The role of mindfulness in romantic relationship satisfaction and responses to relationship stress

Two studies examined the role of mindfulness in romantic relationship satisfaction and in responses to relationship stress. Using a longitudinal design, Study 1 found that higher trait mindfulness predicted higher relationship satisfaction and greater capacities to respond constructively to relationship stress. Study 2 replicated and extended these findings. Mindfulness was again shown to relate to relationship satisfaction; then, using a conflict discussion paradigm, trait mindfulness was found to predict lower emotional stress responses and positive pre- and postconflict change in perception of the relationship. State mindfulness was related to better communication quality during the discussion. Both studies indicated that mindfulness may play an influential role in romantic relationship well-being. Discussion highlights future research directions for this new area of inquiry.     

Health value, perceived social support, and health self-efficacy as factors in a health-promoting lifestyle

During their college years, students may adopt healthpromoting lifestyles that bring about long-term benefits. OBJECTIVE AND PARTICIPANTS: The purpose of this study was to explore the roles of health value, family/friend social support, and health self-efficacy in the health-promoting lifestyles of a diverse sample of 162 college students. METHODS: Participants completed an Assessment Battery consisting of the following instruments: (1) a demographic questionnaire, (2) the Multi-Dimensional Support, (3) the Value on Health Scale, (4) the Self-Rated Abilities for Health Practices, (5) the Health-Promoting Lifestyle Profile II, and (6) the Marlowe-Crowne Social Desirability Scale. RESULTS: Correlational analyses indicated that health value, perceived family/friend social support, and health self-efficacy were significantly associated with engagement in a health-promoting lifestyle. An analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) revealed that health value and health self-efficacy significantly predicted the level of engagement in a health-promoting lifestyle. Perceived family/friend social support was not significant in the model. As age increased, level of perceived family/friend social support decreased. CONCLUSION: Present findings suggest that health interventions programs focus on assessing and increasing health self-efficacy and health value of these youth. College health professionals can design and evaluate the effectiveness of such health-promoting interventions.     

ECONOMIC PROCESS CONTROL UNDER UNCERTAINTY

The future of the global industry lies in the continuous improvement of both products and processes, a renewed commitment to competition, and an aggressive approach to satisfying customers needs in quality, quantity, and timing. In quality management, the degree of customer satisfaction for a given product may be measured in the form of the loss to society. This loss is formulated as a function of the deviation from the target for each of the product's quality characteristics. The greater the variability of uncontrolled factors during manufacturing or production the larger will be that loss. In this paper, we develop a form of the loss function that takes into account the variability of a production process, the decision loss, and the costs of sampling and inspection. Specifically, we consider monitoring a production process, which may undergo continuous mean shift and variance deterioration during a production run. We then examine decision rules for continuing production or stopping and adjusting the production process.     

A QUASI‐LOCALLY MOST POWERFUL TEST FOR CORRELATION IN THE CONDITIONAL VARIANCE OF POSITIVE DATA

A test is derived for short‐memory correlation in the conditional variance of strictly positive, skewed data. The test is quasi‐locally most powerful (QLMP) under the assumption of conditionally gamma data. Analytical asymptotic relative efficiency calculations show that an alternative test, based on the first‐order autocorrelation coefficient of the squared data, has negligible relative power to detect correlation in the conditional variance. Finite‐sample simulation results confirm the poor performance of the squares‐based test for fixed alternatives, as well as demonstrating the poor performance of the test based on the first‐order autocorrelation coefficient of the raw (levels) data. The robustness of the QLMP test, both to misspecification of the conditional distribution and to misspecification of the dynamics, is also demonstrated using simulation. The test is illustrated using financial trade durations data.     

Local elected officials and environmental policy: Does rural matter anymore?

