THE MEANING OF MS.

When Ms. was first introduced as an alternative to Miss or Mrs. it was perceived as a radical feminist innovation. Today, its use is unremarkable, even normative. This study examines two aspects of the meaning of Ms.: changes in its connotative meaning over time, and its current comparability to other titles. Female (n = 83) and male (n = 54) college students rated courtesy titles (Ms., Miss, Mrs., Mr.) on a set of bipolar adjective pairs composing a semantic differential scale in an exact replication of a 1978 study. Of the four titles, the largest change in meaning over time was for Ms., and the direction of the change was positive. These results document the social assimilation of a new gender-related concept.     

Normative values on the marks and mathews fear questionnaire: A comparison as a function of age and sex

While the Marks and Mathews Fear Questionnaire (1979) has gained widespread use, little information on its psychometric characteristics has been reported. Thus, one purpose of this investigation was to provide normative information on this device. A second purpose was to examine differences in reported fears as a function of age and sex. Fear Questionnaires were administered to a large sample of high-school students, college students, and adults. Means and standard deviations on the Fear Questionnaire are reported for the various groups. Significant differences were found between groups, with college and high-school women reporting more fears than corresponding men, college and high-school women reporting more fears than adult women, and college men showing a trend toward more fears than other men.Portions of this paper were presented at the Annual Meeting of the Association for the Advancement of Behavior Therapy, November 1985, Houston, Texas.     

A dictionary of rational-emotive feelings and behaviors

Rational-emotive therapy (RET) hypothesizes that people mainly make themselves emotionally disturbed and dysfunctional in their behavior by starting with rational Beliefs (rBs) about their Goals (G) and then by consciously or unconsciously converting these into irrational Beliefs (iBs) or dogmatic, absolutistic musts and commands. To help clients and others to clearly see the differences between their rational Beliefs and their irrational Beliefs, to understand the disordered feelings and behaviors to which the latter lead, and to help them become more rational, less disturbed, and less dysfunctional in their activities, the authors have constructed and herewith present a dictionary of rational-emotive equivalents.Ted Crawford is a Consultant on Communication and Group Processes in Santa Barbara, California. Albert Ellis, Ph.D., is the Executive Director of the Institute for Rational-Emotive Therapy in New York City.     

Transient positive and negative experiences accompanying stage hypnosis.

Frequency of positive and negative experiences accompanying stage hypnosis was assessed in follow-up interviews with 22 participants of university-sponsored performances. Most subjects described their experience positively (relaxing, interesting, exciting, satisfying, illuminating, and pleasurable), but some described it negatively (confusing, silly, annoying, and frightening). Five subjects (22.7%) reported partial or complete amnesia; all were highly responsive to the stage hypnosis suggestions. One subject was completely unable to breach amnesia and felt annoyed and frightened. Five subjects (22.7%) believed the hypnotist had control over their behavior. Participants (n = 15) tested subsequently on the Stanford Hypnotic Susceptibility Scale, Form C (Weitzenhoffer & Hilgard, 1962) were mostly moderately to highly hypnotizable (M = 7.07), and the scores correlated significantly (r = .68) with the percentage of passed stage hypnosis suggestions.     

The Rev.: An IBM BASIC program for Bayesian test interpretation

The Rev. is a BASIC computer program for IBM-PC-compatible systems that provides Bayesian estimates of “true” scores from multiple scores measuring the same construct. Psychological reports often include test scores from earlier evaluations without objectively incorporating them into current findings. Using Thorndike’s formulas for objectively combining test scores while providing estimates with reduced standard errors, the Rev. is an interactive program that facilitates test interpretation by combining information from many test administrations. The user provides four easily obtainable pieces of information for each test administration. The output includes an estimated “true” score and the standard error of the estimate.     

Attachment in Adult Child-Older Parent Relationships: Research,Theory, and Practice

Greater longevity has increased the years that adult children share with their older parents, yet it creates the potential for family stress situations that may be amenable to counseling intervention. In this article, the authors examined an attachment theory perspective for conceptualizing adult child—older parent issues by introducing the basic constructs of attachment theory and by demonstrating how the theory and its related research can be applied to adult children's struggles with older parental issues.     

Traditional attitudes and teacher consistency in producing student learning gains in the early elementary grades

Questionnaire responses of second- and third-grade teachers specially selected because of their relatively high consistency in producing student learning gains on standardized achievement tests (N =30) were compared with responses of other teachers working in the same school system at the same grade levels (N = 38). Due to sample selection procedures, the highly consistent teachers were older and averaged more years of teaching experience than the teachers in the comparison group. In order to see whether the consistent teachers differed in any other ways from the teachers in the comparison group, the teachers in each group were administered a 495-item questionnaire. Group difference analyses revealed 57 items showing differences beyond the .05 level of significance, when only about 25 would have been expected by chance. For the most part, the items showing group differences did not form interpretable patterns. However, a subset of 10 items emerged from a factor analysis to form a traditionalism factor. Further analyses revealed that the highly consistent teachers were more traditional in their attitudes and beliefs than the teachers in the comparison group, and that this difference was not related to teacher age or years of experience. Thus, traditionalism in beliefs and attitudes was related to consistency in relative success in producing student learning gains. Possible reasons for this puzzling finding are discussed.