Factors Influencing Levels of Credit‐Card Debt in College Students1

The current study examined the relationship between money attitudes, impulsivity, locus of control, life satisfaction, and stress and credit‐card debt in 227 college students. Students reported an average credit‐card debt of $ 1,518, with over 75% of students holding at least one credit card. Students with credit cards from on‐campus solicitation had higher debt‐to‐income ratios than did those with credit cards from other sources. Personality variables were generally unrelated to level of debt, although they were related to attitudes toward money. Many students requested information about credit and debt, suggesting that knowledge of financial issues may be an important variable for future consideration.     

Personality Factors,Money Attitudes,Financial Knowledge,and Credit‐Card Debt in College Students1

The issue of credit‐card debt among college students has received increasing attention. This study explored factors hypothesized to be causes and effects of credit‐card debt in 448 students on five college campuses. Students reported an average of $1,035 (SD=$1,849) in debt, including students without credit cards or credit‐card debt. Lack of financial knowledge, age, number of credit cards, delay of gratification, and attitudes toward credit‐card use were related to debt. Sensation seeking, materialism, the Student Attitude Toward Debt scale, gender, and grade point average were not unique predictors of debt. Students reporting greater debt reported greater stress and decreased financial well being. Results highlight the need for comprehensive financial literacy education among college students.     

Gender,Socialization, and Money1

We examine the familial experiences of 605 university students surrounding money, and their current beliefs and attitudes about money. A survey examined parental practices regarding money, gender beliefs about equal and unequal earnings, money as it relates to assessments of the self and others, current financial practices, and plans and expectations regarding future financial earnings. Gender comparisons of 12 factors revealed separate and distinct money socialization tracks for men compared to women. Parents were described as having a very different set of practices and expectations for sons and daughters, and the male and female students also sharply differed in a number of ways on their attitudes and behaviors regarding money. For males, money was positively valued. Females had a negative value for money. These money tracks were more sharply differentiated and positively associated among students from higher social classes.     

Do Community Characteristics Relate to Young Adult College Students’ Credit Card Debt? The Hypothesized Role of Collective Institutional Efficacy

This study examines the extent of emergent, outstanding credit card debt among young adult college students and investigates whether any associations existed between this credit card debt and the characteristics of the communities in which these students grew up or lived. Using data (N = 748) from a longitudinal survey and merging community characteristics measured at the zip code level, we confirmed that a community's unemployment rate, average total debt, average credit score, and number of bank branch offices were associated with a young adult college student's acquisition and accumulation of credit card debt. For example, a community's higher unemployment rate and lower number of bank branches were associated with a young adult college student's greater accumulated debt. Community characteristics had the strongest associations with credit card debt, especially after controlling for individual characteristics (i.e., a young adult college student's race and financial independence) and familial characteristics (i.e., their parents’ income and parents’ discussions of financial matters while growing up at home). The findings may help to understand the unique roles that communities play in shaping children and young adults’ financial capability, and how communities can be better capacitated to support the financial goals of their residents.     

Determinants of Money Management Behavior

Financial debt continues to rise, especially among college students, indicating a need for behavioral research to develop more effective money-management interventions. This study examined social psychological variables relevant to money management decision making among college students. Attitude, affect, perceived ability, and past experience were found to influence money-management behavior (i.e., maintaining a budget). We also examined an attitude model of money management and found 9 variables (e.g., normative influence, perceived barrier, perceived control) that determined attitudes toward maintaining a budget. The relevance of our findings to debt prevention is discussed.     

Understanding Male Bias Against Girls and Women in Science1

Boys consistently have expressed more negative attitudes toward women in science than have girls. The basis of these negative male attitudes was explored in a sample of 159 male and 158 female science‐oriented high school students. The students participated in a science enrichment program in which positive information about women in science was provided. Consistent with theories of prejudice and stereotyping: (a) at the beginning of the program, more negative attitudes toward women in science were linked to lower science self‐confidence among boys, but not among girls; and (b) following the program, analysis of residual post‐scores (with pre‐scores controlled) indicated that changes in self‐confidence over the course of the program were related significantly to changes in attitudes toward women in science among boys but not among girls. Implications for girls’ and women's participation in science are discussed.     

Help seeking and social competence mediate the parental attachment–college student adjustment relation

This short‐term longitudinal study investigated whether attitudes about academic help seeking, social competence, and self‐compassion mediated the relations between parental attachment and college student adjustment. Two hundred and four first‐year students completed measures of parental attachment and the proposed mediators at the beginning of their first semester. At the end of the semester, students reported on their academic, social, and personal/emotional adjustment. Results showed that attitudes about academic help seeking mediated the attachment–academic adjustment relation and social competence mediated the attachment–social adjustment relation. Personal/emotional adjustment largely was predicted by initial personal/emotional adjustment. These findings suggest that help‐seeking attitudes and social competence could be fruitful targets of intervention for personnel working with college students who have strained parental relationships.     

