Alternate-forms and alpha reliability of the Teacher Stress Inventory

The alternate-forms and alpha reliabilities of the Teacher Stress Inventory were investigated based on the responses of two groups of 138 teachers. Reliability estimates ranged from .43 to .94 for the TSI subscales and .71 to .94 for the TSI whole scale, indicating high stability and equivalence for the stress factors across immediate, one-day, one-week, and two-week intervals using two different TSI short forms. Between-forms correlations were larger for the immediate sample than they were for the interval samples. Short-form TSI alphas ranged from .76 to .90.     

Correlations between the stanford-binet: Fourth edition and the WISC-R with a learning disabled population

The Fourth Edition of the Stanford-Binet and the WISC-R were compared as instruments for assessing the intellectual strengths and weaknesses of students classified as learning disabled in the primary and secondary grades. Results found only a 3.28-point difference (p≥.0001) between the S-B Composite score and the WISC-R Full Scale score. Correlations between the four broad areas of the S-B and the three scales of the WISC-R ranged from .494 (S-B Abstract/Visual Reasoning with WISC-R Verbal) to .920 (S-B Composite with WISC-R Full Scale). All correlations were found to be significant. Implications of the research findings were discussed.     

The alpha and split-half reliability of the teacher stress inventory

The internal consistency and split-half reliability of the Teacher Stress Inventory (TSI) was investigated based on data provided by 3,478 teachers, representing 22 individual and two aggregate samples from six states. The data indicate for both the strength and frequency dimensions that the TSI is highly reliable in terms of both its regular and short-form length, and that the two short forms are highly correlated with one another.     

Cultured meat and cowless milk: on making markets for animal-free food

According to its proponents, animal-free animal food products, such as cultured meat and synthetic cow’s milk, have the potential to overcome various environmental, health and ethical challenges that have emerged around global animal product consumption and the industrial agriculture that is needed to support it. Apart from the myriad of technical problems making animal-free food products, critics have pointed out the blurry ontological status of the food and the ethical challenges therein, and have questioned the veracity of the various promissory narratives being produced. This paper considers animal-free food from a social studies of economies and markets (SSEM) perspective. As a market that currently mostly only exists in potential, an SSEM perspective can reveal the various social and material relations that comprise the (bio)capital formation that will underpin any market-to-be, an aspect of markets that are often invisible once markets are up and running. Moreover, this perspective details the intimate role markets have in establishing the ethical and ontological aspects of animal-free foods in a political economy shaped by neoliberalisation and financialisation.     

Exposing athletes to playing form activity: outcomes of a randomised control trial among community netball teams using a game-centred approach

This study evaluated whether exposing junior netball players to greater amounts of competition relevant activity (playing form activity) had an effect on game play outcomes and session involvement. A group-randomised controlled trial in one junior netball club in the Hunter Region, NSW, Australia. Ninety female athletes (mean age = 9.04 years, SD 1.53) were randomised by team (n = 11) into the intervention (n = 41) or 9-week wait-list control (n = 49) condition. The Professional Learning for Understanding Games Education into Sport (PLUNGE into Sport) programme was undertaken in the first half of nine training sessions (9 × 30 min). The intervention exposed athletes to playing form activity through a coach development programme within training sessions. Athletes’ decision-making, support and skill outcomes during a small-sided invasion game, and session involvement (pedometer step/min), were measured at baseline and 9-week follow-up. Linear mixed models revealed significant group-by-time intervention effects (P < 0.05) for decision-making (d = 0.4) and support (d = 0.5) during game play, and in-session activity (d = 1.2). An intervention exposing athletes to greater levels of playing form activity, delivered via a coach education programme, was efficacious in improving athlete decision-making and support skills in game play and increasing athlete involvement during sessions.     

Examining coaches’ perceptions of how their stress influences the coach–athlete relationship

This study extends recent coach stress research by evaluating how coaches perceive their stress experiences to affect athletes, and the broader coach–athlete relationship. A total of 12 coaches working across a range of team sports at the elite level took part in semi-structured interviews to investigate the 3 study aims: how they perceive athletes to detect signals of coach stress; how they perceive their stress experiences to affect athletes; and, how effective they perceive themselves to be when experiencing stress. Following content analysis, data suggested that coaches perceived athletes able to detect when they were experiencing stress typically via communication, behavioural, and stylistic cues. Although coaches perceived their stress to have some positive effects on athletes, the overwhelming effects were negative and affected “performance and development”, “psychological and emotional”, and “behavioural and interaction” factors. Coaches also perceived themselves to be less effective when stressed, and this was reflected in their perceptions of competence, self-awareness, and coaching quality. An impactful finding is that coaches are aware of how a range of stress responses are expressed by themselves, and to how they affect athletes, and their coaching quality. Altogether, findings support the emerging view that coach stress affects their own, and athlete performance.     

Long-term endurance training increases serum cathepsin S and decreases IL-6 and hsCRP levels

Cathepsin S (CS) was shown to play a key role in cancer progression, atherosclerosis, heart valve disease, insulin resistance and diabetes mellitus. The present prospective study aimed to investigate the influence of sports on CS, interleukin-6 (Il-6) and high-sensitivity C-reactive protein (hsCRP) levels.

Ninety-eight of 109 participants completed the study. Ergometries were performed at baseline and after 8 months to evaluate/quantify the performance gain. Blood samples were taken at baseline and every 2 months. CS was measured by ELISA (enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay). Compared to the control group (mean performance gain ?3.41 ± 4.62%) we observed a significant physical-activity-induced increase of CS levels (3.45–3.73 ng · ml^?1; P = 0.027) and a significant decrease of Il-6 (2.43–1.91 pg · ml^?1; P = 0.031) and hsCRP-levels (0.11–0.09 mg · dl^?1; P = 0.001) in the intervention group (mean performance gain: 12.13 ± 6.32%). Furthermore, the tendency of the progression was significant for CS and Il-6 (P = 0.002/0.033).

We could show a significant sports-induced decrease of the classic inflammation parameters hsCRP/Il-6, probably expressing a downregulation of permanently prevalent inflammation processes. Simultaneously CS levels increased significantly. Our results show that increasing CS amounts are not simply to equal with an enhanced inflammation status and might even have beneficial effects on inflammation and angiogenesis.