Normative orientations of university faculty and doctoral students

Data from two national surveys of 4,000 faculty and doctoral students in chemistry, civil engineering, microbiology and sociology indicate that both faculty and students subscribe strongly to traditional norms but are more likely to see alternative counternorms enacted in their departments. They also show significant effects of departmental climate on normative orientations and suggest that many researchers express some degree of ambivalence about traditional norms. This paper was presented at the “Communicating Science Conference” held at Hamilton College, Clinton, NY, October 1998. The paper is part of the Acadia Institute’s Project on Professional Values and Ethical Issues in the Graduate Education of Scientists and Engineers, cosponsored by the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s Committee on Scientific Freedom and Responsibility, the Council of Graduate Schools and Sigma Xi. This work was supported by Grants No. 8913159 and 9222889 from the National Science Foundation. The following NSF components have provided funding to the NSF Ethics and Values Studies Program for support of the project: the Directorate for Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences; the Directorate for Biological Sciences; the Directorate for Engineering; the Directorate for Mathematical and Physical Sciences; and the Office of the Inspector General. Opinions, findings, conclusions and recommendations are the author’s and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.     

Sexual harassment of university faculty by colleagues and students

The focus of this research was on faculty members as victims of sexual harassment by colleagues (peer harassment) and students (contrapower harassment). A self-administered, mailed questionnaire was sent to a probability sample of faculty at a large, public Midwestern university and to the whole population of faculty at a small, public institution in the Western Mountain region. Several hypotheses were made based on conflict theory, role theory, and previous research. Results indicated that women faculty generally have more negative attitudes toward and broader definitions of sexual harassment than do male faculty. Moderate levels of sexual harassment of faculty by both colleagues and students were reported; minor and anonymous (course evaluations and obscene phone calls) forms were the most common. Female faculty were more likely to report harassment by colleagues; male faculty were more likely to report some potentially harassing behaviors by students. Incidents of sexual harassment were usually not reported to formal agents of social control.This research was funded, in part, through the Small Grant Program of the Office of Research and Sponsored Activities, Illinois State University. The author would like to thank Krista Moore for her assistance in data collection at the Colorado site, Nancy Uphoff for her assistance with the library research, Robyn Leech and Ann Marie Woods for coding and data entry, and Elizabeth Grauerholz and Susan Specher for their comments on an earlier draft of this paper.     

Instructor's transformational leadership: university student attitudes and ratings

We extend leadership research by examining the effect of an instructor's transformational leadership on university students. 120 undergraduate students provided ratings for their instructors on Charisma, Intellectual Stimulation, and Individual Consideration as well as the Instructors' Performance and the Students' Involvement in class. Multiple regression analyses indicated that Intellectual Stimulation and Charisma together accounted for 66.3% of the variance in the prediction of Instructor's Performance ratings. In turn, Intellectual Stimulation and Individual Consideration combined to account for 55.1% of the variance in predicting Student Involvement.     

Ethnic and gender subgroup differences in assessment center ratings: a meta-analysis

Assessment centers are widely believed to have relatively small standardized subgroup differences (d). However, no meta-analytic review to date has examined ds for assessment centers. The authors conducted a meta-analysis of available data and found an overall Black-White d of 0.52, an overall Hispanic-White d of 0.28, and an overall male-female d of -0.19. Consistent with our expectations, results suggest that Black-White ds in assessment center data may be larger than was previously thought. Hispanic-White comparisons were smaller than were Black-White comparisons. Females, on average, scored higher than did males in assessment centers. As such, assessment centers may be associated with more adverse impact against Blacks than is portrayed in the literature, but the predictor may have less adverse impact and be more "diversity friendly" for Hispanics and females.     

Turnover intentions of the faculty at a teaching-focused university

Research on turnover in academia suggests faculty primarily resign to obtain higher salaries and for personal reasons; however, the samples of most such studies have been from research institutions. Correlates were examined for turnover intentions among 190 faculty members at a university that emphasized teaching. Although current turnover intention was low, seven measures of satisfaction explained 31.5% of the variability in turnover intent, and satisfaction with pay, work itself, and teaching/service load together explained 26% of the variance. Findings support the hypothesis that salary is an important element in explaining turnover consideration at teaching institutions. Although satisfaction with collegial relations was related significantly to turnover intent, it was not as important as some of the other characteristics.     

The influence of gender on children's ratings of fear in self and same-aged peers

In the present study, gender differences in children's fear were examined. Nine-year-old children were asked to rate their own fears, the fears of their peers of the opposite gender, and the fears of their peers of the same gender, using the Fear Survey Schedule for Children--Revised (Ollendick, 1983). Consistent with previous investigations, the results revealed that boys rated themselves as less fearful than girls. In addition, both male and female judges rated "other boys" as less afraid than "other girls." These findings emerged whether fear was examined in terms of intensity or prevalence. Implications and suggestions for future research are discussed.     