A survey was mailed to elected officials (mayors and city council) from a sample of 52 rural communities in Idaho and all 7 communities with populations above 20,000 to examine whether there is a relationship between environmental policy issues and various independent variables such as economic type, age, gender, rural/ urban, political ideology, and percentage of life lived in the current community. One-hundred and fifty-five (155) out of three hundred twenty seven (327) respondents returned the survey for a response rate of 47%. The findings reveal that while the rural/urban dichotomy consistently predicted for questions on “trust of information sources,” overall economic base was a better predictor of attitudes toward environmental issues and policy.     

Barriers and Enablers to Safeguarding Children and Adults within a Disability Services Context: Insights from an Australian Delphi Study

Research conducted in the 1990s revealed the tragic irony that exposure to the disability support system, and particularly to its institutional forms, was a major risk factor related to the neglect and abuse of children and adults with a disability. Subsequently, a range of policies have been introduced to minimize risk. However, recurring events of abuse and neglect in the disability services sector in high and middle income countries demonstrate that processes geared to safeguard children and adults with a disability from abuse and neglect remain insufficient. To establish the wider fabric of organizational factors that contribute to effective safeguarding practices within the Australian disability support sector, a modified online Delphi study was conducted, capturing the views of disability services staff and managers (n = 249) regarding barriers and enablers to effective safeguarding. This study identified issues concerning organizational culture, management practice, workforce development, client capacity building and contextual factors. During Round Two of the Delphi, participants were asked to rate the categorized enabler statements according to importance on a 10‐point Likert scale, to ascertain the degree of consensus. A total of 262 of the statements were regarded as important or very important. The Delphi result highlighted the considerable gap between the wider systemic and cultural processes that, in the eyes of disability services staff and management, contribute to good safeguarding practice and the safeguarding measures currently in place. The article calls for a holistic approach to safeguarding that addresses procedural issues and to the transformation of the wider systemic and cultural fabric of an organization.     

Controlling for endogeneity in the health-socioeconomic status relationship of the near retired

Although there is a strong correlation between health and socioeconomic status (SES), the direction of causation is not empirically clear. This study a uses a two stage methodology to control for endogeneity. Using data from the U.S. Health and Retirement Study, the results show that after controlling for endogeneity, labor force status turns out to be an even more important factor in determining health than in the case where endogeneity is not controlled for. In particular, unemployment generates much higher odds for worse health as measured by both subjective and objective health measures.     

Abstract Rule Learning for Visual Sequences in 8‐ and 11‐Month‐Olds

The experiments reported here investigated the development of a fundamental component of cognition: to recognize and generalize abstract relations. Infants were presented with simple rule‐governed patterned sequences of visual shapes (ABB, AAB, and ABA) that could be discriminated from differences in the position of the repeated element (late, early, or nonadjacent, respectively). Eight‐month‐olds were found to distinguish patterns on the basis of the repetition, but appeared insensitive to its position in the sequence; 11‐month‐olds distinguished patterns over the position of the repetition, but appeared insensitive to the nonadjacent repetition. These results suggest that abstract pattern detection may develop incrementally in a process of constructing complex relations from more primitive components.     

Bigamy: Neither Love nor Marriage,but a Threat to the Nation?

In a computer search of 18 national newspapers over a three-year period (1993–1945) 420 mentions of bigamy were identified. 110 items (or 26 per cent) referred to 26 current criminal cases involving bigamy. Seven cases attracted 70 per cent of the coverage. The comments of the presiding judge were widely reported in five of these cases together with titillating detail. Two other cases included comments by judges. Using Phoenix's (1996) distinction between threats to the nation-state from 'inside' and 'outside', the analysis indicates that two issues of wider socio-political importance – familism and immigration – were central to the judges' comments reported in the press and produced an important counterpoise to the titillating features of these cases. It is argued that the newspaper reporting of bigamy constructs bigamists as being a threat to Britain from 'inside' to the institution of marriage, while the threat from 'outside' is from minority ethnic men marrying female bigamists to gain residential status in Britain. It is the latter challenge which brings the most significant condemnation.