MI. Furthermore, client verbal ambivalence was compared between sessions. Finally, we conducted lag sequential analyses to analyze temporal dynamics between counselor behavior and immediate client verbal responses across N = 6883 behavioral events. Our results showed, first, behavior profiles of career counselors did significantly differ from recommended counseling benchmarks of good MI practice. Second, as assumed on the basis of past studies, client ambivalence decreased across sessions. Third, MI consistent counselor behaviors showed a positive sequential association with client positive career talk, whereas MI inconsistent counselor behaviors showed the reverse pattern. Our results suggest that counseling behaviors recommended from MI are facilitating career interventions. We discuss how trainings in MI could amend career counseling interventions and provide ethical implications when integrating MI into career counseling programs.