مطالب

Objective: This study aimed to examine the effectiveness of mindfulness-based psychotherapy on functional flexibility and health hardiness in patients with coronavirus anxiety during the epidemic. Methods: This research utilized a quasi-experimental method with a pre-test, post-test design, including a control group and a three-month follow-up period. The statistical population comprised individuals with coronavirus anxiety who contacted counseling centers in Isfahan for telephone consultations during the summer of 2021. From this population, 33 individuals were selected through purposive sampling and randomly assigned to experimental and control groups. Participants in the experimental group received mindfulness-based psychotherapy (8 sessions) based on Kabat-Zinn's protocol (2003) over two months. The questionnaires used in this study included the Functional Flexibility Questionnaire (Dennis & Vander Wal, 2010), the Health Hardiness Questionnaire (Gibbhardt, VanderDerf, & Powell, 2001), and the Coronavirus Anxiety Questionnaire (Alipour et al., 2019). Data were analyzed using mixed ANOVA with SPSS23 statistical software. Findings: The results indicated that mindfulness-based psychotherapy significantly impacted functional flexibility (P<0.0001; Eta=0.62; F=52.32) and health hardiness (P<0.0001; Eta=0.65; F=55.09) in patients with coronavirus anxiety. Conclusion: Based on the findings of the present study, mindfulness-based psychotherapy, utilizing techniques such as mindful attitude, mindful activities, addressing problematic emotions, and breathing exercises, can be effectively used to improve functional flexibility and health hardiness in patients with coronavirus anxiety.

Objective: The aim of the present study was to predict distress tolerance in the elderly based on experiential avoidance and spiritual intelligence. Method: This was a descriptive correlational study. The population included all elderly individuals aged between 65 and 80 years who visited community centers in Tehran in 2022, from whom a sample of 300 was selected using cluster sampling. The Emotional Distress Tolerance Scale by Simons and Gaher (2005), the Spiritual Intelligence Scale by King (2008), and the Experiential Avoidance Questionnaire by Gámez et al. (2011) were utilized for data collection. Data were analyzed using regression analysis. Findings: The results indicated that experiential avoidance significantly negatively predicted distress tolerance. Additionally, spiritual intelligence significantly positively predicted distress tolerance. Conclusions: Based on the findings of the current study, it can be concluded that this predictive model could serve as an effective framework in counseling and psychotherapy centers to enhance distress tolerance among the elderly.

Objective: This study aimed to compare the efficacy of a specialized package for women with body dysmorphic disorder and schema therapy on perfectionism and maladaptive schemas in women afflicted with body dysmorphic disorder. Methods: The research employed a quasi-experimental design with pre-test, post-test, and follow-up phases involving two experimental groups and one control group, conducted among women with body dysmorphic disorder visiting psychological centers in Isfahan in the first half of 2022. For this purpose, 45 women were selected by convenience and randomly assigned to two experimental groups and one control group. The first experimental group received the specialized package for women with body dysmorphic disorder (researcher-designed), and the second experimental group underwent schema therapy according to the protocol of Young and colleagues (2023) over ten 90-minute sessions, while the control group received no intervention. Participants completed the Perfectionism Questionnaire (1995) and Young's Schema Questionnaire (1998) at pre-test, post-test, and follow-up stages. Data were analyzed using repeated measures ANOVA with SPSS software. Findings: There were significant differences between the groups receiving the specialized package and schema therapy and the control group in terms of negative perfectionism and rejection schemas (p < .01). Additionally, there were differences between the group receiving the specialized package and the schema therapy group in terms of positive perfectionism, autonomy schemas, impaired performance, and impaired limits (p < .01), such that the specialized package had an effect on positive perfectionism, and schema therapy had an impact on autonomy schemas, impaired performance, and impaired limits (p < .05). Moreover, neither treatment had an effect on schemas of other-directedness and hypervigilance. Conclusion: Specialists are recommended to utilize both interventions to improve women with body dysmorphic disorder in terms of reducing negative perfectionism and rejection schemas, to use the specialized package for enhancing positive perfectionism, and to employ schema therapy for reducing autonomy schemas and impaired functioning and limits.

