The athletic coachability scale: construct conceptualization and psychometric analyses

Recent research indicates that coaches consider coachability\u27\u27 to be an important predictor of athletic success (Giacobbi, Whitney, Roper, & Butryn, 1999; Kuchenbecker, 1999). The results of these studies also show that coaches regularly use the term coachability\u27\u27 to describe the personalities of particular athletes. In the sport psychology literature, coachability was first discussed by Ogilivie and Tutko (1969) who asserted that ... coachability is one of the most essential qualities for truly great athletic effort. Those men who are labeled great pros, with rare exceptions, remain highly coachable men (p. 26). Since that time, little research attention has been given to the systematic examination of the coachability\u27\u27 construct in sport. Researchers appear to have little idea of what behaviors are associated with coachability or whether this construct can predict sport performance. Therefore, the purposes of this study were to develop a measure of coachability\u27\u27 and to assess its psychometric properties. Consistent with the recommendations of Strean (1998), scale items were developed from qualitative interviews with coaches (Giacobbi et. al., 1999) and athletes (Giacobbi, Haley, & Whitney, 1998). In study one, a 44-item scale was developed (The Athletic Coachability Scale) which was administered to 170 college athletes representing a variety of sports. The results of principal components factor analysis with a varimax rotation produced a five-component solution accounting for 43% of the response variance. These factors were labeled intensity of effort (11 items), trust/respect for the coach (7 items), openness to learning (4 items), coping with criticism (3 items), and \u27\u27working with teammates (2 items). All sub scale alpha reliability coefficients exceeded the . 70 criterion advocated by Nunnally (1978). In study two, the revised 30-item Athletic Coachability Scale (ACS) and the Task and Ego Orientation Scale for Sport {TEOSQ; Duda and Nicholls, 1992) was administered to 120 athletes. Principal components factor analysis with a varimax rotation produced a six-component solution accounting for 59% of the response variance. These components were labeled intensity of effort (5 items), reactions to coaching feedback ( 4 items), openness to learning (3 items), \u27\u27trust/respect for the coach (4 items), coping with criticism (4 items), and working with teammates ( 4 items). Correlational analyses between the emergent ACS subscale scores and the subscales scores of the TEOSQ (task and ego orientation) revealed significant positive relationships between a task orientation and the intensity of effort (rho=.377), reactions to coaching feedback (rho=.453), trust/respect for the coach (rho=.277), working with teammates (rho=.378), and total ACS score (rho=.458). It was concluded that the initial evidence from the two studies support-a six-component conceptualization of the coachability construct. However, future research should include efforts to address issues of social-desirability, the creation of a coach rating form, and performance assessments

Business Process and Information Technology Alignment: Construct Conceptualization, Empirical Illustration, and Directions for Future Research

Since strategic alignment first rose to prominence with Henderson and Venkatraman’s (1993) seminal paper, research has tended to focus on the extent of fit between IT and business strategy at the firm level. Although useful, a firm-level view of alignment could mask what firms are doing to realize intellectual alignment between business and IT strategy and whether their actions will likely succeed. In this study, we build on an emergent stream of research that considers alignment between IT and business strategy at the process level. Since research tends to view this form of alignment through the lens of IT support for business strategy, this perspective fails to account for how IT can enable the development of new business strategies. Accordingly, we conceptualize alignment between IT and business strategy at the process level using the lens of IT shortfall (a lack of IT support for business activities) and IT slack (having more IT than needed to support current business activities). Using data from matched surveys of IT and business executives at 317 U.S. and E.U. firms, we illustrate the value of this conceptualization and its process measures. Our results show that IT shortfall is negatively correlated with IT business value, while IT slack is positively correlated with IT business value. We further note that the existence of IT shortfall and IT slack depends on differences in firms’ chosen business strategy and whether a process is critical or non-critical to that strategy’s success

