Research Integration
LINKS:
Dr. Underwood is Professor of Biomedical Humanities at Hiram College. She has written and edited numerous publications. A number of them are featured here.
Biomedical Humanities
"The Human Person Revealed More Fully in Disability, End of Life and In Extremis," presented at European Research Network meeting, "The Human Person in the 21st Century," Thessaloniki, Greece, April 20-23 2007.
"Now Bounded, Now Immeasurable: Perspectives on Time in Disability, in Suffering and at End of Life," Medical Humanities 33:11-15 (2007)
Psycho-social Aspects of Health
The 1997 ground-breaking text, Measuring Stress: A Guide for Health and Social Scientists (Oxford University Press), co-edited by Dr. Underwood, provided tools for researchers investigating the nature of stress and its relation health.
Another area in which Dr. Underwood successfully brought together researchers from various disciplines resulted in the book Social Support Measurement and Intervention: A Guide for Health and Social Scientists (Oxford University Press, 2000).
Spirituality and Love
Dr. Underwood is author of the "Daily Spiritual Experience Scale," an instrument designed to enable researchers to get measures of "ordinary" spiritual experiences. This scale has been used in a variety of different studies. Two articles provide theoretical background and interpretation guidelines for the DSES:
"Ordinary Spiritual Experience: Qualitative Research, Interpretive Guidelines, and Population Distribution for the Daily Spiritual Experience Scale," is designed to help scholars understand, use and score the DSES. Archive for the Psychology of Religion/Archiv fuer Religionspsychologie, 28:1 (2006), 181-218.
"The Daily Spiritual Experience Scale: Development, Theoretical Description, Reliability, Exploratory Factor Analysis, and Preliminary Construct Validity Using Health-Related Data," Annals of Behavioral Medicine, by Underwood and Teresi, which describes its psychometric qualities and some of its applications.
"Interviews with Trappist Monks as a Contribution to Research Methodology in the Investigation of Compassionate Love." Journal for the Theory of Social Behavior, 35:3(285-302), September 2005.
Spanish, French and Vietnamese translations of the DSES have also been developed.
In 1999, Dr. Underwood, along with others, organized a conference, Empathy, Altruism and Agape: Perspectives on Love in Science and Religion. This conference brought together researchers from many disciplines and was the basis for the 2002 Oxford University Press book which she co-edited, Altruism and Altruistic Love: Science, Philosophy and Religion in Dialogue.
Compassionate Love Research Conference Booklet At a May, 2004 conference in Washington, D.C., scholars gathered to report on fifty-some research projects involving the scientific study of compassionate love/altruism. (Booklet artwork is by Dr. Underwood.) Dr. Underwood, then at the Fetzer Institute, was major author of the orignal Request for Proposals and the co-editor of the conference booklet, which includes a summary of the projects.
An important area of focus for Dr. Underwood has been the relations between body, mind and spirit. One offshoot of this was a number of projects relating to health and spirituality. Another was an article by Dr. Underwood on the place of spirituality and religiousness in an inclusive concept of health: "A Working Model of Health: Spirituality and Religiousness as Resources: Applications to Persons with Disabilities"
Cancer Epidemiology
Dr. Underwood originally trained in epidemiology and pathology. Her publications in that area include:
"Poor Prognosis for Malignant Melanoma in Northern Irelant: A Multivariate Analysis," Gordon(Underwood) LG, Lowry WS, Pedlow PJ, Patterson CC, British Journal of Cancer, 1991: 63; 283-286;
"Incidence and Aetiology of Melanoma," Gordon(Underwood) L, Lowry WS. The Lancet, 1985, i, 8428; 583.