A Schema Therapy Based Milieu in Secure Residential Youth Care:Effects on Aggression, Group Climate, Repressive Staff Interventions, and Team Functioning

Group care workers of residential youth care settings face the challenge of creating a warm and involved treatment climate against the demands and restrictions of the treatment setting. We tested the effects of SafePath, a milieu-based intervention based on Schema Therapy principles, during the first year of implementation on two secure residential treatment units compared to two control units. Staff’s daily reports on 139 individual patients were coded on use of schema mode language (implementation check), occurrences of aggression (primary outcome) and repressive staff interventions. In addition, repeated questionnaires were filled out by patients (n = 87) on group climate and by staff (n = 50) on team functioning. Compared to the control units, SafePath units showed higher improvements in group climate and repressive interventions. Both SafePath and control units showed decreased aggression over time. Team functioning was consistently better in the SafePath units compared to the care-as-usual units from baseline through 12 months. In conclusion, a Schema Therapy based milieu as implemented with SafePath may contribute to a warm and supportive group climate with less repressive interventions in secure residential youth care

Helping students to build a conceptual understanding of elementary statistics

Tertiary students of elementary statistics often have difficulty developing a conceptual understanding of the subject. This article proposes a didactic method that stimulates students to self-explain the study material. This stimulus to self-explanation is directed, because the instructor decides which particular links and relationships between concepts the student should explore. The method is composed of two major steps: having the students identify the propositions that underlie the statistical theory, and then having them manipulate these propositions by constructing arguments showing a given statement to be either true or false. A practical way of implementing the method in a large-scale introductory statistics course is briefly described

Formalized theory of appraisive judgments: a general methodology for questionnaire research integrating facet design, theory construction and psychometrics

Contains fulltext : mmubn000001_17350874x.pdf (publisher's version ) (Open Access)Promotor : E. Roskam365 p

Using propositions for the assessment of structural knowledge of statistics

It is well known that meaningful knowledge of statistics involves more than simple factual or procedural knowledge of statistics. For an intelligent use of statistics, conceptual understanding of the underlying theory is essential. As conceptual understanding is usually defined as the ability to perceive links and connections between important concepts that may be hierarchically organized, researchers often speak of this type of knowledge as structural knowledge. In order to gain insight into the actual structure of a student's knowledge network, specific methods of assessment are sometimes used. In this article we discuss a newly developed, specific method for assessing structural knowledge and compare its merits with more traditional methods like concept mapping and the use of simple open questions