Gibbsjama5495

Purpose The Demoralization scale (DS-I) is a validated and frequently used instrument to assess existential distress in patients with cancer and other severe medical illness. The purpose of this study was to provide normative values derived from a representative German general population sample and to analyze the correlational structure of the DS-I. Methods A representative sample of the adult German general population completed the DS-I (24 Items), the Emotion Thermometers (ET) measuring distress, anxiety, depression, anger, need for help, and the Functional Assessment of Chronic Illness Therapy Fatigue Scale (FACIT-fatigue). Results The sample consists of N = 2,407 adults (mean age = 49.8; range = 18-94 years), 55.7% women). The percentages of participants above the DS-I cutoff (≥30) was 13.5%. The mean scores of the DS-I dimensions were as follows (1) loss of meaning and purpose M = 2.78 SD = 4.49; (2) disheartenment M = 3.19 SD = 4.03; (3) dysphoria M = 4.51 SD = 3.20; (4) sense of failure M = 6.24 SD = 3.40; and for the DS-I total score M = 16.72 SD = 12.74. selleck kinase inhibitor Women reported significantly higher levels of demoralization than men, with effect sizes between d = 0.09 (Loss of Meaning) and d = 0.21 (Dysphoria). Age was not associated with demoralization in our sample. DS-I reliability was excellent (α = 0.94) and DS-I subscales were interrelated (r between 0.31 and 0.87) and significantly correlated with ET, especially depression, anxiety, and need for help and fatigue (r between 0.14 and 0.69). Conclusions In order to use the DS-I as a screening tool in clinical practice and research the normative values are essential for comparing the symptom burden of groups of patients within the health care system to the general population. Age and sex differences between groups of patients can be accounted for using the presented normative scores of the DS-I.The present study aims to examine whether self-efficacy mediates the relationship between optimism, dimensions of psychological well-being, and resilience among Iranian students. The participants in this study included 251 Iranian students from Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM). Structural equation modeling using AMOS 20.0 was used to analyze the data. The results indicated that there were significant relationships between optimism, dimensions of psychological well-being, and resilience among Iranian students of UPM. The study findings presented that self-efficacy mediated the relationship between dimensions of psychological well-being (environmental mastery, autonomy, self-acceptance, positive relations with others, personal growth, and purpose in life) and resilience among Iranian students of UPM. Furthermore, self-efficacy was not observed to mediate the influence of optimism on resilience among Iranian students of UPM. The study's findings help to understand the interrelationship between self-efficacy, various dimensions of psychological well-being, and resilience. Consequently, counselors, psychologists, and instructors can develop and plan valuable strategies to enhance students' psychological factors.In response time (RT) research, RT outliers are typically excluded from statistical analysis to improve the signal-to-noise ratio. Nevertheless, there exist several methods for outlier exclusion. This poses the question, how these methods differ with respect to recovering the uncontaminated RT distribution. In the present simulation study, two RT distributions with a given population difference were simulated in each iteration. RTs were replaced by outliers following two different approaches. The first approach generated outliers at the tails of the distribution, the second one inserted outliers overlapping with the genuine RT distribution. We applied ten different outlier exclusion methods and tested, how many pairs of distributions significantly differed. Outlier exclusion methods were compared in terms of bias. Bias was defined as the deviation of the proportion of significant differences after outlier exclusion from the proportion of significant differences in the uncontaminated samples (before introducing outliers). Our results showed large differences in bias between the exclusion methods. Some methods showed a high rate of Type-I errors and should therefore clearly not be used. Overall, our results showed that applying an exclusion method based on z-scores / standard deviations introduced only small biases, while the absence of outlier exclusion showed the largest absolute bias.Research shows the existence of a coercive dominant discourse that associates attraction with violence and influences the socialization processes of many girls and women. According to previous studies, the coercive dominant discourse constitutes a risk factor for gender violence, as men with violent attitudes and behaviors are socially presented as attractive and exciting while egalitarian and non-aggressive men are considered "not sexy." Yet fewer evidences indicate that men acting from the New Alternative Masculinities (NAM) model overcome this double standard through verbal and non-verbal communicative acts, which tell that they do not choose women acting under the coercive dominant discourse for a relationship because they are not "jumping for joy" when meeting them. Drawing from communicative daily life stories conducted to men and women from diverse sociocultural backgrounds and ages, this article presents how language is used in concrete heterosexual sexual-affective relationships. The analysis resulting from the fieldwork focus on how NAM men's communicative acts with women set conditions of desire. This article shows evidence on how communicative acts of NAM empowerment incorporate "language of desire," taking a clear position for egalitarian and passionate relationships. Implications for gender violence prevention are presented.Patients with Parkinson's disease (PD) usually reveal speech disorders and, among other symptoms, the alteration of speech rhythm. The purpose of this study is twofold (1) to test the validity of two acoustic parameters-%V, vowel percentage and VtoV, the mean interval between two consecutive vowel onset points-for the identification of rhythm variation in early-stage PD speech and (2) to analyze the effect of PD on speech rhythm in two different speaking tasks reading passage and monolog. A group of 20 patients with early-stage PD was involved in this study and compared with 20 age- and sex-matched healthy controls (HCs). The results of the acoustic analysis confirmed that %V is a useful cue for early-stage PD speech characterization, having significantly higher values in the production of patients with PD than the values in HC speech. A simple speaking task, such as the reading task, was found to be more effective than spontaneous speech in the detection of rhythmic variations.