Development and psychometric evaluation of a rapid intimate partner violence perpetration screening tool

Current methods of identifying intimate partner violence (IPV) perpetration rely upon lengthy screening instruments, partner injury, and legal involvement. There exist no viable, brief screening tools to facilitate the rapid and early identification of IPV perpetration. The development of a brief IPV screening tool would reduce participant burden and compensation in research as well as aid in self‐identification and appropriate consultation for treatment. Three samples were recruited and administered an IPV assessment measure. Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) curve analyses were used to determine a critical subset of items that could be rapidly administered and used to accurately detect physical IPV perpetrators. A set of four items emerged that were capable of differentiating between partner violent and nonviolent participants in Samples 1 (the Area Under the ROC Curve (AUC) = .95, SE = .02), 2 (AUC = .98, SE =.01), and 3 (AUC = .94, SE = .04). Internal consistency of the screening items was acceptable across samples and the scores on the screening tool were significantly associated in the expected direction with all assessed risk factors for IPV. Initial evaluation of the rapid IPV perpetration screening tool suggests that it may help satisfy the growing need to quickly determine research eligibility and to help college students self‐identify risk, offering objective data upon which to base the decision for follow‐up consultation.

     

Deeper Affinities: Fundamental Resonances Between Psychoanalysis and Religion

This essay considers how we “create meaning” in the interplay of “felt sense” and “symbols,” and examines the direct and immediate interplay between some common everyday experiences and a series of concepts from psychoanalytic perspectives to reveal how this interplay has affinities with religion. Psychoanalysis and religion are overlapping projects. Psychoanalytic symbolizing of experience facilitates our knowing features of religion not previously known, as well as knowing features previously known, in new ways.

Mechanisms Responsible for Differences in Perceived Duration for Rising-Intensity and Falling-Intensity Sounds

Sounds that are equivalent in all aspects except for their temporal envelope are perceived differently. Sounds with rising temporal envelopes are perceived as louder, longer, and show a greater change in loudness throughout their duration than sounds with falling temporal envelopes. Stecker and Hafter (2000) Stecker, G. C. and Hafter, E. R. 2000. An effect of temporal asymmetry on loudness. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 107: 3358–3368.  [Google Scholar] proposed that participants ignore the decay portion of sounds with falling temporal envelopes to account for observed loudness differences, but there is no empirical evidence support this hypothesis. To test this idea, two duration-matching experiments were performed. One experiment used broadband noise and the other natural stimuli. Different groups of participants were given different instruction sets asking them to (1) simply match the duration or (2) include all aspects of the sounds. Both experiments produced the same result. The first instruction set, which represented participants' natural biases, yielded shorter subjective durations for sounds with falling temporal envelopes than for sounds with rising temporal envelopes. By contrast, asking participants to include all aspects of the sounds significantly reduced the size of the asymmetry in subjective duration, a result that supports Stecker and Hafter's hypothesis. This segregation of the stimulus at the perceptual level is consistent with observed asymmetries in loudness change and overall loudness for sounds with rising and falling temporal envelopes, but it does not account for the entire effect. The remaining portion of the effect, after considering biases due to instructions, is not likely a result of adaptation but could be associated with persistence. The amount of persistence was inferred from behavioral masking data obtained for these sounds.     

Women Inmate Substance Abusers’ Reactivity to Visual Alcohol, Cigarette, Marijuana, and Crack-Cocaine Cues: Approach and Avoidance as Separate Dimensions of Reactivity

Despite the growing recognition for multidimensional assessments of cue-elicited craving, few studies have attempted to measure multiple response domains associated with craving. The present study evaluated the Ambivalence Model of Craving (Breiner et al. Alcohol Research and Health 23:197–206, 1999; Stritzke et al. 2007) using a unique cue reactivity methodology designed to capture both the desire to use (approach inclination) and desire to not consume (avoidance inclination) in a clinical sample of incarcerated female substance abusers. Participants were 155 incarcerated women who were participating in or waiting to begin participation in a nine-month drug treatment program. Results indicated that all four substance cue-types (alcohol, cigarette, marijuana, and crack cocaine) had good reliability and showed high specificity. Also, the validity of measuring approach and avoidance as separate dimensions was supported, as demonstrated by meaningful clinical distinctions between groups evincing different reactivity patterns and incremental prediction of avoidance inclinations on measures of stages of change readiness. Taken together, results continue to highlight the importance of measuring both approach and avoidance inclinations in the study of cue-elicited craving.     

