Ada Spitzer

Psychometric evaluation of the Russian Language version of the Resilience Scale.

The Resilience Scale (RS) was developed by Wagnild and Young (1993) to measure a personality characteristic or coping resource that facilitates adaptation. The RS, however, has not been evaluated with foreign-born populations. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to report the factor structure, internal consistency, and concurrent validity of a Russian language version of the RS in a sample of 450 recent former Soviet immigrants. The 25-item 2-factor solution obtained by Wagnild and Young (1993) was not supported by the Russian data. However, a modified 12-item Russian language version of the RS was, for the most part, reliable and valid: The standardized factor loadings and goodness of fit indices obtained from confirmatory factor analysis were acceptable, the internal consistency of one of the two subscales was very good, and the correlations between scores from the RS subscales and various measures of constructs that are theoretically linked with adaptation were in the expected direction and statistically significant.

Internal Body Perceptions of Ethiopian Jews Who Emigrated to Israel

Previous research regarding knowledge about internal organs among school-age children tied this knowledge to the development of cognitive capabilities. Studies have rarely considered the impact of culture on this knowledge. The purpose of this study was to examine internal body perceptions among Ethiopian Jews who emigrated to Israel. A total of 65 children (stratified according to age) and 19 adults were interviewed. Findings indicated that Ethiopian children reported fewer body organs than did Western children. Further, Ethiopian children and adults, unlike peoplefrom Western societies, did notthinkabout the body in terms of different biophysical functions. Rather, they perceived the body as a holistic system in which a divine providence was responsible for body organs working together harmoniously. Implications of the differing perceptions about internal body organs, health, illness, and treatment are discussed.