Specifying the Software Project Risk Construct

This paper conceptualizes software project risk in terms of risk exposure and defines it as an aggregate multidimensional construct comprised of four interrelated dimensions: risk sources, risk events, risk management mechanisms, and expected outcomes. The paper also theorizes about relationships between the four dimensions. Furthermore, it argues that the risk factors identified in the literature could be systematically categorized using the proposed construct. The specification is derived from a review of 20 years of software project risk literature – from 1989 to 2009 and on a semantic decompositional analysis of software project risk definitions. The proposed construct conceptualization helps demarcate between the often intertwined behavioural factors and project attributes recognized risk factors in the literature pertaining to software project risk. By identifying the dimensions of risk and their interrelationships, the suggested specification should help improve the construct’s explanatory and predictive power

Workplace Aggression: A Reconceptualization of The Construct & an Exploration of Strain Based Outcomes

The examination of Workplace Aggression as a global construct conceptualization has gained considerable attention over the past few years as organizations work to better understand and address the occurrence and consequences of this challenging construct. The purpose of this dissertation is to build on previous efforts to validate the appropriateness and usefulness of a global conceptualization of the workplace aggression construct. This dissertation has been broken up into two parts: Part 1 utilized a Confirmatory Factor Analysis approach in order to assess the existence of workplace aggression as a global construct; Part 2 utilized a series of correlational analyses to examine the relationship between a selection of commonly experienced individual strain based outcomes and the global construct conceptualization assessed in Part 1. Participants were a diverse sample of 219 working individuals from Amazon’s Mechanical Turk participant pool. Results of Part 1 did not show support for a one-factor global construct conceptualization of the workplace aggression construct. However, support was shown for a higher-order five-factor model of the construct, suggesting that it may be possible to conceptualize workplace aggression as an overarching construct that is made up of separate workplace aggression constructs. Results of Part 2 showed support for the relationships between an existing global construct workplace aggression conceptualization and a series of strain-based outcomes. Utilizing correlational analyses, additional post-hoc analyses showed that individual factors such as emotional intelligence and personality are related to the experience of workplace aggression. Further, utilizing moderated regression analysis, the results demonstrated that individuals experiencing high levels of workplace aggression reported higher job satisfaction when they felt strongly that the aggressive act was highly visible, and similarly, when they felt that there was a clear intent to cause harm. Overall, the findings of this dissertation do support the need for a simplification of its current state of measurement. Future research should continue to examine workplace aggression in an effort to shed additional light on the structure and usefulness of this complex construct

Memory for Emotionally Provocative Words in Alexithymia: A Role for Stimulus Relevance

Alexithymia is associated with emotion processing deficits, particularly for negative emotional information. However, also common are a high prevalence of somatic symptoms and the perception of somatic sensations as distressing. Although little research has yet been conducted on memory in alexithymia, we hypothesized a paradoxical effect of alexithymia on memory. Specifically, recall of negative emotional words was expected to be reduced in alexithymia, while memory for illness words was expected to be enhanced in alexithymia. Eighty-five high or low alexithymia participants viewed and rated arousing illness-related ( pain ), emotionally positive ( thrill ), negative ( hatred ), and neutral words ( horse ). Recall was assessed 45 min later. High alexithymia participants recalled significantly fewer negative emotion words but also more illness-related words than low alexithymia participants. The results suggest that personal relevance can shape cognitive processing of stimuli, even to enhance retention of a subclass of stimuli whose retention is generally impaired in alexithymia

Construing and body dissatisfaction in chronic depression: a study of body psychotherapy.

© 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The frequent association of depression with somatic symptoms suggests that body psychotherapy may be an appropriate therapeutic intervention for people with chronic depression. Using a subset of twenty-three participants from a randomized controlled trial that had demonstrated the effectiveness of such an intervention in reducing depressive symptoms, the present study investigated whether it may also impact aspects of construing which have been associated with depression. Patients presenting with chronic depression were randomly allocated to a treatment group or a waiting list group, which received body psychotherapy after a period on a waiting list. Correlations between repertory grid, questionnaire, and visual analogue measures indicated that depression and bodily dissatisfaction were associated with features of the content and structure of construing. There were no significant changes while patients were on the waiting list, but during treatment reduction in depression and bodily dissatisfaction, together with increase in self-esteem and quality of life, were accompanied by an increase in the salience of construing of the bodily self.Peer reviewe