Student personnel services in the university without walls

With the growth of the university without walls, or the open university, a new and expanded role can be in the making for the student personnel professional. This professional's expanded functions should center around outreach services that are necessary for the special groups the open university can serve. An active role for the student personnel professional should become a reality within the nontraditional university.     

Effects of personality and gender on self–other agreement in ratings of leadership

We explore the role of leader personality (i.e., the Big 5 traits: Conscientiousness, Agreeableness, Openness, Extraversion, and Neuroticism) and gender in self–other (dis)agreement (SOA) in ratings of leadership. We contend that certain aspects of the leader's persona may be more or less related to self‐ or other‐ratings of the leader's behaviour if those aspects are (1) more or less observable by others, (2) more or less related to internal thoughts versus external behaviours, (3) more or less prone to self‐enhancement or self‐denigrating biases, or (4) more or less socially desirable. We utilize statistical methodologies that capture fully the effects of multiple independent variables on the congruence between two dependent variables (Edwards, 1995 , Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 64, 307), which previously have not been applied to this area of research. Our results support hypotheses predicting less SOA as leader Conscientiousness increases and greater SOA as Agreeableness and Neuroticism increase. Additionally, we found gender to be an important factor in SOA; female leaders exhibited greater SOA than did their male counterparts. We discuss the implications of these findings, limitations, and future research directions.

Practitioner points

• Popular practices such as 360‐degree feedback may reveal discrepancies between a person's self‐ratings and other's ratings.
• Although often attributed to a lack of self‐awareness, these discrepancies also may be explained by factors such as the personality and gender of the focal individual.

     

Evaluative ratings and attention across the life span: emotional arousal and gender

This study was designed to investigate the evolution of emotional processing over the whole adult life span as a function of stimulus arousal and participants’ gender. To this end, self-reported affective evaluation and attentional capture prompted by pleasant and unpleasant pictures varying in arousal were measured in a large sample of participants (n?=?211) balanced by gender and equally spread across seven decades from 20 to 90 years. Results showed age differences only for affective evaluation of pleasant stimuli, with opposite patterns depending on stimulus arousal. As age increased, low-arousing pleasant cues (e.g. images of babies) were experienced as more pleasant and arousing by both males and females, whereas high-arousing stimuli (e.g. erotic images) were experienced as less pleasant only by females. In contrast, emotional pictures (both pleasant and unpleasant) were effective at capturing attention in a similar way across participants, regardless of age and gender. Taken together, these findings suggest that specific emotional cues prompt different subjective responses across different age groups, while basic mechanisms involved in attentional engagement towards both pleasant and unpleasant stimuli are preserved in healthy ageing.     

Androgyny and sex-typing: Differences in beliefs regarding gender polarity in ratings of ideal men and women

To test Bem's (1979) hypothesis that androgynous and sex-typed individuals are differentiated by the presence or absence of beliefs in “gender polarity,” 200 students rated themselves on the short Bem Sex Role Inventory (BSRI). Of these 200, 20 androgynous women, 20 androgynous men, 20 feminine sex-typed women, and 20 masculine sex-typed men were randomly selected and asked to rate either the ideal woman or the ideal man on the short BSRI. As predicted, androgynous women did not rate the ideal man and woman differently, but, contrary to prediction, neither did feminine-typed women. As predicted, masculine-typed men rated the ideal man and woman differently, but, contrary to prediction, so did androgynous men. Thus, sex rather than sex-role distinguished subjects' beliefs in gender polarity. This finding may reflect women's desires for, and men's fears of, abandoning traditional modes of sex differentiation. The large initial subject pool was necessary because an extremely high percentage of subjects were classified as feminine sex-typed. An apparent feminine bias in the short BSRI is discussed.     

Content‐specific gender differences in emotion ratings from early to late adulthood

The investigation of gender differences in emotion has attracted much attention given the potential ramifications on our understanding of sexual differences in disorders involving emotion dysregulation. Yet, research on content‐specific gender differences across adulthood in emotional responding is lacking. The aims of the present study were twofold. First, we sought to investigate to what extent gender differences in the self‐reported emotional experience are content specific. Second, we sought to determine whether gender differences are stable across the adult lifespan. We assessed valence and arousal ratings of 14 picture series, each of a different content, in 94 men and 118 women aged 20 to 81. Compared to women, men reacted more positively to erotic images, whereas women rated low‐arousing pleasant family scenes and landscapes as particularly positive. Women displayed a disposition to respond with greater defensive activation (i.e., more negative valence and higher arousal), in particular to the most arousing unpleasant contents. Importantly, significant interactions between gender and age were not found for any single content. This study makes a novel contribution by showing that gender differences in the affective experiences in response to different contents persist across the adult lifespan. These findings support the “stability hypothesis” of gender differences across age.     

