Correlates of patients'' global assessment of arthritis impact. A 2-year study of 216 patients with RA

The dominant ideology of the premenstrual woman is that of a person who has no control over her moods, cognition and behaviour because of her fluctuating hormone levels. The social influence of this stereotype has been put forward as an explanation for discrepancies between retrospective and prospective accounts of premenstrual experiences. However, recent research has found that women can and do distinguish between their own experience and that of the stereotype. What their own experience is (positive as well as negative) was the question that we set out to answer in this study. Nine undergraduate women were interviewed about their menstrual cycle experiences. Using qualitative analysis of their subjective accounts, a clear distinction between self and other premenstrual experiences emerged. While the women did experience premenstrual symptoms, they considered them to be relatively minor in comparison to what they defined as premenstrual syndrome. Furthermore, none of them had previously considered any positive menstrual cycle related experiences but the management of menstruation was emphatically viewed as a 'hassle'. We conclude that women can and do distinguish their own experience from the premenstrual stereotype and this needs to be recognized in the treatment setting; there is a lack of positive discourse for the menstrual cycle which needs to be developed and more attention needs to be paid to menstrual management because it is of great concern to women but is currently not discussed openly.     

Use of both qualitative and quantitative approaches to study job stress in different gender and occupational groups.

Gender differences in job stress were investigated, collecting both qualitative (stressful incidents at work) and quantitative (rating scales of commonly experienced job stressors and strains) data from a sample of university employees. Content analyses of the qualitative data revealed 5 major job stressors, 5 major psychological strains, and 4 major physical strains experienced by both genders. When comparisons are made between men and women on their job stress experiences, a potential confounder is occupation, for which the authors controlled. While the authors controlled for occupation, women reported more overall psychological strains (as indicated by the qualitative data) and depression (as indicated by the quantitative data) than did men. Conversely, while the authors controlled for gender, faculty reported more anger and less frustration (as indicated by the qualitative data) and less turnover intentions (as indicated by the quantitative data) than did support staff. In this study, both qualitative and quantitative data indicated interaction effects between gender and occupation in predicting job stressors and strains. Finally, there was a stronger relation between interpersonal conflicts and negative emotions/job satisfaction were stronger for faculty than for staff. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

"Mostly straight" young women: Variations in sexual behavior and identity development.

Researchers have begun to explore and identify various gradations in sexual orientation identity, paying attention to alternative sexual identity categories and attempting to clarify potential subtypes of same-sex sexuality, particularly among women. This study utilizes both quantitative and qualitative data to explore the behavioral experiences and identity development processes among women of a particular sexual identity subtype, "mostly straight." Participants were 349 female college students whose primary sexual identities included exclusively straight, mostly straight, bisexual, and lesbian. Results indicated that, on most behavioral variables, mostly straight women fell directly between and were significantly different from exclusively straight and bisexual/lesbian women. Mostly straight women were also distinct from exclusively straight women but were similar to bisexual women and lesbians on several quantitative measures of identity. Narratives about sexual identity development for mostly straight women revealed the complexities of sexual identity exploration, uncertainty, and commitment within this population. As a whole, this study encourages researchers to begin to recognize and examine mostly straight as a distinct sexual identity subtype in young women. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

"Getting on with life": Women's experiences and ways of coping with depression.

Explored women's experiences of depression, and in particular how women living in rural communities understand, experience, and cope with feelings of distress unaided by professional help. Participants were 15 women (aged 23–60 yrs) living in rural areas of central New Brunswick who completed a semistructured interview. The purpose of the interview was to explore their experiences of depression and their ways of coping with these experiences. The women's accounts were analyzed using thematic and discourse analysis methods. A central theme revealed in the analysis was that women's understanding of their experiences was interwoven with their attempts to live up to the ideals and practices of the "good" woman. Within this context, depressive experiences were viewed as a taken-for-granted or expected part of their everyday lives. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

黄金矿山企业文化建设的思考

从企业文化产生的背景及其作用出发,结合黄金矿山企业的行业特点,论述了黄金矿山企业文化建设的内涵和所要坚持的原则,分析了4个黄金矿山企业文化建设的基本经验。说明黄金矿山企业文化建设对于树立以人为本管理思想,塑造良好的企业形象,增强企业竞争力的重要性。     