Exploring Attitudes and Predicting Intentions: Profiling Student Debtors Using an Extended Theory of Planned Behavior

This study was designed to investigate application of a theory of planned behavior, including involvement and decision‐making style in predicting undergraduates' borrowing attitudes. We conducted interviews to explore antecedents of students' debt‐consumption/borrowing attitudes. We employed exploratory factor analysis to identify attitudinal dimensions utilized in hierarchical regression as independent variables. The results suggest students regard themselves as good money managers, but lack control over borrowing and debt. Combining involvement and decision‐making style as a style/involvement variable had a powerful mediating effect in predicting borrowing intention. Research suggests that grouping students, based on their involvement level with finance and decision‐making style, into debtor types offers opportunities for more understanding of their debt‐consumption intentions. Strategies are proposed for dealing with different debtor types.     

Implications of financial concerns for college goal commitment among undergraduate students in the United States

Financial stress and student loan debt are on the rise among today’s college students. This study examined the associations between financial factors and students’ college goal commitment. A multi-institutional survey was used to assess students’ financial stress, estimated student loan debt, and the perceived importance of career, economic, academic, and co-curricular college goals. Logistic regression analyses found that, after controlling for demographic and academic factors, students with significant financial stress and high levels of debt were more likely to prioritize career, economic, and academic goals for college. Significant interactions between students’ demographic characteristics and their financial concerns were also found.

     

Attitudes Toward Seeking Professional Help for an Eating Disorder: The Role of Stigma and Anticipated Outcomes

This study examined the relationship between self‐stigma, anticipated risks and benefits associated with seeking counseling, and attitudes toward seeking counseling among college students with disordered eating attitudes and behaviors. The results of hierarchical regression analyses demonstrated that self‐stigma and the anticipated risks and benefits significantly predicted attitudes toward counseling for people with disordered eating. In addition, self‐stigma had a stronger relationship with men's attitudes toward counseling than with women's, and anticipated benefits had a stronger relationship with women's attitudes toward counseling than with men's.     

Sex education sources and attitudes toward sexual precautions across a decade

75 college students responded to Moore and Barling's AIDS questionnaire. Coopersmith's Self-esteem Inventory, and a background survey regarding sex education and sexual and religious activity. The most commonly reported sources of sex education were peers, parents, and high school courses, respectively. Ratings of the most important of 10 potential sources of sex education included peers, high school courses, and religious institutions, respectively. None of these were significantly correlated with future condom use. Virgins reported more open communication with parents about sex. Sexual experience was positively related to more confusion about sexual precautions but negatively related to foreclosed attitudes toward such precautions. Some types of religious involvement (church attendance and campus religious organization membership) were related to foreclosed attitudes. Data in attitudinal and sex education were compared with data collected in 1991. Although students more frequently reported having received sex education in 2000, their attitudes toward utilizing sexual precautions have become somewhat more diffused.     

Influence of Generational Status and Financial Stress on Academic and Career Self‐Efficacy

The importance of a college degree is underscored by higher unemployment rates of individuals who have not completed college (Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2014 ). Academic and career self‐efficacy influence students' completion of college, and 1st‐generation college students and those under financial strain may experience decreased self‐efficacy (Wohlgemuth et al., 2007 ). Participants in this study (N = 383) were college students at a 4‐year university. Results from a 2 × 3 multivariate analysis of variance and discriminant function analysis revealed significant differences in academic and career self‐efficacy based on financial stress, but not generational status.     

Materialism and credit card use by college students

Much has been written in the popular press on credit card use and spending patterns of American college students. The proliferation of credit cards and their ease of acquisition ensure that students today have more opportunities for making more credit purchases than any other generation of college students. Little is known about the relationship between students' attitudes towards materialism and their use of credit cards. A study was conducted at three college campuses in the northeastern part of the United States where a total of 1,022 students were surveyed. Students' attitudes toward use of credit and their credit card balances were evaluated relative to their scores on Richins and Dawson's Materialism Scale (1992). Our findings suggest no significant difference between those individuals scoring high versus low on the Materialism Scale in terms of the number of credit cards owned and the average balance owed. Individuals high on materialism, however, significantly differed in terms of their uses for credit cards and their general attitude toward their use.     

Exposing Mammon: Devotion to Money in a Market Society

Abstract : The recent financial crisis has exposed the extent to which the contemporary global economy is driven by credit. Yet credit is the obverse of debt, and where overspending threatens instability through an increasing debt spiral, austerity measures also threaten instability through reducing growth, also leading to an increasing debt spiral. Humanity is increasingly exposed to the force of money, which is created as debt with a given expiration date. Yet to place our credit or faith in the power of debt itself is to place faith in a world of shadows, in estimations of the value of things as perceived by others or market prices. Redemption from debt involves a restoration of our capacity to judge intrinsic values rather than mere prices.     

