Personality factors in stress and anxiety, J.Brebner personal and interpersonal determinants of children's anxiety, Y.Teichman, H.Gilaie self-esteem, realization of life-purposes and level of anxiety in the Aged, I.Paspalanov Emotional Patterns In Stress Situations And Their relationship to somatic disease, K.Wrzesnieski an experimental analysis of sport related trait anxiety, D.Hackfort.

Cross-Cultural Anxiety

Background
Recent models of evaluation anxiety emphasize the importance of personal knowledge and self-regulatory processes in the development of test anxiety, but do not theorize a route for situational influences.

Aim
To investigate the relationship between test anxiety and personal knowledge beliefs (achievement goals and perceived academic competence), parental pressure/support, and teachers' achievement goals.

Sample
One-hundred and seventy five students at a sixth-form college following pre-degree courses in Psychology and Sociology.

Method
Self-report data were collected for test anxiety, personal achievement goals, academic self-concept, perceived test competence, teachers' achievement goals, and parental pressure/support. Relationships were examined through correlational and regression analyses.

Results
The relationship between test anxiety and personal knowledge beliefs differed for the various components of test anxiety. A mastery-avoidance goal was related to worry and tension, and a performance-approach goal to bodily symptoms. Perceived academic competence was related to worry and tension. Parental pressure was associated with stronger worry and test-irrelevant thinking components directly, and with a stronger bodily symptoms component indirectly through a performance-approach goal. Teachers' performance-avoidance goals were related to worry, tension, and bodily symptoms indirectly through personal performance-avoidance goals, and in the case of bodily symptoms additionally through a performance-approach goal.

Conclusion
Findings provide partial support for the self-regulatory model of test anxiety suggesting that additional routes are required to account for the role of parental pressure and teachers' performance-avoidance goals and a re-examination of the relationship between test anxiety and achievement goals.

Personal and Situational Predictors of Test Anxiety of Students in Post-Compulsory Education.

Several unilinear and bilinear dimensional measurement models of Asian American acculturation and enculturation were tested with confirmatory factor analysis. Bilinear models of acculturation consistently outperformed the unilinear model. In addition, models that articulated multiple dimensions (i.e., values and behavior) exhibited a better fit to the data than did unidimensional models. The degree to which Asian Americans adhered to the values and behavior associated with each culture differed. Specifically, there was a small relationship between values and behavior in the Asian cultural orientation, whereas there was a moderate relationship between values and behaviors in the Western cultural orientation and between Asian behavior and Western behavior. Present findings suggest that the way in which Asian Americans negotiate the acculturation and enculturation process is likely nuanced and complex. Implications for working with Asian Americans and future directions for research are explored.

A bilinear multidimensional measurement model of Asian American acculturation and enculturation: Implications for counseling interventions.

A systematic review of help-seeking and mental health service utilization among military service members.

This article presents a methodology for examining the content and nature of item parcels as indicators of a conceptually defined latent construct. An essential component of this methodology is the 2-facet measurement model, which includes items and parcels as facets of construct indicators. The 2-facet model tests assumptions required for accepting parcels as aggregates of item covariation in representing the latent construct. According to this methodology, parcels are acceptable indicators of the latent construct if the 2-facet model meets parametric assumptions for unidimensionality and if items and parcels have content validity as measures of the latent construct. The proposed methodology is illustrated using a 1-factor model of the Worry construct in the test anxiety measurement tradition

How Well Do Item Parcels Represent Conceptually Defined Latent Constructs? A Two-Facet Approach

Self and social identity are key elements in the understanding of a person’s strivings for health and well-being. This review (i) examines the concepts of self, social identity, and psychological well-being; (ii) integrates empirical evidence that relates various self-aspects or social identities to psychological well-being; (iii) analyzes within a stress and coping framework the well-being consequences of socially devalued self or threatened identities, perceived discriminations, challenges of acculturation and identity management; and (iv) delineates the role of self, social identity and related psycho-social variables as moderators and mediators in pathways leading to psychological well-being. Besides listing some methodological issues and empirical deficits, major concerns for future research are also identified. An explicit self and social identity perspective of this research synthesis brings personal and social aspects together, and this interface offers exciting opportunities for research advancement.

