Sunday, June 23, 2019

Fr. Anil Gonsalves obtains Doctorate at Loyola University Maryland, USA

Our Province of St. Bonaventure is getting another Doctoral student who defended his doctoral thesis in Maryland, USA. Our province is now intellectually rich and the wisdom these doctors will spread around in the province will help us to walk in the footsteps of St. Francis of Assisi and be vibrant Capuchins in Maharashtra. Fr. Anil since five years has been studying in the USA with the sponsorship by the Capuchins of Pittsburg, USA. The theme that he explored and researched is " An examination of the Impact of a Non-violent communication training program for married Individuals and its influence on Marital Satisfaction".  Below i have provided a summary of his doctoral thesis. 
The primary goal of this study was to examine the impact of a Nonviolent Communication (NVC) training program on married individuals and its influence on spirituality/religiosity, communication patterns, and marital satisfaction. To accomplish this goal two important steps were taken: first, the Nonviolent Communication Inventory (NVCI) was developed which measures the empathic involvement of individuals through behavioral, emotional, and psychological engagement. Exploratory Factor Analyses were conducted to analyze a pool of 50 items that resulted in 30 items and three factors for the NVCI: Empathic Expressing/Listening, Empathic Connecting, and Empathic Receiving. This study provided evidence for strong internal consistency and relatively strong construct validity for the NVCI. The NVCI, after controlling for demographic variables, demonstrated incremental validity when explaining a unique variation in marital satisfaction over the subscales of the Nonviolent Communication Scale, as well as over personality, spirituality, and process variables. The results suggested combining both the NVCI and the NVCS to meaningfully capture the aspects of NVC.
 
 Second, a four-week NVC training program was developed for married individuals. Participants (N= 104) were randomly assigned to one of two groups and the impact of the NVC training on marital satisfaction was assessed three different times during the study. Although the results failed to demonstrate the expected interaction effect for group by time, the results revealed a statistically significant improvement in all the outcome variables during the course of training. Moderate effect sizes were evidenced over time for Empathic Expressing/Listening, Empathic Connecting, Empathic Receiving, Spiritual Transcendence, and Religious Involvement and small effect sizes for Marital Satisfaction and Religious Crisis. The results indicated a strong relationship between the three process variables (practice, with or without partner, and attendance) and changes on outcome variables. Multiple regression analyses revealed that engagement in NVC skill practice between sessions was the most important process variable that facilitated a significant change in three of the outcome variables (Marital Satisfaction, Empathic Expressing/Listening, and Empathic Connecting).

 Moreover, the post-test scores on spirituality also demonstrated a unique predictive power over covariates and personality when explaining an additional significant variation in marital satisfaction. The results of this exploratory study provided initial evidence for the reliability and validity of the NVCI, and the suitability of the NVC training program for enhancing marital satisfaction. Clinical and pastoral implications, the limitations of the study, and directions for future research are discussed.  


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