Prognosis after Adolescent Suicide Attempt: Mental Health,Psychiatric Treatment,and Suicide Attempts in a Nine‐Year Follow‐up Study

The prevalence of mental health and suicidal behavior was examined 8 to 10 years after an adolescent suicide attempt. Of 71 persons, 79% had at least one psychiatric disorder (mean 1.7) at follow‐up, most commonly depression (46%), personality disorder (46%), and anxiety disorder (42%). The stability of diagnoses was moderate. The suicide attempters had received a substantial amount of treatment. One third had received inpatient treatment, and 78% psychiatric treatment, despite low compliance shortly after the index suicide attempt. At follow‐up, repeated suicide attempts were found in 44% of the sample, and half of those had an affective or personality disorder.     

Suicide Attempts and Suicide among Marines: A Decade of Follow‐up

Suicidal behavior among military personnel is of paramount public health importance because of the increased risk of death from suicide in this population. Pre‐ and post‐Marine recruit training risk factors for suicide attempts among current and former Marines were examined in 10 years following recruit training. The characteristics of the subsample of current and former Marines who died by suicide during this time are also described. Stressful and traumatic life events (e.g., childhood physical, sexual, and emotional abuse, sexual harassment during recruit training) and pre‐recruit training suicide attempts emerged as having strong associations with post‐recruit training attempts. Half of those who died by suicide in the 10 years following recruit training endorsed at least one significant life stressor prior to joining the Marines. This study highlights the importance of screening for stressful and potentially traumatic experiences occurring both before and during military service as part of a comprehensive suicide risk assessment in military samples.     

Barriers to Mental Health Care: A 25‐Year Follow‐Up Study of the Orthodox Jewish Community

The current study is a 25‐year follow‐up to a mental health needs assessment in the often overlooked, but rapidly growing, Orthodox Jewish denomination. Results suggest increased acceptance of mental illness and its treatment and satisfaction with quality of care, along with decreased mistrust of the mental health field, belief that religion and psychiatry conflict, and tendency to attach stigmas to psychiatric problems. However, issues of stigma and affordability continue to be obstacles to treatment. El presente estudio es un seguimiento tras 25 años de una evaluación de necesidades de salud mental en la población frecuentemente ignorada, pero en crecimiento rápido, de individuos de denominación judía ortodoxa. Los resultados sugieren una mayor aceptación de enfermedades mentales y sus tratamientos, así como la satisfacción con la calidad de los cuidados, además de una reducción en la desconfianza hacia el campo de la salud mental, la creencia de que existe un conflicto entre religión y psiquiatría, y la tendencia a estigmatizar los problemas psiquiátricos. Sin embargo, problemas relacionados con la asequibilidad y el estigma continúan siendo obstáculos para el tratamiento.     

A Seven‐Year Follow‐Up Study on Parents' Expectations of Their Children's Further Education

This study examined the role of parents' perceptions of their children's competencies and their educational optimism in forming expectations of their children's further education. A group of parents (N = 352) were asked to estimate the probability of their children's entering gymnasium or vocational school and to assess the child's competencies in the course of primary school years. Parents had crystallized anticipations of their children's further education as early as preschool, and the differences bound to parents' education and child's gender were well established in their expectations. By the end of the 7^th school year, the relationships between the expectations and the competence assessments strengthened and became more uniform among parents, although there were also group‐specific profiles.     

Behavior Analysts' Use of and Beliefs in Treatments for People with Autism: A 5‐Year Follow‐up

As autism prevalence rises, parents of children with autism rely upon professionals to recommend the most effective treatment for their children. Historically, these professionals have chosen a range of treatments from empirically supported to nonempirically supported treatments. This study replicated and extended that work by surveying Board Certified Behavior Analysts to determine what treatments they promoted and used. Results showed that although most respondents used evidence‐based, behavioral procedures, many did not. Influential stimuli most likely to contribute to behavior analysts' choices of treatments were beliefs in effectiveness, ease of implementation, and persuasion by others. Self‐reported reinforcers for treatment use included perceived observed success, praise from others, and financial gain. Behavior analysts continue to use a variety of nonscientifically supported treatments, including those that have been deemed ineffective and harmful to people with autism. Future training of Board Certified Behavior Analysts must stress adherence to the ethical code for certified behavior analysts, adherence to data‐based decision‐making, and strict fealty to the scientific process in which all behavior analysts have been trained. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Best Practice Recommendations Still Fail to Result in Action: A National 10‐Year Follow‐up Study of Investigative Interviews in CSA Cases

