Assessment, Statistics, and Research

    Assessment Instrument:   Electronically Activated Recorder (EAR) The EAR is a scientific instrument for recording short snippets of ambient sounds (e.g., 30 sec every 12.5 min). Participants activate an app or wear a device while the recorder creates audio files. Inventor: The EAR was developed by psychological scientist Matthais Mehl. DATA : The raw data are acoustic files. Data Analyses: Researchers can listen to the data or read a transcript to search for targeted data. For example, a researcher could search for evidence of humility or anger. Researchers could use a coding strategy to identify multiple target sounds, words, or phrases. The data could be analyzed for social environmental data using the Social Environment Coding of Sound Inventory (SECSI; Mehl & Pennebaker, 2003). Researchers can submit the data for qualitative or quantitative text analysis. Examples of participant EAR data (See Tackman & Mehl, 2003.) 1. Location of the...

  Introduction to a Basic Study This post provides information about one way to evaluate a workshop or seminar. I will illustrate the process using a hypothetical example of forgiveness. Suppose you wanted to evaluate the effectiveness of a workshop on forgiveness.  You hypothesize that the group participating in the workshop would be more forgiving toward an offender than the group not receiving the forgiveness workshop. Get approval from your company, university, or other research review board. They usually have forms listing the information you need to provide. Recruit participants for your workshop. Obtain consent for the study. Select   a forgiveness program Select a survey to measure progress in forgiveness. Create two groups of people.     Group 1 gets the workshop now.     Group 2 gets the workshop later and will serve as a control group. Randomly assign volunteers to one of the two groups. Deliver the workshop. Assess the participants' pr...

  Assessment name:   Spiritual Bypass Scale-13 (SBS-13) Scale overview: To assess the observed spiritual bypassing phenomenon, Fox et al. (2017) developed the 13 item Spiritual Bypass Scale . Authors: Fox, Cashwell, and Picciotto    [ Read more about Spiritual Bypassing in Psychotherapy] Response Type: The 13 items are rated on a four-point scale of agreement. Scale items Data analyses from two ethnically diverse US adult samples supported two factors (Psychological Avoidance, PA; Spiritualizing, SP). PA example: When I am in pain, I believe God will deliver me from it SP example: When someone I know is in trouble, I believe it is because they have done something wrong spiritually.   Psychometric properties Cronbach’salphas: Total scale = .85, PA = .82; Sp = .75. The total SBS score was associated with the ASPIRES subscales except for connectedness. PA was associated with depression and SP with stress and anxiety (DASS-21). The over...

  Girls by a stone church 2023 by Geoffrey W Sutton & Bing AI Assessment name:   Spiritual Assessment Inventory Scale overview: The Spiritual Assessment Inventory (SAI-2002) is a 48-item self-report measure of spiritual development (Hall & Edwards, 1996, 2002): Awareness of God and Quality of Relationship with God. Authors: Hall & Edwards Response Type: . Respondents rate each item on a five-point scale of personal truth (1= not at all true, 2 = slightly true, 3 = moderately true, 4 = substantially true, and 5 = very true). Scales The authors examined a large pool of items in several studies and identified the best items that measured the following five factors. The items are included in the 2002 reference. Awareness of God (A) Disappointment in Relationship with God (D) Realistic Acceptance of God (R) Grandiosity in Relationship with God (G Instability in Relationship with God (I)   Psychometric properties The authors provide evid...

  Woman above cemetery 2023 Geoffrey W Sutton and Bing AI Assessment name:   Connection of Soul Scale (COS) Scale overview: The Connection of Soul Scale (COS) is a 12-item measure of three categories of belief in the life of one’s soul after death: Secular, God-centered, Cosmic-Spiritual Authors: Amy L. Li et al. Response Type: Respondents rate each item on a six-point scale of agreement from 0 = strongly disagree to 5 = strongly agree. Scale items The 12 COS items are associated with one of the three factors or subscales. Each subscale has four items. The secular view reflects a lack of belief in an afterlife. The God-centered view was designed to assess beliefs in Western ideas such as a soul’s existence in paradise or heaven. The Cosmic- spiritual view includes items associated with Eastern religions such as reaching enlightenment or joining with a universal spirit. Psychometric properties In their study, Ai et al. (2014) reported data from three studies. T...

 Students in many fields learn that relationships between variables may be described as a simple one-to-one correspondence or linear. We often see tables of correlations in journal articles and presentations. Unless otherwise stated, the correlations appear to assume a linear relationship exists. As one variable increases so does the other or as one variable increases, the other declines. But we also learn that some relationships are nonlinear such as the forgetting curve (remember Ebbinghaus) or the learning curve depicted as an S-shape. The classic learning curve illustrates the relationship between learning and experience and is often presented as an S-curve. At first, progress is slow—the curve of learning rises a little. Then, with experience, learning rises rapidly up to a point when it seems to level off at a person’s level of proficiency. This curve has many names such as progress curve, startup curve, and experience curve. However, we should follow the data rather than ass...