Objective: The present study aimed to compare the effectiveness of a combined package of Resilient Dialectical Behavior Therapy and Dialectical Behavior Therapy on the sense of coherence and marital interactions in women with marital burnout. Methods: The present study was a quasi-experimental design with a pre-test, post-test, and follow-up with a control group. The statistical population included all women aged 25 to 50 years with marital burnout who responded to the call posted in cultural centers in the city of Isfahan in the spring of 2022 and were contacted and received a moderate score based on the marital burnout questionnaire. A total of 45 individuals from the mentioned population were selected purposefully and randomly assigned to two experimental groups and one control group (15 individuals each). The experimental groups underwent nine 60-minute sessions of the combined package of Resilient Dialectical Behavior Therapy and Dialectical Behavior Therapy, while the control group received no treatment during this period. Data were collected using Antonovsky's Sense of Coherence Questionnaire (1993) and Gottman's Marital Interactions Questionnaire (1999) and analyzed using repeated measures ANOVA and Bonferroni post hoc test, with SPSS version 23. Findings: The results showed that both interventions significantly affected the sense of coherence and marital interactions in women with marital burnout (p < 0.05). However, in terms of the effectiveness of the two therapeutic methods, the combined package of Resilient Dialectical Behavior Therapy was more effective (p < 0.05). Conclusion: The results indicated that the combined package of Resilient Dialectical Behavior Therapy could be utilized to enhance the sense of coherence and marital interactions.

This study was conducted to examine the comments provided by ChatGPT 3.5 and doctoral students on doctoral dissertation proposals. Feedback receivers’ behavioral engagement with these two feedback types was also examined. The participants of this study, selected based on convenience sampling, were 28 Teaching English as a Foreign Language PhD students from three provinces who wrote their dissertation proposals in English. The first version and revised versions of their proposals and the provided comments were analyzed to identify the feedback types and the extent they applied the comments. Furthermore, stimulated recall interviews were used to identify the reasons why they did not apply some of the participants. Findings showed that both ChatGPT 3.5 and doctoral students were successful in providing both content-related and form-related comments. These two feedback sources also provided significant numbers of elaborated and justified feedback on dissertation proposals. Feedback receivers applied most of the comments provided by these feedback sources, and the specificity levels of comments affected the incorporation rate. The findings of the thematic analysis of the stimulated recall interview data revealed that the participants did not apply the comments because they were too broad, inaccurate, difficult to apply, and difficult to understand.

The accurate imputation of missing values in time series data is paramount for maintaining the integrity and reliability of analyses and predictions. This article investigates the effica-cy of various missing values imputation methods, encom-passing well-known machine learning and statistical tech-niques. Moreover, for a better understanding, they imple-mented two financial data time series: S&P 500 and Bitcoin markets spanning from 2016 to 2023 on a daily frequency. Initially utilizing complete datasets, controlled missingness was introduced by randomly removing 45 data points. Then, these methods applied multiple imputation strategies for estimating and substituting these missing values. Experi-mental evaluation yielded insightful findings regarding the performance of the different methods. The examined ma-chine learning methods, including k-Nearest Neighbors (k-NN), Random Forest, Deep Learning, and Decision Trees, consistently outperformed their statistical counterparts, such as Mean Imputation, Regression Imputation, Hot-Deck Im-putation, and Expectation-Maximization Imputation. Nota-bly, Random Forest emerged as the most effective method, showcasing superior performance in terms of accuracy and robustness. Conversely, the Mean Imputation method exhibited com-paratively inferior outcomes, suggesting its limited suitabil-ity for financial time series data. This research contributes to the ongoing discourse on data integrity within finance ana-lytics and serves as a comprehensive guide for practitioners seeking optimal missing values imputation methods. The empirical evidence provided herein advances the under-standing of imputation techniques' relative performance and their application in financial data, facilitating enhanced de-cision-making processes and yielding more reliable predic-tions.