The present study examined a national sample of Norwegian investigative interviews in alleged child sexual abuse cases (N = 224) across a 10‐year period (2002–2012), in order to decide whether practice had improved over the decade in terms of the types of questions asked. The results indicate that the frequency of open‐ended, directive, option‐posing, and suggestive questions asked was unchanged during the 10‐year period, but that the frequency of repeated questions had increased significantly. When analyzed together with the results from a previous study of interview practice covering the period of 1990–2002, long‐term trends were found to be similarly stable, with no change in the frequency of open‐ended and suggestive questions asked over a 22‐year perspective. However, a decreasing frequency of option‐posing questions observed accompanied by an increasing frequency of directive questions may be considered a positive trend. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Unreliable Bodies: A Follow‐up Twenty Years Later by a Mother and Daughter about the Impact of Illness and Disability on their Lives

We are a mother and daughter, both health care professionals, who offer a follow‐up to an article we published twenty years ago about the impact of each other's ongoing, serious medical problems on our relationship. In this article, we contribute a long‐term perspective on the differences between having an illness that is well or poorly understood by medical professionals and the lay community. We also discuss health in the context of identity formation and life stage, as during this interval the daughter left home, graduated college, married, and had two children. Also in this period, the mother survived a third breast cancer and other life‐threatening illnesses. We discuss the impact of these experiences on each other and in other important relationships in our lives. Current discourses on daughters of breast cancer survivors do not fit our experience and we speculate about why our story differs. We find that although we continue to contend with serious medical issues that impact our own, each other's, and our families' lives, nonetheless, our lives are rich, rewarding, and “appropriate” for our life stage. That is the news.     

The Role of Job Relatedness and Self‐efficacy in Applicant Perceptions of Fairness in a High‐stakes Selection Setting

This article presents results from two samples of applicants (total N = 368) for general practitioner posts in the United Kingdom. The roles of job relatedness and self‐efficacy in fairness perceptions were explored, with data gathered at two time points: immediately after testing and one month later following outcome (pass/fail) feedback. Overall, results indicated that in two samples, job relatedness perceptions measured at the time of testing predicted fairness perceptions measured following outcome feedback. In addition, the stage in the selection process (shortlisting vs. assessment center) was important in determining the extent to which job relatedness perceptions predicted fairness. Findings also suggest that self‐efficacy may be a predictor, rather than an outcome variable, in applicant fairness perceptions in this high‐stakes setting. Results are discussed in relation to their practical and theoretical implications.     

Cross‐Cultural Differences in Applicant Faking on Personality Tests: A 43‐Nation Study

In a globalised world, more and more organisations have to select from pools of applicants from different cultures, often by using personality tests. If applicants from different cultures were to differ in the amount of faking on personality tests, this could threaten their validity: Applicants who engage in faking will have an advantage, and will put those who do not fake at a disadvantage. This is the first study to systematically examine and explain cross‐cultural differences in actual faking behavior. In N = 3,678 employees from 43 countries, a scenario‐based repeated measures design (faking vs. honest condition) was applied. Results showed that faking differed significantly across countries, and that it was systematically related to countries’ cultural characteristics (e.g. GLOBE's uncertainty avoidance, future orientation, humane orientation, and in‐group collectivism), but in an unexpected way. The study discusses these findings and their implications for research and practitioners.     

An Examination of Biodata Theory‐Based Constructs in a Field Context

This study examined whether items from a biodata inventory were consistent with theory‐based constructs as suggested by the ecology model. The model posits five constructs explain biodata predictive ability. Items were sorted using the theory‐based construct domains. The resulting scale scores were assessed for evidence of content, criterion‐related, and construct validity in a sample of 6032 automated systems controllers. Results suggested moderate support for the theory‐based constructs. A notable finding was that items capturing a theoretical construct were impacted by the life stage in which they were anchored. Results further suggest the need to examine if certain life stages are more predictive than others or perhaps if certain constructs are more predictive when related to a particular life stage.     