Self, social identity and psychological well-being

Generalizability of self-related cognitions in test anxiety

This paper explores the links between the changes associated with the processes of globalization and their psycho-social consequences. Focusing primarily on socio-cultural domain, it examines the impact of globalization on various facets of individual psyche. The paper also looks at social functioning, delineates the role of globalization and acculturation processes in the decentring, dislocation, and reconstitution of core identities that provide crucial linkages to the well-being consequences. The review shows that despite threats to their valued identities, ethnic-minority immigrants who adopt active, problem-focused coping and/or identify with their social identity-based support groups cope efficaciously with stress of identity-based discrimination and devaluation, protect their well-being, and even report enhanced collective self-esteem. The “threatened identities” and “coping options—resources and strategies” that are invoked to cope with such threats, are significant psycho-social moderators between the processes of globalization and the well-being of individuals and groups.

https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007%2Fs12646-010-0048-8.pdf

Globalization, Threatened Identities, Coping and Well-Being

With the conventional wars being rarer, low intensity conflict (LIC) operations have now become a norm. This new military environment is characterized by ambiguous and unpredictable situations, complex goals, invisible enemy combatants, political sensitivities, undefined restraints on weaponry tactics and associated multiple microstressors that make it highly stressful and cognitively demanding for soldiers. Considering LIC stress under a holistic / interactionistic paradigm, this review paper examines (i) the unique stressors of LIC operations and their impact on soldiers’ mental health and fitness, cognitive functioning, combat readiness and effective performance; (ii) preventive training programmes (Hardiness Training and Comprehensive Soldier Fitness) for developing and sustaining resilience; (iii) the central role of military leadership and structure as key components of combat stress control, unit cohesion, institutional support and other HR practices (e.g., command consultation, grievance redresssal, performance appraisal, communication, conflict resolution); and (iv) mental health services as coping resources and potential stress countermeasures such as psychological first aid, after-action debriefing, operational stress training, suicide prevention, treatment of stress casualities, help-seeking skills and self-care as part of preventive mental health training and post-trauma rehabilitation. The roles of both the skill-building and the stress-combating aspects of training, leadership, organizational support / HR practices and mental health services seem important as potential moderators of stress-strain relationship in LIC operations.

Low Intensity Conflict Stress in Soldiers: Building Coping Skills and Resources

This study reports consistent findings from a series of construct domain studies of self-related worry cognitions in terms of failure outcome expectancies in 18 samples of adolescent girls and boys from different ethnic groups in five countries on three continents. A multifacet measurement design was applied to inquire into the domain by means of a combination of generalizability theory and confirmatory factor modelling. The series of results provided consistent support for the distinction between self-referenced and other-referenced worry cognitions. Among other factors the students were shown to be more differentiated by other-referenced cognitions than self-referenced cognitions. The findings may suggest a reconceptualization of the domain of worry cognitions. KEYWORDS: multifacet measurement design, domain of worry cognitions, self- and other-referenced worry cognitions. (ProQuest: ... denotes formulae omitted.) Measurement studies of the test anxiety construct have been mostly concerned with assessing its dimensionality and stability over time. Less interest has been taken in how far we can generalize test scores from test anxiety scales. Ideally, these three issues assume that a domain of test anxiety indicators has been defined before any meaningful empirical assessment can be made. In particular, without any delineation of the construct domain, no meaningful generalization can be made to the domain. Even though it is well accepted that "The very definition of a construct implies a domain of content" (Pedhazur & Schmelkin, 1991, p. 179), the description of a domain of content in test anxiety measurement has not gained much of attention. The typical procedure, however, for creating scales in test anxiety research has rather been to administer a large pool of items mostly derived from prior test anxiety scales. The final criterion for including or excluding items was exploratory factor analysis. Thus the latent factors were identified by factor analysis. A potential result is that the final dimensions may be related to the latent constructs somewhat loosely and post hoc. In some cases a large number of nonduplicable items that belonged to the original pool of construct relevant indicators, have been excluded by the researcher due to the data analytic model that was imposed on the data. It is ample reason to believe, however, that all the items constituting the original pool represent the researcher's conception of test anxiety. In this sense the item indicators presumptively possess content validity (Nunnally & Bernstein, 1994) as indicators of test anxiety. An interesting question remains: what information about test anxiety has been left out during the process of fitting the factor model to the data? Could one or more aspects of test anxiety have been misrepresented or underrepresented (Messick, 1995) in the final set of indicators due to lack of an explicit domain definition from which the item indicators were derived? Defining a domain of content for a construct may be a rather demanding task, and certainly it is not a task that is made once and for all. Rather a construct definition should over time be reconsidered to sharpen the domain definition as new knowledge about the construct is gained. It appears that no precise method can be stated to outline the domain of indicators for a construct properly. Even though deciding the conceptual relevance of indicators is a challenge, Nunnally and Bernstein (1994) stated that "... there is no way to know how to test the adequacy with which a construct is measured without a well-specified domain" (p. 88). When a domain description is lacking no frame of reference exists to decide the conceptual relevance of the indicators. A vague domain definition may be better than none. A domain description can be improved in different ways. A need for aiming at a complete and systematic domain description is a general methodological requirement for adequately measuring a construct (Nunnally & Bernstein, 1994). …

Sagar Sharma

Papers

Self, social identity and psychological well-being

Generalizability of self-related cognitions in test anxiety

Globalization, Threatened Identities, Coping and Well-Being

Low Intensity Conflict Stress in Soldiers: Building Coping Skills and Resources

Inquiry into a Domain of Worry Cognitions in Test Anxiety Research