Measuring religious faith in cancer patients: reliability and construct validity of the Santa Clara Strength of Religious Faith questionnaire.

Growing attention has focused on associations between religious involvement and health outcomes for cancer patients. Unfortunately, research has been hampered by lack of measures suitable for use in oncology settings. This study examined the performance of one recently developed measure, the Santa Clara Strength of Religious Faith Questionnaire (SCSORF). Initial investigations with cancer patients in a bone marrow transplant program and with non-oncology patients yielded promising results. This study provided additional information about temporal stability and convergent validity. The measure was evaluated in two well-defined samples: (1) 95 breast cancer patients, and (2) 53 healthy young adults. Most of the cancer patients had recent diagnoses and localized or regional disease. In each sample, the instrument demonstrated high test-retest reliability (r's=0.82-0.93) and internal consistency (r's=0.95-0.97). It displayed strong correlations with measures of intrinsic religiosity (r's=0.67-0.82, p<0.0001), and moderate correlations with organizational religiosity (r's=0.61-069, p<0.0001), non-organizational religiosity (r's=0.52-0.55, p<0.0001), comfort from religion (r=0.58, p<0.0001), and ratings of self as religious (r=0.58, p<0.0001). Among cancer patients, scores were significantly associated with optimism (r=0.30, p<0.01), but not with openness of family communication about cancer or perceived social support. These data build on previous findings with cancer patients, and suggest that the SCSORF may be a useful measure of religious faith in oncology settings.

Religious sentiment in church affiliates and nonaffiliates.

The Religious Life Inventory was administered to 454 college students, members of one of three religious denominations (Catholic, Methodist, Baptist) or a member of no church (nonaffiliate). An evaluation of the four groups on 3 scales showed nonaffiliates scored less external in religious sentiment than affiliates, Baptists scored higher on internal religious sentiment than nonaffiliates, and no differences among groups were found for interactional religious sentiment.

Lithium effects on active and passive avoidance behavior in the rat.

Lithium chloride reduced the rate of acquisition of a passive-avoidance response and decreased the rats' reaction to the shock delivery. Acquisition of an active-avoidance response was unimpaired by lithium, although lithium-administered rats responded predominantly to the cue stimulus, making significantly fewer precue avoidance responses than did controls. Lithium's efficacy in the treatment of manic disorders may, therefore, be the result of a decrease in the individual's reactivity to low-intensity stimulation.

Automaintenance in guinea pigs: effects of feeding regimen and omission training.

Behavior maintained by stimulus-reinforcer pairings was examined. Guinea pigs maintained at 85 per cent of free-feeding weights reliably contacted a retractable lever presented before delivery of a single piece of guinea-pig chow or a 45-milligram guinea-pig pellet. When animals were given free access to one food and received the second food preceded by the lever, contact responses persisted. Such responses seldom occurred when a single food was freely available and was also delivered after lever presentation. Introduction of an omission training (negative automaintenance) procedure, in which lever contacts resulted in lever retraction and prevented food delivery, strongly reduced lever contacts. Observation indicated that mouthing the food cup, instead of the lever, became the prominent behavior during the prefood stimulus under the omission training procedure.