No grammatical gender effect on affective ratings: evidence from Italian and German languages

In this study, we tested the linguistic relativity hypothesis by studying the effect of grammatical gender (feminine vs. masculine) on affective judgments of conceptual representation in Italian and German. In particular, we examined the within- and cross-language grammatical gender effect and its interaction with participants’ demographic characteristics (such as, the raters’ age and sex) on semantic differential scales (affective ratings of valence, arousal and dominance) in Italian and German speakers. We selected the stimuli and the relative affective measures from Italian and German adaptations of the ANEW (Affective Norms for English Words). Bayesian and frequentist analyses yielded evidence for the absence of within- and cross-languages effects of grammatical gender and sex- and age-dependent interactions. These results suggest that grammatical gender does not affect judgments of affective features of semantic representation in Italian and German speakers, since an overt coding of word grammar is not required. Although further research is recommended to refine the impact of the grammatical gender on properties of semantic representation, these results have implications for any strong view of the linguistic relativity hypothesis.     

Adaptive and maladaptive narcissism among university faculty, clergy, politicians, and librarians

Some adaptive narcissistic characteristics may be prevalent in individuals in occupa-tions that involve leadership or authority, provide social attention and prestige, or require a confident social presentation. The present study investigated the expectation that narcissistic characteristics would be more prevalent in higher status occupations involving frequent opportunities for attention and admiration from others. Of four occupations sampled, politicians scored highest in total narcissism, as well as in leadership and authority; university faculty and librarians did not score particularly high or low on any narcissism indices; and clergy were lowest in exploitativeness and entitlement, which represent the more maladaptive aspects of narcissism. The results were discussed with respect to Holland's (1985) classification of vocational personali-ties.     

Hardiness commitment,gender, and age differentiate university academic performance

Background The increasing diversity of students, particularly in age, attending university has seen a concomitant interest in factors predicting academic success. Aims This 2‐year correlational study examined whether age, gender (demographic variables), and hardiness (cognitive/emotional variable) differentiate and predict university final degree grade point average (GPA) and final‐year dissertation mark. Sample Data are reported from a total of 134 university undergraduate students. Method Participants provided baseline data in questionnaires administered during the first week of their second year of undergraduate study and gave consent for their academic progress to be tracked. Final degree GPA and dissertation mark were the academic performance criteria. Results Mature‐age students achieved higher final degree GPA compared to young undergraduates. Female students significantly outperformed their male counterparts in each measured academic assessment criteria. Female students also reported a significantly higher mean score on hardiness commitment compared to male students. Commitment was the most significant positive correlate of academic achievement. Final degree GPA and dissertation mark were significantly predicted by commitment, and commitment and gender, respectively. Conclusions The findings have implications for universities targeting academic support services to maximize student scholastic potential. Future research should incorporate hardiness, gender, and age with other variables known to predict academic success.     

Professional service involvement of leadership faculty: An assessment of gender,role, and satisfaction

This study explored gender differences among educational administration faculty and their participation in and satisfaction with professional association activities. The study population would be characterized as overwhelmingly male and white, but with women and minority candidates beginning to enter the faculty ranks. Women faculty reported involvement in more professional service activities and a slightly higher satisfaction with their involvement than their male colleagues. However, women participated in different types of and more professional association activities than men.     

Belief, its inconsistency, and the implications for the teaching faculty

The traditional concept of belief is analyzed and compared with a behavior analytic concept of belief. Beliefs and belief statements are differentiated and relationships between them are examined. The often troublesome inconsistencies in people's beliefs are examined in general and explained, including the phenomena of compartmentalization and repression. Social implications are pursued relative to both punishment for inconsistency in belief and counter-controls thwarting such punishment. The role of teachers in shaping beliefs is analyzed, and appropriate teaching strategies are reviewed.     

Bioethics committee in the university teaching hospital in Bordeaux

Set up in 2011, the ethics committee at the teaching hospital in Bordeaux, although it is now obsolete in its organisation because of the "standardisation" in early 2012 of regional ethics groups, was nevertheless an original structure which deserves to be analysed for several reasons. First of all, why have a hospital ethics committee? Then, to do what? Finally, it is interesting to give a few indications about the working of this committee.     

Student gender and the probability of referral for counselling in a college of further education

A small pilot study was carried out to investigate whether college tutors' perceptions of students' counselling needs were dependent on the gender of the student. Twenty-five tutors were asked to read six vignettes describing composite case-studies of students showing overt distress. The vignettes were constructed to represent two of each of three types of problem (anxiety, depression and aggression). One of each clinical type depicted a female student and the other a male. The tutors were asked to evaluate each of the six vignettes along a visual analogue scale, according to the perceived urgency of the problem and its long-term nature. The results were then analysed using two-factor within-subjects anovas and unplanned multiple pairwise comparisons to establish whether there existed any differences on these dimensions. Of the analyses computed, it was found that depressive vignettes were considered to be in more urgent need of referral than were anxious or aggressive vignettes; that males were generally considered to have a more urgent need for referral than were females; that anxiety was construed as a less enduring problem than was depression or aggression; and that male aggressive vignettes were considered to be a longer-term problem than were females, anxious or depressive clients. These results indicate that some sex-role stereotyping exists with respect to psychological problems. This is discussed in terms of equal opportunities and access to student support systems.