Modulation of Long-Term Memory by Arousal in Alexithymia: The Role of Interpretation

Moderate physiological or emotional arousal induced after learning modulates memory consolidation, helping to distinguish important memories from trivial ones. Yet, the contribution of subjective awareness or interpretation of arousal to this effect is uncertain. Alexithymia, which is an inability to describe or identify one’s emotional and arousal states even though physiological responses to arousal are intact, provides a tool to evaluate the role of arousal interpretation. Participants scoring high and low on alexithymia (N = 30 each) learned a list of 30 words, followed by immediate recall. Participants then saw either an arousing (oral surgery) or neutral video (tooth brushing). Memory was tested 24-h later. Physiological response to arousal was comparable between groups, but subjective response to arousal was impaired in high alexithymia. Yet, delayed word recognition was enhanced by arousal regardless of alexithymia status. Thus, subjective response to arousal, i.e., cognitive appraisal, was not necessary for memory modulation to occur

Internet gaming disorder as a formative construct : implications for conceptualization and measurement

Background. Some people have serious problems controlling their internet and video game use. The DSM-5 now includes a proposal for ‘Internet Gaming Disorder’ as a condition in need of further study. Various studies aim to validate the proposed diagnostic criteria for Internet Gaming Disorder and multiple new scales have been introduced that cover the suggested criteria. Approach. Using a structured approach, we demonstrate that Internet Gaming Disorder might be better interpreted as a formative construct, as opposed to the current practice of conceptualizing it as a reflective construct. Incorrectly approaching a formative construct as a reflective one causes serious problems in scale development including (a) incorrect reliance on item-to-total scale correlation to exclude items and incorrectly relying on indices of inter-item reliability that do not fit the measurement model (e.g., Cronbach’s α) (b) incorrect interpretation of composite or mean scores that assume all items are equal in contributing value to a sum score, and (c) biased estimation of model parameters in statistical models. Implications. We show that these issues are impacting current validation efforts through two recent examples. A reinterpretation of Internet Gaming Disorder as a formative construct has broad consequences for current validation efforts and provides opportunities to reanalyze existing data. We discuss three broad implications for current research: (1) Composite latent constructs should be defined and used in models, (2) Item exclusion and selection should not rely on item-to-total scale correlations, and (3) Existing definitions of Internet Gaming Disorder should be enriched further

Intact Physiological Response to Arousal with Impaired Emotional Recognition in Alexithymia

Background: The purpose of the present study was to clarify the relationship between the recognition of emotion and physiological response to emotion (i.e. arousal) in alexithymia. Methods: This study investigated differences in physiological arousal state, as measured by continuous heart rate, electrodermal activity (EDA) and self-reported emotional intensity before and after exposure to an emotionally arousing or neutral videotape among 41 high- or low-alexithymic young adult participants. Results: Across subjects, emotionally negative stimuli produced increased physiological arousal. However, high-alexithymic participants exposed to the arousing videotape did not report increased subjective emotional intensity, as did low-alexithymic participants. In addition, the baseline EDA of high-alexithymic participants was significantly higher than that of the low-alexithymic participants. Conclusions: Results support the prediction that alexithymia leads to a decoupling between subjective and physiological arousal when exposed to emotionally negative stimuli. This decoupling may increase alexithymic individuals’ risks for stress-related illness

Conceptualization of Constructs for Shaping Information Security Behavior: Towards a Measurement Instrument

The development of new means to attack information systems by attacking humans accessing the systems has increased the attention given to risks related to human or social aspects of information security. However, the effect of organizational key constructs proposed in organizational and individual behavior literature on information security has not been rigorously examined. Therefore it is important to develop measurement instruments and validate them properly to empirically capture the phenomena with reliable results. In this paper we attempt to conceptualize seven constructs and their sub-dimensions toward developing a measurement instrument. This attempt is carried out through specifying the nature of each construct’s conceptual domain and surveying content domain experts on the relevance, comprehensiveness and clarity of the identified dimensions of the construct. Based on the survey results we provide a set of validated constructs and dimensions that can be used to formally specify future measurement models for investigating how organizations can influence information security behavior