Ectopic pregnancy loss during fertility management

Using qualitative techniques, data were obtained from seven women who experienced an ectopic pregnancy loss while undergoing fertility management. Ectopic pregnancy is a risk factor associated with fertility management, but unlike early miscarriage in fertility management, an ectopic pregnancy has additional potential negative sequelae for the women, including risk for severe hemorrhage and death and threat to future fertility. The purpose of this study was to describe women's experiences of loss following diagnosis and treatment of an ectopic pregnancy while undergoing fertility management. A thematic analysis of the data derived from semistructured interviews was conducted. Themes emerging from the women's discussion of their pregnancy loss and fertility plans included physical pain and shutdown, emotional protection, grief, and pressure, endpoints, and decision making. For women continuing fertility management, both the life-threatening risks of future ectopics and time allowances for grieving were minimized.     

"Feeling low and feeling really bad about feeling low": Women's experiences of motherhood and postpartum depression.

Two bodies of work on postpartum depression are reviewed. Quantitative, positivist studies examine the epidemiology and etiology of postpartum depression, adopt a medical model of explanation, and conceptualize postpartum depression as a pathological response to motherhood. Social scientific studies, some from a feminist perspective, explore women's experiences of postpartum depression predominantly, but not exclusively, within a qualitative tradition. Postpartum depression is theorized as a "normal" response to motherhood and is linked to "public-world" losses of identity, autonomy, independence, power, and paid employment. Drawing on a qualitative study of 40 women's experiences of motherhood, this article argues that not all women become depressed following childbirth and women's varying responses to motherhood need to be recognized. A relational re-framing of postpartum depression is put forward. From this perspective, postpartum depression occurs when women are unable to experience, express, and validate their feelings and needs within supportive, accepting, and non-judgmental interpersonal relationships and cultural contexts. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Women's evaluation of the labor and delivery experience

The purpose of this study was to identify how women described and evaluated their labor and delivery experience and what factors were related to their responses. Sixty Lamaze-prepared, married multigravidae, aged 21 to 37 years, participated in this qualitative field study. Detailed, open-ended tape-recorded interviews were conducted on the postpartum unit of a community hospital or in the women's homes early during the postpartum period. Women evaluated their labor and delivery experience according to how well they perceived they had managed their own childbirth performance. Women who managed well viewed childbirth as positive, whereas women who had difficulty or managed poorly viewed it as both positive and negative. Women who managed well thought their own performance and the nature of labor and delivery (physical aspects) went well; women who had difficulty thought labor and delivery and the performance of others went well, but women who managed poorly had problems identifying anything that went well. There was overall agreement that the baby was the best part of the experience and that pain and pushing were the worst parts. Since women's evaluation of their labor and delivery experience may be related to the quality of their subsequent mothering, it is important to enhance their perceptions of their own performance, and thus their evaluation of the childbirth experience.     

Psychotherapy trainees' experience of counterproductive events in supervision.

The authors conducted interviews with 13 psychotherapy trainees about a counterproductive event that occurred in individual supervision, which was defined as any experience that was hindering, unhelpful, or harmful in relation to the trainee's growth as a therapist. A qualitative analysis revealed that trainees typically attributed their experiences of counterproductive events to their supervisors dismissing their thoughts and feelings. All trainees experienced a negative interaction with their supervisors following the counteractive event, yet most did not believe their supervisors were aware of the event's counterproductive nature. All trainees believed the counterproductive event weakened the supervisory relationship and led to a change in the way they approached their supervisors. Although trainees typically thought the counterproductive events negatively affected their work with clients, most did not disclose their counterproductive experience with their supervisors. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Organizational Error Management Culture and Its Impact on Performance: A Two-Study Replication.

The authors argue that a high-organizational error management culture, conceptualized to include norms and common practices in organizations (e.g., communicating about errors, detecting, analyzing, and correcting errors quickly), is pivotal to the reduction of negative and the promotion of positive error consequences. Organizational error management culture was positively related to firm performance across 2 studies conducted in 2 different European countries. On the basis of quantitative and qualitative cross-sectional data from 65 Dutch organizations, Study 1 revealed that organizational error management culture was significantly correlated with both organizational goal achievement and an objective indicator of economic performance. This finding was confirmed in Study 2, using change-of-profitability data from 47 German organizations. The results suggest that organizations may want to introduce organizational error management as a way to boost firm performance. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Psychological resilience predicts decreases in pain catastrophizing through positive emotions.

