Association Between Insomnia and Quality of Life: An Exploratory Study Among Software Engineers

Insomnia is a major public health challenge. Due to its high prevalence and impact on health in recent years it has attracted attention of health care providers. The concept of quality of life (QOL) has gained importance as an outcome measure in sleep disturbed people. This study aims to determine the prevalence of insomnia among software engineers as the job related stress is considered very high. Ninety-one software engineers aged between 21 and 45 from a software developing company in Mysore formed the study population. Insomnia Screening Questionnaire and SF 36 Health Survey Questionnaire were used to elicit information about sleep quality and quality of life respectively. Sleep status among the subjects was as follows: 20.9% severe insomnia, 35.2% mild insomnia and 43.9% normal sleeper. Mean scores for SF 36 and those for physical and mental health were considerably lower among severe insomniacs. Software engineers run at the risk of developing insomnia, those with severe insomnia had poor QOL in comparison with the others. Quality of sleep among software engineers needs special attention since they are prone to develop sleep disturbances.     

Social Cognition and Externalizing Psychopathology: An Investigation of the Mediating Role of Language

The present study integrates findings from three lines of research on the association of social cognition and externalizing psychopathology, language and externalizing psychopathology, and social cognition and language functioning using Structural Equation Modeling (SEM). To date these associations have been examined in pairs. A sample of 354 clinic-referred children (aged 7 to14 years) recruited from a children’s mental health centre were tested on measures of language, social cognition, working memory, and child psychopathology. We compared a hypothesized model presenting language functioning as a mediator of the association between social cognition and externalizing psychopathology to a model presenting the independent contribution of language and social cognition to externalizing psychopathology. As hypothesized, we found that the mediation model fits the data better than the alternative model. Our findings have implications for developing and modifying intervention techniques for children with dual language and externalizing psychopathology. This research was supported by a grant from Health Canada (NHRDP, 6606-4835) to the third author.     

Fuzzy logic and approximate reasoning

The term fuzzy logic is used in this paper to describe an imprecise logical system, FL, in which the truth-values are fuzzy subsets of the unit interval with linguistic labels such as true, false, not true, very true, quite true, not very true and not very false, etc. The truth-value set, ?, of FL is assumed to be generated by a context-free grammar, with a semantic rule providing a means of computing the meaning of each linguistic truth-value in ? as a fuzzy subset of [0, 1]. Since ? is not closed under the operations of negation, conjunction, disjunction and implication, the result of an operation on truth-values in ? requires, in general, a linguistic approximation by a truth-value in ?. As a consequence, the truth tables and the rules of inference in fuzzy logic are (i) inexact and (ii) dependent on the meaning associated with the primary truth-value true as well as the modifiers very, quite, more or less, etc. Approximate reasoning is viewed as a process of approximate solution of a system of relational assignment equations. This process is formulated as a compositional rule of inference which subsumes modus ponens as a special case. A characteristic feature of approximate reasoning is the fuzziness and nonuniqueness of consequents of fuzzy premisses. Simple examples of approximate reasoning are: (a) Most men are vain; Socrates is a man; therefore, it is very likely that Socrates is vain. (b) x is small; x and y are approximately equal; therefore y is more or less small, where italicized words are labels of fuzzy sets.     

From ‘Virgin Births’ to ‘Octomom’: Representations of Single Motherhood via Sperm Donation in the UK News

The use of sperm donation by single women has provoked public, professional and political debate. Newspapers serve as a critical means of both broadcasting this debate and effecting a representation of this user group within the public sphere. This study uses the theory of social representations to examine how single motherhood by sperm donation has been represented in the UK news over time. The study sampled news coverage on this topic in eight British newspapers during three 4‐year periods between the years 1988 and 2012. The dataset of news reports (n = 406) was analysed using a qualitative approach. Findings indicated that UK media reports of single women using donor sperm are underpinned by conventional categories of the ‘personal’, the ‘traditional’ and the ‘natural’ that when paired with their corollaries produce a representation of this user group as the social ‘other’. The amount of coverage on this topic over time was found to vary according to the political orientation of different media sources. Using key concepts from social representations theory, this article discusses the relationship between themata and anchoring in the maintenance of representations of the social ‘other’ in mass mediated communication. Findings are explained in relation to theoretical conceptions of the mass media and its position within the public sphere. It is argued that the use of personal narratives in news reports of single mothers by sperm donation may have significant implications for public understandings of this social group. © 2016 The Authors. Journal of Community & Applied Social Psychology published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.     

The development and validation of a Fear of Death Scale based on the cognitive approach of Avicenna

ABSTRACT

The aim of this study was to develop a culturally sensitive approach assessment instrument that measures cognitive beliefs related to Iranian Muslim salient fear of death. This paper discusses the development and validation of Avicenna Fear of Death Scale (AFDS). The results of confirmatory factor analysis resulted in an instrument (AFDS) consisting of five cognitive concerns related to the fear of death including complete annihilation, severe pain of death, consequences of sins, interpersonal attachment, and attachment to estate. Twenty-two statements overall were offered using a Likert scale to measure related cognitive beliefs. Results from a convenience sample of 291 college students, showed the AFDS to have favourable psychometric properties (e.g., adequate reliability and validity). The total alpha coefficient was .85, suggesting that the items have relatively high internal consistency and the item-total correlation between .28 and .63 (p<.001) indicates that the items are discriminating well. Overall, results suggest that cross-cultural differences render a culturally sensitive approach to assessment and diagnosis essential, and therefore a culture-based scale like Avicenna AFDS might be fruitful extensions of the current death anxiety scales like Templer Death Anxiety Scale within the context of Iranian-Islamic culture. This diagnostic tool can help in the cognitive treatment of fear of death.