Self‐Enhancement in Military Leaders: Its Relevance to Officer Selection and Performance

We report on two studies in which we measured army cadets' tendencies to engage in two types of self‐enhancement: communal self‐enhancement (a moralistic bias in self‐presentation) and agentic self‐enhancement (an egotistic bias in self‐presentation). These self‐presentation styles were then related to their selection and performance as military leaders. In Study 1, scores on self‐enhancement questionnaires were used to predict selection decisions for 206 applicants to an army officer training program. We found that applicants who were higher in either communal or agentic self‐enhancement were more likely to be accepted for leadership training. In Study 2, we evaluated peer and superior ratings of 94 military cadets' leadership, reflecting leadership emergence and leadership effectiveness, respectively. We found that communal self‐enhancement negatively predicted leadership emergence, with those ratings becoming more negative over a 3‐year time‐span, whereas agentic self‐enhancement positively predicted leadership effectiveness. Our results imply that, at least in the present military context, people making selection decisions should be particularly aware of the relations between (a) applicant self‐enhancement tendencies and those decisions, and (b) high communal self‐enhancement in officer trainees and negative evaluations by their cadet peers.     

A Comparison of General and Work‐specific Personality Measures as Predictors of Organizational Citizenship Behavior

The current study compared general and work‐specific measures of personality as predictors of organizational citizenship behavior (OCB). Consistent with the literature on frame‐of‐reference effects in personality assessment, two of the Five Factor Model dimensions – agreeableness and conscientiousness – were significantly related to OCB. Use of a frame of reference that is conceptually relevant to the criterion led to increased validity as a result of the decrement in between‐subject variability and within‐subject inconsistency. Results indicated that work‐specific personality yielded significant incremental relationships with OCB even after general personality is controlled. Finally, regression analyses found that the incremental variance predicted by work‐specific personality decreased as the degree of between‐subject variability and within‐subject inconsistency increased. Overall, the results suggest that there are benefits to considering the work‐specific measure of personality in the prediction of OCB.     

Friendship,Depression, and Suicide Attempts in Adults: Exploratory Analysis of a Longitudinal Follow‐Up Study

Social support is thought to protect against the risk of suicidal behavior in young people and late life, but less is known about the role of friendship in adults. We explored the effect of friendship on suicide attempt risk during 1‐year follow‐up of 132 adults presenting with major depressive episode (MDE). Items from the Social Adjustment Scale–Self‐Report were used as an index of frequency and quality of recent friendship contacts. Survival methods tested associations of friendship with risk of suicide attempt, recurrent MDE, and related outcomes during follow‐up. Impaired friendship predicted greater risk of suicide attempt in an unadjusted Cox model. This association was stronger for quality (p = .009) than frequency (p = .081) of friendship contacts. In the adjusted model, the effect of friendship on suicide attempts was largely explained by self‐reported depression severity. Friendship has a potentially bidirectional relationship with depression, and its effect on suicidal behavior appears to occur through its relationship with depression. Future research should examine the effect of antidepressant treatment on friendship and be designed to test mediation models of relationships between friendship, depression, and suicidal behavior.     

On Enhancing the Cross‐Cultural Comparability of Likert‐Scale Personality and Value Measures: A Comparison of Common Procedures

