1,721,009 research outputs found
Spirituality and psychological well-being: an attention to the agnostics and undecided
No full textThis chapter analyzes the relationship between spirituality and psychological well-being. We focused on agnostics and undecided people who lie between theists as certain believers and atheists as certain non-believers. Agnostics are defined as people who consciously suspend any judgment on the existence of God as an entity outside of the experimental verification and declare as “unknowable” everything that cannot be submitted to an empirical observation. Undecided people are defined as persons who declare that they are unsure if God exist. Both agnostics and undecided people have been overlooked by previous research that has mainly focused on theists or atheists, who might represent the extremes of a continuum of spirituality. Such a categorization does not consider existential certainty and uncertainty and their consequences for a person’s mental well-being. Our research question was: do the agnostics and the undecided report lower levels of psychological well-being compared to theists and atheists? We collected data of more than 1,000 participants from the general population (male and female). Our findings indicated that agnostics and undecided people reported significantly lower levels of happiness and perceived mental well-being than both theists and atheists, independent of gender and age.
We cannot draw firm conclusions regarding the cause of the differences found because our study had a cross-sectional and non-longitudinal design. However, existential uncertainty seems to play a role in a person’s perception of psychological well-being
Emotional overeating questionnaire: a validation study in Italian adults with obesity, overweight or normal weight
Full text linkPurpose
This study aimed at testing the validity and reliability of the Emotional Overeating Questionnaire (EOQ) in a sample of Italian adults with obesity, overweight or normal weight.
Materials and methods
Participants were 314 Italian adults (72.6% females, aged 18–76 years) with obesity (27.4%), overweight (21.3%), or normal weight (51.3%), who completed the EOQ and measures of binge eating, mental well-being, and mindful eating. Retesting was performed 4 weeks later in a randomly selected subsample of 60 participants. Factor structure of the EOQ was estimated by confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). Reliability was tested with McDonald’s ω and ordinal α coefficients for internal consistency and Cohen’s weighted Kappa coefficient (Kw) for test–retest reliability.
Results
Based on CFA, the five negative emotional items formed one factor (EOQ-5) with good reliability (ω = 0.89; ordinal α = 0.88; Kw= 0.71), while the item referring to happiness was dropped. EOQ-5 scores were associated with higher binge eating, lower mental well-being, and lower mindful eating. A cut-off point of two identified individuals at risk for binge eating disorders with 75% sensitivity and 67% specificity. Negative emotional overeating was more frequent in women with obesity than women with normal weight and men with obesity.
Conclusions
EOQ-5 is a valid and reliable tool for measuring the frequency of emotional overeating at the Italian community-level.
Level of evidence
Level V, cross-sectional, descriptive study
Stress e coping
No full textLo stress/Stress e salute/Le strategie di coping/Strategie di coping e salute/Il coping disposizionale
Perinatal affective disorders: towards a gender-based assessment
Full text linkPerinatal affective disorders, such as Perinatal Depression, are very common, but for the screening and clinical assessment of these complex disorders it is necessary to use specific tools that consider gender differences and take into account other aspects, such as anxiety symptoms, illness behavior, irritability, behavioral acting outs like the anger attacks, addiction, and the quality of the couple relationship. In fact, the most common and usual screening tools in this field are developed considering female over male signs and symptoms. Only in recent years, the growing concern on paternal mental health during the perinatal period have pushed some researchers to develop different and specific screening and assessment tools for fathers, such as the Perinatal Assessment of Paternal Affectivity (PAPA). In a recent cross-sectional study (Baldoni et al. 2022) with a 3-month test-retest involving 385 Italian fathers, the PAPA showed adequate reliability and internal consistency as well as acceptable test–retest indices. A single factor common to the male disorder was evidenced at confirmatory factor analysis. Concurrent validity was also confirmed by significant correlations between PAPA total score and standardized test scores. Italian validation data provide initial evidence of validity and reliability of the PAPA as a simple screening tool to detect affective disorders in fathers during the perinatal period. The Perinatal Assessment of Maternal Affectivity (PAMA) is a modified version of the PAPA specifically developed for the mother: the items and the scores are the same, with only a few differences in the formulation of some questions, as the aim of the PAMA is the global assessment of the maternal affectivity during the perinatal period. The psychometric properties of the PAMA were examined also. A study (Baldoni et al. 2023), based on 225 mothers and their partners, used a cross-sectional design with a single assessment at the third trimester of pregnancy. Results confirmed for the PAMA acceptable reliability and internal consistency. The fit of the one-factor model, confirmed for the PAPA, was not satisfactory for the PAMA. The findings suggest the usefulness of developing gender sensitive screening tools for the detection of perinatal affective disorders
Validation of the Modified Dental Anxiety Scale (MDAS) in an Italian Sample and Invariance Across Gender and Mode of Administration
No full textAbout 7–12% of individuals experience high dental anxiety and it represents a barrier to dental care. The Modified Dental Anxiety Scale (MDAS) is a brief measure of dental anxiety which is widely used in clinical practice as well as in research. The principal aims of this study were to create and validate an Italian version of the MDAS and to determine whether its validity was influenced by gender and different methods of data collection (on paper or electronically). A secondary objective was to collect further evidence of criterion validity and reliability of the scale. A self-report battery of standardized psychological measures, including the Italian MDAS and other measures, was completed on paper by 126 patients attending a dental clinic and electronically by 108 respondents plus 40 dentists. Fifty-nine percent of all subjects were female. Confirmatory factor analyses supported a two-factor model for the Italian MDAS and measurement invariance across gender and
17 method of administration. Both internal consistency and 4-week test-retest estimates of reliability were good. The Italian MDAS was shown to be differentially correlated in expected ways with other constructs. Women showed higher dental anxiety than men and online respondents reported higher dental anxiety than dental patients
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
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