Michel Alain

Addressing suicidal ideations through the realization of meaningful personal goals.

A personal goal intervention program was offered to early retirees aged 50 to 65 years with the objective of increasing their subjective well-being. The program was aimed at helping the participants set, plan, pursue, and realize their personal goals. A subsample of 21 participants with suicidal ideas was identified from a larger sample (N = 354) of retirees living in the community who took part in the study to evaluate the program. The experimental (n = 10) and control (n = 11) groups were compared on their answers to 16 goal and psychological well-being questionnaires. By the end of the program, the experimental group had improved significantly more than the control group on hope, goal realization process, serenity, flexibility, and positive attitude toward retirement. The levels of depression and psychological distress significantly decreased. These gains were maintained 6 months later. The positive results obtained from this study could lead to an innovative way to help people with suicidal ideations.

A French Version of the Bem Sex-Role Inventory

Research on sex-roles has been extensive in recent years. More researchers are using sex-role orientation as a way to analyze and refine data analysis. The Bern Sex-role Inventory is popular and has been used in different cultural contexts and sometimes in different languages. This study presents a French version. Internal consistency of the inventory and test-retest correlations are high and quite similar to Berns original (1974) data.

DEVELOPMENT AND VALIDATION OF A SELF-CONFIDENCE SCALE

Even though self-confidence is a popular concept both in everyday life and in psychology, no individual difference measure is available. The purpose of this study was to construct and validate an 18-item self-confidence scale. A sample of 191 white undergraduate students from Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières (44 men and 147 women) participated. An exploratory factor analysis indicated two distinct factors; one measured a general cognitive aspect of self-confidence and a second evaluated a more specific self-confidence in ones abilities and opinions. Internal consistency (Cronbach α) was .84. Intercorrelations with other related measures (.23 to .69) were significant and in the expected direction. The new scale could be useful when a specific measure of self-confidence is required as an individual difference measure.

IMPROVING RELIABILITY OF PEER-NOMINATION WITH YOUNG CHILDREN

It is now well recognized that poorly accepted children run a greater risk of serious adjustment problems later in life. The poor-to-fair temporal reliability of the peer-nominations found among young children was an obstacle to early assessment. Although two reliable alternative techniques have been proposed, these have important drawbacks. The present study assessed the reliability of a third alternative, namely, asking children to make more nominations. Three to six positive and negative nominations were obtained from 97 kindergarten and 100 prekindergarten children. Although data proved unreliable at the prekindergarten level, data from kindergarten children were quite reliable and indicated that four choices yielded higher reliabilities than three-choice nominations. More nominations did not further improve reliability. Percentages of subjects classified in the various sociometric status following Coie and Dodges 1983 criteria also suggested that four choices reproduced optimally the classification generated by the traditional nomination technique. Implications of these results are discussed.

La santé mentale par la gestion des projets personnels : une intervention auprès de jeunes retraités

A personal goal-based intervention was offered to retired people aged 50 to 65 years with the objective of increasing their subjective well-being and their mental health. More specifically, the program presented here was aimed to promote the setting, planning, and realization of personal projects through a learning process based on a cognitive approach. At the end of the program, the experimental group (n = 117) had improved significantly more than the control group (n = 177) on all the goal and subjective well-being indicators, and this gain was maintained six months later. Some ideas to make the program more effective are discussed.

Les facteurs influençant le bien-etre psychologique à la retraite

The present study focused on variables influencing psychological well-being during the period of adjustment to retirement (6 to 36 months). The sample included 141 respondents – 69 retired men and 72 retired women – who completed questionnaires evaluating life satisfaction, retirement satisfaction, and psychological well-being. Variables traditionally examined (socio-demographic, health, attitude, and social) explained 45 to 57 per cent of the variance related to life and retirement satisfaction, but explained a smaller percentage (9 to 37%) of the variance related to the six dimensions of psychological well-being. This study, therefore, confirmed the impact of traditional variables on life and retirement satisfaction but brought out the importance of investigating other variables that could explain psychological well-being during retirement.