Attitudes Toward Homosexuals Among Students at a Canadian University

We examined attitudes toward homosexuals amonga broad selection of undergraduates (101 men, 98 women)attending a Canadian university, where a vast majorityof the students are from working- or middle-class families of European descent. Attitudes towardgay men were more negative than attitudes towardlesbians. Compared to Science or Business students,students in the faculties of Arts or Social Science had more positive attitudes toward gay men, andwomen were more positive than men. Attitudes toward gaymen also improved with time spent at college, but onlyfor male students. Although attitudes toward lesbians improved with time at college, they were notassociated with students' gender or faculty ofenrollment. Thus, a college education may promote areduction in anti-homosexual prejudice among youngpeople, particularly among young men.     

Money,Money, Money: Gift Exchange and Credit Giving in Coastal Kerala

For Kerala’s Latin Catholics, financial expenses related to life-cycle events like weddings, baptisms, funerals, and paying for children’s education or for medical treatment are customary expenditures. Yet, many Malayali Latin Catholics in the coastal region are craftsmen and fishermen, and their incomes tend to be unsteady. When they cannot afford these costs using their own resources, borrowing money and accruing debt is a common solution. Besides loans from banks and other institutions, credit is given among relatives, friends, neighbors, and acquaintances. This type of credit is known as ka?a? (“debt”). The article argues that ka?a? can be interpreted as a kind of gift exchange, since it is inseparable from the people involved and the (kind of) relationship that exists between them. Interdependence is the necessary basis of ka?a?, and like gift exchange, credit giving among relatives and friends serves to confirm and strengthen existing relationships.     

Age differences in financial decision making: The benefits of more experience and less negative emotions

The emerging literature on aging and decision making posits that decision‐making competence changes with age, as a result of age differences in various cognitive and noncognitive individual‐differences characteristics. In a national life‐span sample from the United Kingdom (N = 926), we examined age differences in financial decisions, including performance measures of sunk cost and credit card repayment decisions, and self‐report measures of money management and financial decision outcomes. Participants also completed four individual‐differences characteristics that have been proposed as relevant to financial decision making, including two cognitive ones (numeracy and experience‐based knowledge) and two noncognitive ones (negative emotions about financial decisions). First, we examined how age was related to the four financial decision‐making measures and the four individual‐differences characteristics. Older age was correlated to better scores on each of the four financial decision‐making measures, more experience‐based knowledge, less negative emotions about financial decisions, whereas numeracy and motivation were not significantly correlated with age. Second, we found that considering both the two cognitive and the two noncognitive individual‐differences characteristics increased predictions of financial decision making, as compared with considering either alone. Third, we examined how these four individual‐differences characteristics contributed to age differences in financial decision making. Older adults' higher levels of experience‐based knowledge and lower levels of negative emotions seemed to especially benefit their financial decision making. We discuss implications for theories on aging and decision making, as well as for interventions targeting financial decisions.     

A test of positive and negative extended intergroup contact in a Chinese minority with perceived group norms and intergroup anxiety as mediators

This article is aimed to examine the effect of Uyghur's (minority group) positive and negative extended contact with Han (majority group) within the background of China. One affective (intergroup anxiety) and two cognitive (perceived in‐group and out‐group norms) variables were tested as potential mediators. A sample of 875 Uyghur minority college students ranging in age from 17 to 25 years completed self‐reported measures of direct contact, positive and negative extended contact, intergroup anxiety, perceptions of in‐group and out‐group norms, out‐group attitudes, and contact intentions. Results revealed that both positive and negative extended contact were associated with out‐group attitudes and contact intentions, over and above the effect of direct contact. The effects of both forms of extended contact were mediated by intergroup anxiety, perceived in‐group, and out‐group norms. Notably, positive extended contact exerted larger effects than negative extended contact. This research highlights the significance of considering both positive and negative extended contact and the potential of extended contact as a means to ameliorate intergroup relations from the perspective of minority groups.     

let your life speak: assessing the effectiveness of a program to explore meaning,purpose, and calling with college students

Typical career planning courses assist students with the self‐assessment process, career exploration, and decision making. Although this assistance is helpful, college students are increasingly concerned with issues of meaning and calling (P. Braun, 2005). The authors describe and test the effectiveness of the Let Your Life Speak course, a program to help students articulate their framework of life meaning and increase their sense of vocational calling. Results indicate an increase in sense of vocational calling, greater confidence in ability to achieve goals, and a deepened framework of life meaning. Moreover, 96% reported they would recommend the course to others.     

Can Perfectionism Affect Career Development? Exploring Career Thoughts and Self‐Efficacy

This study identified relationships among career‐specific barriers (i.e., perfectionism, negative career thoughts, career decision‐making self‐efficacy) in a sample of 300 college students. The authors found relationships among the constructs of interest, prediction of variance in career decision‐making self‐efficacy, and differences among groups of perfectionists on endorsements of negative career thoughts and career decision‐making self‐efficacy. The findings suggest that interventions addressing maladaptive perfectionism and dysfunctional career thinking may enhance clients’ confidence in decision making.