Goal Contents, State Empathy and Instructional Goals in a Physical Disability Vignette

ABSTRACT

Setting and recommending instructional goals represents an important communication process in educational and health domains, which are intersected in many cases. However, little is known about the antecedents of instructional goals. The aim of the present study was to examine how the contents of participants’ personal goals in life (i.e. goal contents) and state empathy during message processing affected the processes of prioritizing instructional goals in the case of an adolescent who presented physical disability and impaired cognitive functioning, as presented in a video vignette. Health and care practitioners who were members of the educational system, in-service teachers and university students of disciplines related to health, rehabilitation or education, participated in a cross-sectional study. The findings showed that the participants proposed instructional goals according to their current goal contents and state empathy. In particular, state empathy demonstrated both main effects and mediations in influencing intrinsic instructional goals. However, state empathy, in fact its associative component, influenced an extrinsic goal domain as well. Interpretations of this phenomenon are presented, and the limitations of some tools are demonstrated. In addition, suggestions are put forward regarding implications and future research for a proximal causation of the instructional goals.

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank all respondents who participated in our study. Also, we would like to thank the editor and the reviewers for their effort, interest and commitment to improve this manuscript by providing valuable comments.

Disclosure statement

Authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that influence their work. However, authors state that Dr. Panagiotis Varsamis was the supervisor of the Bachelor Thesis written by Eleni Iosifidou. Authors declare data/code availability.

Additional information (only for reasons of review)

Editors and reviewers may find the original/initial extended scene (without Greek subtitles) used in the present research from here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4mBk7ruLI0E. Yet, the video used consisted of the first three minutes and 40 seconds from this file: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1gSnJv6MBMHzxZMzRDVeXohunuu_erwfz/view?usp=sharing

Compliance with ethical standards

All procedures performed in the present study, which involved human participants, were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards. The national Institute of Educational Policy of Greece (see http://iep.edu.gr/en/administration-structure/what-is-i-e-p/aims-and-responsibilities) is responsible for giving relevant permissions, only when research involves underage/juvenile and/or school-aged human participants. The present research refers to adult participants. Therefore, the General Assembly of the Department of Educational and Social Policy (University of Macedonia) approved the present research (approval act: 1/October 2 2018). At the time of our research planning the role of the Committee for Research Ethics of the University of Macedonia (https://www.uom.gr/en/ethics) was not very known. Later on, we received an official permission for expanding our research; in this approval all variables of the present study are covered (Number of decision: 16/11.02.21).

Consent to publish

Although no personal data was collected, participants were aware that the sum of their opinions (means, correlations etc.) will be published in the form of a research paper.

Informed consent

Informed consent was obtained from all participants included in the study.

Notes

1. Any information concerning methods, results and data is available from the corresponding author.

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.