Critical Psychologies of Religious Matters: A Late Modern Enterprise

Drawing upon illustrations of research in psychology and religion, this essay sketches a historical account of twentieth century scholarship in terms of three phases. In the early modern phase research was problem-centered: scholars customarily drew upon expertise in cognate areas of inquiry in solving a problem. In the modern phase research is specialization-based: scholars develop competence in the perspectives, concepts, and methods peculiar to their subfield. In the late modern phase research is interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary: scholars achieve proficiency in cognate subfields and acquire fluency in coordinating the assumptions, concepts, and methods of those subfields. This historical account provides the context and warrant for formulating an enterprise expressing the spirit of the late modern phase: critical psychologies of religious matters.     

Rethinking Selfobject and Self: Implications for Understanding and Studying Religious Matters

Research having to do with psychoanalysis and religion customarily explains a religious experience, expression, or event in terms of psychoanalytic methods and concepts. In marked contrast, this essay pursues a different objective by way of an alternative route, revealing how a theory and model of self opens up to and implies a way of understanding and studying religious matters. It accomplishes this objective through a series of steps: reflecting on how theories and models function and change; illustrating a particular instance of theory change—examining the emergence of Heinz Kohut's self-selfobject model in relation to the subject-object model embedded in classical psychoanalytic theorizing; discussing the warrant for and outlining the contours of a revised way of reading the self-selfobject model; identifying implications of this model, now re-read, for understanding and studying religious matters.     

Revising Method in Psychological Studies of Religious Matters: From Repeating to Remembering and Working-Through

Fundamental criticisms of research in psychology of religion are recurrently leveled by scholars—including psychologists of religion themselves: the character, intention, and validity of many studies are suspect; approaches are parochial; findings are often insubstantial. These valid critiques betray a neglected root cause: a problem of method. This essay examines method and method change, considers why inadequate methods persist as well as how operative methods are corrected. It identifies tacit problematic commitments and outlines contours of a revised method.     

Neglected Questions at the Interface of Psychology and Religion

Pastoral Psychology - Critical questions basic to all research at the interface of psychology and religion are customarily neglected: what does it mean to regard and/or interpret any experience,...     

Illustrating two complementary enterprises at the interface of psychology and religion through reading Winnicott

Our work at the interface of psychology and religion can proceed in two complementary directions. When reading a psychological theory, (1) we may pay special attention to how certain concepts in particular, and the system of ideas as a whole, are being or might be used to interpret religious phenomena. We may focus on how those ideas may be involved in doing psychology of religion: the psychological interpretation of religious phenomena. Alternatively, (2) we may pay special attention to how certain concepts in particular, and the system of ideas as a whole, are being or might be used, either implicitly or explicitly, to make claims about human nature, about the meaning and purpose of life, about God. We may identify the psychology as religion-theology: psychological ideas potentially functioning in a religious-theological manner. I will illustrate this by: (a) examining D. W. Winnicott's article, Transitional Objects and Transitional Phenomena (1953/1986) in terms of three successive concepts or categories: transitional object, transitional phenomena, and a third intermediate area of experiencing; (b) considering how these categories can be used in psychology of religion; (c) reconsidering how the psychological categories may function as religious-theological. The discussion is intended to illustrate how we might more fully appreciate how and why a psychological theory may work well in doing psychology of religion when we more fully appreciate how that psychology implicitly functions as theology.