Background: The Daily Spiritual Experience Scale (DSES) has been developed through extensive and qualitative research. Numerous studies have confirmed the reliability and validity of the DSES among different populations. Most of the studies have shown association of the DSES with physical and psychological well-being. Purpose: The current study aimed to evaluate the psychometric properties of the DSES in the Croatian population. Method: The 16-item scale was translated through standard translation/back-translation procedures. The scale was afterwards applied to a sample of 535 test subjects (49% men and 51% women), mean age 42.6 years. Results: The coefficient of reliability (Cronbach alpha = 0.945) is very high. The coefficients of discriminant validity were satisfactory for 15 items, whereas only one item (14) has a coefficient of less than 0.30. The factor analysis after oblique rotation resulted in two related factors: the relationship with God and relationship with others. Using these two factors explained the 66.1% of the variance. Conclusion: Based on the data, it can be concluded that DSES has satisfactory psychometric characteristics and can be applied to the Croatian population, but its correlation with other religious and non-religious constructs should be verified in further research. OPEN ACCESSReligions 2015, 6 713

The aim of the paper was to examine the direct and indirect effect of economic adjustment on the emotional and behavioural school engagement of children, through parental punishment. The direct and indirect effects were examined depending on the gender of the child and the parent, and the source of the assessment of the examined constructs. Based on theoretical models, namely the Adams's and Ryan Family–School Relationships Model (2005), the Conger's and colleges Family Stress Model (2010), and the model of Yoshikawa and colleges (2012), hypothesis has been postulated about the existence of significant indirect but not the direct effect of the economic adjustment on the school engagement of boys and girls. In this paper, the data collected from 285 schoolchildren and their parents analysed. Children assessed punishment of the father and of the mother, and their school engagement and parents provided information on the economic adjustment. Using the Hayes's (2013) mediation process analysis, eight models were tested with direct and indirect effects of the economic adjustment on school engagement of the children. The results partly supported the hypothesis of the existence of significant indirect but not direct effects of economic adjustment on school engagement. The obtained results indicate that the effect of economic adjustment on school engagement of boys is only indirect, namely through parental punishment, while in girls the economic adjustment is both directly and indirectly related to school engagement. In boys, the adverse effect of economic adjustment on school engagement is realized through the behaviour of both mothers and fathers, while in girls only with the relation to maternal behaviour. The results indicate the significant and negative impact of the economic adjustment on school engagement of children.

Objective: Personal well-being is a positive state of mind that involves the whole life experience. Croatian War of Independence has certainly been a life-changing experience for many Croatian families, especially those whose members were actively involved. The aim of this study was to investigate the effects of anxiety and depression symptoms on personal and partner's well-being in couples with and without traumatic war experiences. Method: One hundred and ninety-four participants were included in this study and divided into three groups: war veterans without posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and their wives (34 dyads), war veterans with PTSD and their wives (33 dyads), and nonveteran couples (30 dyads). All completed Depression, Anxiety, and Stress Scale, Personal Well-Being Index, and reported information about war-related experience and mental health diagnosis. We applied two Actor–Partner Interdependence Models with anxiety and depression as predictors and personal well-being as outcome. Results: Our most interesting finding revealed that war veterans with PTSD and their wives demonstrate specific pattern of interaction: significant partner effect showed that husbands' higher anxiety and depression symptoms reduced wives' personal well-being. We also found significant actor effects, showing that symptoms of depression and anxiety have negative effects on personal well-being. Conclusions: It seems that the personal well-being of wives of war veterans with PTSD is doubly burdened by their own and their husbands' emotional state. In the clinical context, this might mean that special attention should be paid to veterans' wives, even when the husband who is suffering from PTSD is the one who primarily seeks professional help.

Implicit beliefs and cognitions largely direct behavioral and emotional interaction between intimate partners which in turn determines relationship satisfaction of both partners. Positive illusions, based on automatic thinking, represent a possible strategy for coping with relationship stress caused by the discrepancy between ideal and perceived partner’s attributes. Contrary, research suggests that mindfulness, a conscious alternative to functioning on automatic pilot, has numerous benefits on relationship satisfaction and partner dynamic. However, the role of mindfulness in the context of relationship cognition is still not fully researched. The aim of this research was to examine the relationship between dispositional mindfulness and positive illusions about intimate partners. Survey was conducted online, and it included participants living in Croatia. Dyadic analysis included 106 heterosexual couples (mean age for women was 23.17 years, and for men 24.54 years) who were in a relationship for at least 6 months. Mindfulness Attention Awareness Scale – MAAS is used as a measure of dispositional mindfulness, and Interpersonal Qualities Scale as a measure of partners’ positive illusions. The actor and partner effects of dispositional mindfulness on illusory perception of partners’ attributes were tested by Actor-Partner Interdependence Model. Contrary to hypothesized, mindfulness did not negatively affect biased perception of intimate partner. Partner effects for both men and women, and men’s actor effect are shown to be significant in our model, suggesting that dispositional mindfulness contributed positively to partner’s illusory perception of their intimate partner attributes, on both dyad level and individual level only for men.

The authors wish to make the following correction to [1]. The copyright attribution for Appendix A1 and Appendix A2 were missing. For Appendix A1, the caption should include “© Lynn Underwood. Permission required to copy or distribute. www.dsescale.org.” For Appendix B2, the caption should include “© Lynn Underwood Permission required to copy or distribute. www.dsescale.org; Translation collaboration with Ž. Rakošec, Š. Mikšić, and B. Juranić.” [...]