Structural equation modeling procedures were used to examine relationships among several war zone stressor dimensions, resilience-recovery factors, and post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms in a national sample of 1,632 Vietnam veterans (26% women and 74% men). A 9-factor measurement model was specified on a mixed-gender subsample of the data and then replicated on separate subsamples of female and male veterans. For both genders, the structural models supported strong mediation effects for the intrapersonal resource characteristic of hardiness, postwar structural and functional social support, and additional negative life events in the postwar period. Support for moderator effects or buffering in terms of interactions between war zone stressor level and resilience-recovery factors was minimal.

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Resilience-recovery factors in post-traumatic stress disorder among female and male Vietnam veterans: hardiness, postwar social support, and additional stressful life events.

Research examined psychological and sociocultural adjustment during cross-cultural transitions in two groups of sojourners. One hundred and forty-five Malaysian and Singaporean students in New Zealand and 156 Malaysian students in Singapore participated in the studies. In line with past sojourner research, results revealed that locus of control, life changes, social difficulty, and social support variables predicted psychological adjustment during cross-cultural transitions. In contrast, length of residence in the host culture, cultural distance, interaction with host nationals and co-nationals, extroversion, acculturation strategies, and mood disturbance predicted sociocultural adaptation. In addition to these general findings, culture-specific results also emerged; high host national contact and cultural integration were associated with mood disturbance in Malaysian sojourners in Singapore. As expected, Malaysian and Singaporean students in New Zealand experienced greater social difficulty than Malaysia...

Where's the "Culture" in Cross-Cultural Transition? Comparative Studies of Sojourner Adjustment

DOI 10.1037//1061-4087.54.3.175 Consulting Psychology Journal: Practice and Research, Vol. 54, No. 3, 175–185 173 aware of the trend in research and practice concerning the debilitating effects of disruptive changes on which the magazine article was based. As I quickly discovered, this trend presented a challenge to my contention that creative people actively search for changes, f inding them more stimulating than debilitating. The disagreement between the two positions seemed to highlight an issue of individual differences to me: Although stressful changes may be debilitating for some people, perhaps they are developmentally provocative for others. My research team and I at the University of Chicago discussed this issue, and before long we decided to collect some relevant research data.

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The story of hardiness: Twenty years of theorizing, research, and practice.

Locus of control, mood disturbance, and social difficulty during cross-cultural transitions

The recent emphasis on positive psychology is welcome, and has spurred much relevant research. But, there are still many unresolved conceptual and research issues, as more variables are being proposed as relevant. As part of this process, the present paper proposes hardiness as an addition to positive psychology. Hardiness is a combination of attitudes that provides the courage and motivation to do the hard, strategic work of turning stressful circumstances from potential disasters into growth opportunities. In this regard, the inherently stressful nature of living is discussed. Also clarified are the particular aspects of excellence in performance and health to which hardiness is relevant. The paper concludes with a call for issue-resolving research through which orientations and actions proposed as part of positive psychology can be compared in their contributions to performance and health. Two studies along these lines have found hardiness more powerful than optimism and religiousness in coping with st...

/pdf/hardiness-the-courage-to-grow-from-stresses-3oekoj4hpv.pdf

Hardiness: The courage to grow from stresses

Previous investigations of immigrant mental hospitalization rates have accumulated inconclusive evidence in regard to native-foreign differentials. We attempt to examine factors that protect voluntary immigrants from psychological impairment. Unlike existing studies, which tend to regard immigrants as merely reactive to stressful life changes accompanying immigration, we assume immigration can be used as a vehicle for personal advancement. We hypothesize that the immigrant's activism in cultivating social networks in the receiving society, and hardiness in the personality repertoire, are the chief means of ameliorating strain. Also examined are issues related to (/) the nature of social networks, (2) ties to the immigrant community and to the host society, and (3) how these ties influence adaptation.

Social networking, hardiness and immigrant's mental health.

A rigorous faculty appointment and promotion (FAP) system is vital for the success of any academic institution. However, studies examining the FAP system in Asian universities are lacking. We surveyed the FAP policies of Taiwan's medical schools and identified an overreliance on the CJA score (manuscript Category, Journal quality, and Author order). The potential shortcomings of this metric and recommendations for refinement were discussed.We obtained the FAP documents from all 12 medical schools in Taiwan, and analyzed their use of traditional versus non-traditional criteria for FAP according to a published methodology. The influence of the journal impact factor (JIF) on the FAP process was quantified by comparing its relative weight between papers with two extreme JIFs. To better understand the research impact and international standing of each school, we utilized the public bibliographic database to rank universities by the number of papers, and the proportions of papers within the top 10% or 50% citation.Compared with other countries, Taiwan's medical schools focus more on the quantifiable quality of the research, mostly using a "CJA" score that integrates the category, JIF or ranking, and authorship of a paper, with the JIF being the most influential factor. The CJA score for an article with a JIF of 20 can be up to three times the threshold for promotion to Assistant Professor. The emphasis on JIF is based on a presumed correlation between JIF and citation counts. However, our analysis shows that Taiwan's medical schools have lower-than-average citation counts despite a competitive rank in the number of publications.The JIF plays an unrivaled role in determining the outcome of FAP in Taiwan's medical schools, mostly via the CJA system. The questionable effectiveness of the current system in elevating the international standing of Taiwan's higher-education institutions calls for a re-examination of the FAP system. We recommend a reduction in the relative importance of CJA score in the FAP system, adopting more rigorous metrics such as the h-index for evaluating research quality, and supporting more research aimed at improving the FAP system. 

/pdf/faculty-appointment-and-promotion-in-taiwans-medical-schools-3ftzidk0.pdf

Faculty appointment and promotion in Taiwan’s medical schools, a systematic analysis

Professor Pinch was a precious resource for East Asian STS. Before serving as an advisory editor to EASTS, a role he took on at our inception, Trevor had traveled to East Asia and lectured to STS communities in Korea, Japan, and Taiwan. These connections also led to his supervising several East Asian graduate students at Cornell, the university where he worked for over thirty years. Being a researcher who was not an East Asia specialist, EASTS benefitted greatly from Trevor’s generous and straightforward sharing of his views on STS. This memorial essay was initiated by three of Professor Pinch’s students—EASTS editor Honghong Tinn, Eunjeong Ma, and Hannah Rogers, who contributes the major part of this review of his career. He will be remembered not only for his ground-breaking work but also his enthusiasm for living a meaningful STS life, which he so amply demonstrated to us. — EASTS Editorial Office

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/18752160.2022.2032931?needAccess=true

Wen H. Kuo

Papers

Social networking, hardiness and immigrant's mental health.

Faculty appointment and promotion in Taiwan’s medical schools, a systematic analysis

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