The study used a daily process design to examine the role of psychological resilience and positive emotions in the day-to-day experience of pain catastrophizing. A sample of 95 men and women with chronic pain completed initial assessments of neuroticism, psychological resilience, and demographic data, and then completed short diaries regarding pain intensity, pain catastrophizing, and positive and negative emotions every day for 14 consecutive days. Multilevel modeling analyses indicated that independent of level of neuroticism, negative emotions, pain intensity, income, and age, high-resilient individuals reported greater positive emotions and exhibited lower day-to-day pain catastrophizing compared with low-resilient individuals. Mediation analyses revealed that psychologically resilient individuals rebound from daily pain catastrophizing through experiences of positive emotion. Implications for research on psychological resilience, pain catastrophizing, and positive emotions are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Forgotten partners of international assignments: Development and test of a model of spouse adjustment.

The authors developed and tested a model of spouse adjustment to international assignments in a sequence of qualitative and quantitative investigations. From in-depth interviews with expatriate spouses, half of whom had either positive or negative experiences living abroad, the authors identified several potentially important sources of adjustment. These constructs were integrated with others from identity theory and earlier research on expatriates to develop a conceptual model of spouse adjustment. The model was tested by collecting multisource questionnaire data from 221 international assignee couples working in 37 countries. Correlation and regression analyses revealed several important relationships between individual, interpersonal relationship, and environmental sources of identity, and the adjustment of expatriate spouses. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Role quality, multiple role involvement, and psychological well-being in midlife women.

Examined women's occupancy of the social roles of paid worker, wife, and mother, and the quality of their experience in these 3 roles in relation to psychological well-being. Data were from a disproportionate (i.e., women from high-prestige occupations) random sample of 23 White women (aged 35–55 yrs). Well-being was measured by indices of self-esteem, depression, and pleasure; pleasure was assessed by a scale consisting of single-item measures of happiness, satisfaction, and optimism. Role quality was measured by scales developed for this study that assessed the balance between the positive and negative attributes women perceived in their roles. Hierarchical regression analyses controlling for age, education, and income indicated that role occupancy was unrelated to well-being with one exception: Occupying the role of paid worker significantly predicted self-esteem. In contrast, the 3 role-quality variables were significant predictors of the well-being indices, except that quality of experience in the role of mother did not predict pleasure. Findings suggest the importance of qualitative rather than quantitative aspects of role involvement and the need to examine different dimensions of well-being in relation to social roles. (45 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Measuring battering: development of the Women's Experience with Battering (WEB) Scale

Measuring only the physical markers of violence (e.g., slapping, beating) fails to capture the chronic vulnerability and gendered nature of battered women's experiences. Instruments that measure only observable discrete events may mask the continuous nature of battering and the relation between events and experience. Our approach to measuring battering operationalizes the experiences of battered women rather than the abusive behaviors they encounter. This alternative approach emphasizes the meanings battered women attach to the violence and to battering as an enduring presence in their lives. Focus groups with 22 battered women generated qualitative data for developing scale items (Smith, Tessaro, & Earp, 1995) and a known-groups survey with 185 battered and 204 nonbattered women determined the final scale items. Factor analysis of 40 initial items revealed a strong single-factor solution. The resulting 10-item Women's Experiences with Battering (WEB) Scale demonstrated high internal consistency reliability, was significantly correlated with known-group status, exhibited good construct validity, and was not significantly correlated with a measure of social desirability. The WEB Scale provides researchers with a valid and concise measure for studying relations between battering and health or health behavior, as well as evaluating the impact of interventions on battered women or prevalence.     

The meaning of patient satisfaction: an explanation of high reported levels

The social policy background to the proliferation of patient satisfaction surveys is a desire for increased patient representation and participation. Within this context, it is assumed that satisfaction surveys embody patients' evaluations of services. However, as most surveys report high satisfaction levels, the interpretation of satisfaction as the outcome of an active evaluation has been called into question. The aim of this study is to identify whether and how service users evaluate services. This was made possible through unstructured in-depth interviews with users of mental health services and through more structured discussion around their responses on a patient satisfaction questionnaire (CSQ 18B) whose psychometric properties has been well documented. Twenty-nine people with current or recent contact with mental health services within the British National Health Service were interviewed. The data revealed that service users frequently described their experiences in positive or negative terms. However, the process by which these experiences were transformed into "evaluations" of the service was complex. Consequently, many expressions of "satisfaction" on the CSQ 18B hid a variety of reported negative experiences. An explanation for this lack of correspondence is outlined.     

