Christopher Peterson

ObjectiveTo evaluate the effects of early treatment with continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) on nutritional intake and in-hospital growth rates of extremely preterm (EPT) infants.Study designEPT infants (240/7-276/7 weeks of gestation) enrolled in the Surfactant Positive Airway Pressure and Pulse Oximetry Trial (SUPPORT) were included. EPT infants who died before 36 weeks of postmenstrual age (PMA) were excluded. The growth rates from birth to 36 weeks of PMA and follow-up outcomes at 18-22 months corrected age of EPT infants randomized at birth to either early CPAP (intervention group) or early intubation for surfactant administration (control group) were analyzed.ResultsGrowth data were analyzed for 810 of 1316 infants enrolled in SUPPORT (414 in the intervention group, 396 in the control group). The median gestational age was 26 weeks, and the mean birth weight was 839 g. Baseline …

The concept of perceived spiritual support (PSS) centers on an internalized resource derived from perception of an intimate relationship with a higher power, be it God, Jesus, a cosmic force, ancestral spirits, or a psychologically functional equivalent. The literature has indicated the increasing importance of spiritual support in crises and medical care, but previous assessments tended to focus on mainstream religions with inadequate validation. To meet the gap and based on related scientific theories, three crises-based studies were conducted to develop and validate a 12-item scale of perceived spiritual support (the PSSS) for assessing the spiritual resource of individuals with diverse belief systems. This endeavor was also a response to a long-standing call for measuring consciousness-related faith experience and to an assessment problem—the use of simple frequency measures in large-scale …

Prayer is an important experience in the lives of many people. We introduce the Using Private Prayer for Coping (UPPC) scale, based on William James’s (1902/1958) concept of personal religious experiences as “a study of human nature” (p. 350) and prayer as an “inward communion or conversation with the power recognized as divine” (p. 352). The UPPC is a consciousness-based scale to assess the use of private prayer for coping in crisis or distress, involving: (a) belief in its importance, (b) faith in its efficacy based on previous experiences, and (c) intention to use this as a means to cope with distress. Three studies in samples with diverse demographic characteristics, belief patterns, and crisis contexts were used to establish the satisfactory psychometric properties of the UPPC, including its association with or predictive value for hedonic and eudaemonic wellbeing following traumatic events or collective …

Research has linked optimism to higher levels of subjective well-being, to positive mood and good morale, to perseverance and effective problem solving, to achievement and success in a variety of domains, to popularity, to good physical health, to reduced suicidal ideation, and even to long life and freedom from trauma. In this chapter, we review what is known about one cognate of optimism—-“explanatory style,” how people habitually explain the causes of events that occur to them. We trace the history of explanatory style research, focusing on the neglected question of the origins of explanatory style. Finally, we conclude by addressing issues that need to be considered by positive psychologists doing research on explanatory style. Research still focuses too much on negative outcomes, ignoring the premise of positive psychology: What makes life most worth living needs to be examined in its own right.