Psychometric properties and measurement invariance of Short-Form Life Attitude Inventory for hospital staff.

BACKGROUND: The life attitude of health care workers can deeply influence the quality of care. Examining the performance of the Short-Form Life Attitude Inventory (SF-LAI), this study analyzes the factorial structure, reliability, and invariance of the revised SF-LAI across genders and professions among the staff of a teaching medical center. METHODS: The SF-LAI was developed for university students in Taiwan. From January to February 2019, we administered a cross-sectional survey of life attitudes by distributing the SF-LAI to all staff members of a medical center in Taiwan. The construct validity was evaluated using a confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). Model fit was assessed in terms of the comparative fit index (CFI), Tucker-Lewis index (TFI), standardized root mean square residual (SRMR), and root mean square of error of approximation (RMSEA). Internal consistency was calculated using Cronbach's alpha and McDonald's omega. We also performed the CFA invariance analysis for the SF-LAI-R across genders and professions (physician, nurse and other hospital staff). RESULTS: Of 884 (24.62%) responses, 835 were valid. The participants had a mean age of 47.8 years, and 20.12% were male. In a comparison of multiple CFAs, a second-order model with six factors outperformed other models. The goodness of fit indices revealed the CFI was 0.955, TFI was 0.952, RMSEA was 0.071, and SRMR was 0.038. The Cronbach's alphas, McDonald's omega coefficients for internal consistency were all greater than 0.8. The first and second-order model had metric and scalar invariance across genders and professions. CONCLUSIONS: As health care demands evolve, humanities are becoming more important in medical education. Life attitude of hospital care worker is a crucial indicator of whether one embodies the ideals of a humanistic education. The revised SF-LAI has acceptable structural validity, internal consistency, and invariance across genders and professions among staff members of a teaching medical center.

Educators' implicit perspectives on wisdom: a comparison between interpersonal and intrapersonal perspectives.

This research aimed to investigate educators' implicit perspectives on wisdom in order to compare interpersonal and intrapersonal perspectives and to help identify similarities or differences between these two theoretical perspectives. A total of 56 educators in Taiwan were interviewed individually. We utilised the grounded theory method to analyse the qualitative data. Results showed that both interpersonal and intrapersonal perspectives converged on four core components of wisdom: intrapsychic integration, actions in service of problem solving and ideal implementation, positive results and feedback and adjustments. The interpersonal perspective referred to external characteristics, and admiration and influence, whereas the intrapersonal perspective included greater detail about intrapsychic integration and action strategies than did the interpersonal perspective. We close with a discussion both of how wisdom appears to span across different fields and how the present results might feed into the teaching of wisdom in schools.

Escaping the impulse to immediate gratification: the prospect concept promotes a future-oriented mindset, prompting an inclination towards delayed gratification.

People's willingness to postpone receiving an immediate reward in order to gain additional benefits in the future, that is, a tendency to shallow delay discounting, is closely related to one's health, wealth, and happiness. We conducted two experiments investigating how the prospect concept can induce a future-oriented mindset and induce people to behave accordingly. We found that engaging in prospective imagery led the participants to focus on delayed utility over immediate utility in financial decisions (Experiment 1). Participants who received the prospect prime via a scrambled-sentence task decreased their desire to pursue hedonic activities for instant gratification (Experiment 2). Moreover, a state of future orientation mediated the effect of the prospect prime on measures of delayed gratification (Experiments 1 and 2). Thus, reminders of prospect may activate a mindset for future orientation by which delayed gratification is strengthened.

A qualitative inquiry of wisdom development: educators' perspectives.

This study draws on the perspectives of educators to explore the factors and processes underlying wisdom development. We interviewed 25 wise Taiwanese nominees and used a grounded theory method to analyze the qualitative data. The wise nominees mentioned eight facilitative factors, including work experiences, life experiences, social interactions, observations, family teachings, professional development, religion, and reading. The process of wisdom development involves facilitative conditions, inner assimilation and adjustment, transformations of actual actions, and feedback from the results of actions. Findings are discussed in relation to relevant theory and research.

Longitudinal effects of educational expectations and achievement attributions on adolescents' academic achievements.

This study used nationwide data from the Taiwan Education Panel Survey (TEPS) to examine the longitudinal effects of educational expectations and achievement attributions on the academic achievements of adolescents. The sample included 2,000 Taiwanese secondary school students, each of whom completed three waves of questionnaires and cognitive tests: the first in grade 7 (in 2001), the second in grade 9 (in 2003), and the third in grade 11 (in 2005). Through multilevel longitudinal analysis, the results showed: (1) educational expectations accounted for a moderate amount of the variance in academic achievements; (2) students with high educational expectations and effort attribution exhibited higher growth rates in their academic achievements; and (3) studentswith lower educational expectations and those attributing success to others showed significantly fewer academic achievements and significantly lower growth rates in such achievements. The results demonstrated that adolescents' educational expectations and achievement attributions play crucial roles in the long-term course of academic accomplishments. Implications for educational practice and further studies are also discussed.

Improving measurement precision of test batteries using multidimensional item response models.

A conventional way to analyze item responses in multiple tests is to apply unidimensional item response models separately, one test at a time. This unidimensional approach, which ignores the correlations between latent traits, yields imprecise measures when tests are short. To resolve this problem, one can use multidimensional item response models that use correlations between latent traits to improve measurement precision of individual latent traits. The improvements are demonstrated using 2 empirical examples. It appears that the multidimensional approach improves measurement precision substantially, especially when tests are short and the number of tests is large. To achieve the same measurement precision, the multidimensional approach needs less than half of the comparable items required for the unidimensional approach.