Resilient Individuals Use Positive Emotions to Bounce Back From Negative Emotional Experiences.

Theory indicates that resilient individuals "bounce back" from stressful experiences quickly and effectively. Few studies, however, have provided empirical evidence for this theory. The broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions (B. L. Fredrickson, 1998, 2001) is used as a framework for understanding psychological resilience. The authors used a multimethod approach in 3 studies to predict that resilient people use positive emotions to rebound from, and find positive meaning in, stressful encounters. Mediational analyses revealed that the experience of positive emotions contributed, in part, to participants' abilities to achieve efficient emotion regulation, demonstrated by accelerated cardiovascular recovery from negative emotional arousal (Studies 1 and 2) and by finding positive meaning in negative circumstances (Study 3). Implications for research on resilience and positive emotions are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Stress appraisal in women with spinal cord injury: Supplementary findings through mixed methods.

A study was conducted to examine how women with spinal cord injury (SCI) perceive the stressors they encounter, and how cognitive appraisal is associated with coping and life satisfaction. Fifty women with SCI were interviewed regarding their experience with stress and coping. The interviews were then coded using a framework based on stress and coping theory (transactional model). The systematic application of quantitative methods to the coded interview data allowed for statistical analyses, which demonstrated that the context in which the women spoke about their experiences with various stressors was associated with coping strategies, time since injury, and life satisfaction. Although stress and coping are commonly seen as interacting constructs that influence quality of life outcomes, current findings suggest that appraisal of stressors in the context of loss (more common among women more recently injured) may have a direct impact on life satisfaction apart from any coping strategies put into effect. Interventions designed to facilitate coping with loss and enhance problem-solving skills, along with education about available resources, may foster a sense of empowerment after SCI and ultimately change how stressors are perceived and managed in order to dampen their negative impact on life satisfaction. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The supervision relationship: Variables contributing to positive versus negative experiences.

We present pilot data on variables that influence interaction between trainees and supervisors and contribute to positive versus negative experiences in psychotherapy supervision. Subjects were two groups of supervisor/trainee dyads in which trainees had reported very positive or very negative supervision experiences. We found agreement on the quality of supervision experience between pair members. Trainees had positive supervision experiences when they were seen as interested in the supervisor's feedback. Trainees preferred supportive, instructional, and interpretive supervisors. Similarity in theoretical orientation and interpretive style contributed to positive experiences. A model combining variables to predict the quality of supervision experiences is presented. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Loss, happiness and postpartum depression: The ultimate paradox.

This paper describes a British-based longitudinal qualitative study of postpartum depression over the transition to motherhood. 24 women (aged 21–41 yrs) were interviewed during pregnancy and 1, 3, and 6 mo after the birth. The data were transcribed verbatim and analyzed from a symbolic interactionist perspective to identify themes surrounding the meaning of motherhood and experiences of depression during this time. The findings presented here demonstrate an important paradox in women's experiences: they are happy to be mothers to their children, while unhappy at the losses that early motherhood inflicts upon their lives—losses of autonomy and time, appearance, femininity and sexuality, and occupational identity. It is argued that if these losses were taken seriously and the women encouraged to grieve that postpartum depression would be seen by the women and their partners, family, and friends as a potentially healthy process toward psychological re-integration and personal growth rather than as a pathological response to a "happy event." (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Out on campus: sexual orientation and academic climate in a university context

Although lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) students often "come out" in university settings, empirical studies have demonstrated that these environments are often hostile toward them. The current paper posits that such hostile contexts adversely affect their educational experiences. Results from a survey of a stratified random sample of 1,927 undergraduate and graduate students on a scale measuring perceptions of academic climate (General Campus Climate) supported this claim: LGB students had more negative perceptions of a variety of campus factors. In addition, a scale measuring perceptions of Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Campus Climate found that LGB students were more likely than heterosexuals to perceive the campus as inhospitable to LGB people. Women and racial and ethnic minorities were also more likely to rate the LGB climate as hostile. Finally, data from two scales measuring attitudes believed to influence these perceptions yielded gender, racial/ethnic, religious, and sexual orientation differences in theoretically meaningful directions. Results indicate that LGB students often experience the university in more negative ways than heterosexual students, and that certain campus communities--particularly women and racial/ethnic minorities--are more aware of this negativity and contribute to it less because of their relatively more progay attitudes. Implications for how to improve LGB students' experiences are discussed.