This study aims to evaluate a number of procedures that have been proposed to enhance cross‐cultural comparability of personality and value data. A priori procedures (anchoring vignettes and direct measures of response styles (i.e. acquiescence, extremity, midpoint responding, and social desirability), a posteriori procedures focusing on data transformations prior to analysis (ipsatization and item parcelling), and two data modelling procedures (treating data as continuous vs as ordered categories) were compared using data collected from university students in 16 countries. We found that (i) anchoring vignettes showed lack of invariance, so they were not bias‐free; (ii) anchoring vignettes showed higher internal consistencies than raw scores where all other correction procedures, notably ipsatization, showed lower internal consistencies; (iii) in measurement invariance testing, no procedure yielded scalar invariance; anchoring vignettes and item parcelling slightly improved comparability, response style correction did not affect it, and ipsatization resulted in lower comparability; (iv) treating Likert‐scale data as categorical resulted in higher levels of comparability; (v) factor scores of scales extracted from different procedures showed similar correlational patterning; and (vi) response style correction was the only procedure that suggested improvement in external validity of country‐level conscientiousness. We conclude that, although no procedure resolves all comparability issues, anchoring vignettes, parcelling, and treating data as ordered categories seem promising to alleviate incomparability. We advise caution in uncritically applying any of these procedures. Copyright © 2017 European Association of Personality Psychology     

The Stability of the Five‐Factor Model of Personality in Personnel Selection and Assessment in Greece

The stability and replicability of the Five‐Factor model of personality across samples and testing purposes remain a significant issue in personnel selection and assessment. The present study explores the stability of a new Greek Big Five personality measure (TPQue) across different samples in order to explore the suitability of the measure in personnel selection and assessment. The factor structure of the measure across three samples (students, employees, and job applicants) is examined. The results of exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses show that the five‐factor structure remains intact for the students’, the applicants’ and the employees’ samples – contrary to previous studies – with all the sub‐scales of the personality measure (TPQue) loading on the intended factors. Furthermore, congruence coefficients between the samples justify the stability of the model in the working settings.     

Moderating Effects of Rater Personality on the Relation Between Candidate Self‐Monitoring and Selection Interview Ratings

The present study examined the moderating effect of rater personality – extroversion and sensitivity to others – on the relations between selection interview ratings and measures of candidate self‐monitoring (SM) and social anxiety (SA). In a real‐life military selection procedure setting in which 445 candidates and 93 raters participated, rater extroversion moderated the relation between candidate SM and selection interview ratings so that this relation was negative for raters low on extroversion and positive for raters high on extroversion. Rater extroversion was also found to moderate the negative relation between candidate SA and selection interview ratings. No support was found for the moderating effect of rater sensitivity to others. An explanation of the moderating effect of rater extroversion based on the assumption that extroversion is negatively related to critical interpersonal sensitivity was suggested.     

Mid‐ and Long‐Term Effects of Family Constellation Seminars in a General Population Sample: 8‐ and 12‐Month Follow‐Up

In a previous randomized controlled trial (RCT), short‐term efficacy of family constellation seminars (FCSs) in a general population sample was demonstrated. In this article, we examined mid‐ and long‐term stability of these effects. Participants were 104 adults (M = 47 years; SD = 9; 84% female) who were part of the intervention group in the original RCT (3‐day FCS; 64 active participants and 40 observing participants). FCSs were carried out according to manuals. It was predicted that FCSs would improve psychological functioning (Outcome Questionnaire OQ‐45.2) at 8‐ and 12‐month follow‐up. Additionally, we assessed the effects of FCSs on psychological distress, motivational incongruence, individuals’ experience in their personal social systems, and overall goal attainment. Participants yielded significant improvement in psychological functioning (d = 0.41 at 8‐month follow‐up, p = .000; d = 0.40 at 12‐month follow‐up, p = .000). Results were confirmed for psychological distress, motivational incongruence, the participants’ experience in their personal social systems, and overall goal attainment. No adverse events were reported. This study provides first evidence for the mid‐ and long‐term efficacy of FCSs in a nonclinical population. The implications of the findings are discussed.     

A Qualitative Analysis of Home‐Based Counselors' Experiences in a Rural Setting

This qualitative study sought to understand the experiences of home‐based counselors working in a rural setting. In‐depth interviews were conducted with 12 counselors who were asked to describe their experiences in the areas of preparedness, professional development, challenges, and gender‐specific experiences. Fourteen coding categories emerged from the interviews, which led to the findings of 3 overarching themes: shared isolation, ethical ambiguity, and the high‐intensity nature of the job. Recommendations for home‐based counselors, agencies, and professional counseling associations are discussed.