ABSTRACT
The world is in crisis! While we are writing this introduction, the COVID-19 pandemic continues to hold many countries in its tight grip. Countries have gone into lock-down over the Omicron variant. People have lost their jobs. Above all, the current pandemic highlights the underlying long-term crises of racism and social inequality, whereas for example communities of color and individuals with lower socio-economic status are impacted disproportionally by the pandemic. The articles in this special issue reflect the new meaning of meaning. We discuss multidisciplinary perspectives on how meaning is experienced in different contexts and crises. Together, these articles show the personal and societal power of meaning, and stand for meaning in our globalized society. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved)
ABSTRACT
Sociologists have argued that we live nowadays in a World Risk Society, in which we are hyperconnected and exposed to many risks. Although risks involve gradients on a grey scale, individuals often seem to have black-or-white perceptions and responses to the world risk society: either they deny that any risks exist and continue living in their habitual ways, or they feel overwhelmed by the risks, develop panic and engage in obsessive-compulsive self-protection. These black-or-white perceptions and responses may have large consequences for the physical, mental and social well-being of individuals, and for the epidemiological risks and the economy in general. This book discusses the following key players: politicians;science;individuals experiencing stress and mental health problems;media;individuals impacted by existential threats, quarantine, and inequality. It discusses COVID-19 in the context of SARS, MERS, Ebola, Zika, HIV, H1N1, H5N1, and other pandemics. The book is based on systematic literature reviews and meta-analyses. It offers examples of resilience for each of the themes and describes the World Resilience Society. The book exemplifies the themes with citations from interviews with individuals affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. To understand the psychology of COVID-19 is to understand how individuals perceive and respond to the uncertainties of the World Risk Society. However, we need to differentiate uncertainties in different life domains, which each have their own key actors. Resilience is the capacity to adjust to challenges flexibly and to recover quickly from difficulties, like a young twig on a tree is resilient as it can withstand storms whereas an old rigid branch may crack. The book offers glimpses of hope for coping in more resilient ways with future pandemics, and these will lay out how we could move from a World Risk Society to a World Resilience Society. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved)
ABSTRACT
The main objective of this study is to evaluate the utility of a new qualitative scale development methodology?Three-Step Test-Interview (TSTI)?in its first application in the validation of a psychotherapy scale: The Relational Depth Frequency Scale (RDFS). The TSTI is a cognitive pretesting method designed to uncover potential problems in scale construction. The RDFS is a six-item unidimensional scale of in-depth therapeutic relating, designed for use in large-scale outcome studies. Following the creation of an item pool and ?expert ratings,? a purposive sample of four therapists and four clients (five females, three males, mean age: 49 years) was recruited to take part in the TSTI with the view to refine the original 36-item RDFS prior to psychometric exploration. Structured observations pointed to problems in test-takers? patterns of responses in relation to theoretical knowledge of the relational depth construct. Issues uncovered and addressed included some misinterpretations of instructions and items, redundant content, double-barreled items, and test-takers? reactions to intimate content wording. The method supported the refinement of the RDFS including amendment to its instructions and the removal of problematic items. TSTI results produced knowledge on the scale which could not be captured with statistical methods.