Eliciting Short-Term Closeness in Couple Relationships With Ecological Momentary Interventions

Relationship closeness is considered an important psychological variable for studying couple relationships, and is often postulated as cause for important relationship outcomes. The current study evaluates four micro-interventions for their suitability to experimentally elicit feelings of closeness towards one’s partner. Using participants’ smartphones, and a combination of experience sampling, event sampling, and ecological momentary interventions, individuals reported for a week on their experiences of closeness before and after completing daily either a neutral task or a task meant to enhance relationship closeness. The closeness tasks included showing physical affection, sharing a childhood memory, looking each other in the eyes for five minutes, and discussing shared life achievements. Results of intention-to-treat analyses on a within-person level showed that closeness increased from pre- to post-measurement on average more strongly on days of any of the four examined closeness conditions than on days of the neutral control conditions. Interindividual variability of this effect was observed, emphasizing the relevance of using within-person designs to evaluate such interventions. Exploratory analyses showed that effect sizes declined across time within the day. This study provides instruments for research on causal effects of closeness in everyday relationship life, and an evidence basis for smartphone-delivered interventions in practitioner settings

Applying Ecological Momentary Interventions in Couple Relationships - An Experimental Experience Sampling Study on Closeness

In this experimental experience sampling study it was examined, whether two micro-interventions could causally increase closeness to the romantic partner at an intrapersonal level. The interventions had been developed based on previous literature and findings on mechanisms to enhance closeness. The study was part of a Bachelor’s thesis at the Chair for Quantitative Methods and Assessment (Department of Psychology) at Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich. All supplementary material as well as the Bachelor’s thesis itself can be found in this project. The data, which is needed to run the attached R scripts, may be obtained at https://osf.io/agchm/

Paper: Eliciting Short-Term Closeness in Couple Relationships

This project is associated with the manuscript "Eliciting Short-Term Closeness in Couple Relationships" (https://online.ucpress.edu/collabra/article/8/1/38599/194135/Eliciting-Short-Term-Closeness-in-Couple). Please have a look at the "_ReadMe.txt" file in the OSF storage for details. Please note that the project additionally contains two separate osf projects as components: these components act as self-contained projects for the theses that were associated with the manuscript, hence some information are duplicated in each subproject. Details in the theses may differ from the manuscript, hence please use the main osf project and associated files at https://osf.io/agchm/ for inspection of files and data associated with the journal manuscript, and not the components

Effects of pre‐operative isolation on postoperative pulmonary complications after elective surgery: an international prospective cohort study

We aimed to determine the impact of pre-operative isolation on postoperative pulmonary complications after elective surgery during the global SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. We performed an international prospective cohort study including patients undergoing elective surgery in October 2020. Isolation was defined as the period before surgery during which patients did not leave their house or receive visitors from outside their household. The primary outcome was postoperative pulmonary complications, adjusted in multivariable models for measured confounders. Pre-defined sub-group analyses were performed for the primary outcome. A total of 96,454 patients from 114 countries were included and overall, 26,948 (27.9%) patients isolated before surgery. Postoperative pulmonary complications were recorded in 1947 (2.0%) patients of which 227 (11.7%) were associated with SARS-CoV-2 infection. Patients who isolated pre-operatively were older, had more respiratory comorbidities and were more commonly from areas of high SARS-CoV-2 incidence and high-income countries. Although the overall rates of postoperative pulmonary complications were similar in those that isolated and those that did not (2.1% vs 2.0%, respectively), isolation was associated with higher rates of postoperative pulmonary complications after adjustment (adjusted OR 1.20, 95%CI 1.05-1.36, p = 0.005). Sensitivity analyses revealed no further differences when patients were categorised by: pre-operative testing; use of COVID-19-free pathways; or community SARS-CoV-2 prevalence. The rate of postoperative pulmonary complications increased with periods of isolation longer than 3 days, with an OR (95%CI) at 4-7 days or >= 8 days of 1.25 (1.04-1.48), p = 0.015 and 1.31 (1.11-1.55), p = 0.001, respectively. Isolation before elective surgery might be associated with a small but clinically important increased risk of postoperative pulmonary complications. Longer periods of isolation showed no reduction in the risk of postoperative pulmonary complications. These findings have significant implications for global provision of elective surgical care