The Social Conditions for Successful Peer Education: A Comparison of Two HIV Prevention Programs Run by Sex Workers in India and South Africa

Peer education is a community-based intervention being implemented worldwide as an approach to HIV prevention. However, its results are inconsistent, with little consensus on why some projects succeed while others fail. Considering peer education as an ‘intervention-in-context’, we systematically compare the context and the implementation of two peer education interventions run by sex workers, one in India and one in South Africa, which produced contrasting outcomes. In so doing, we aim to identify key factors in the projects’ successes or failures that may inform future peer education efforts. The Indian project’s relative success was facilitated (1) by a more stable and supportive social, material and political context, and (2) by a community development ethos which devoted significant resources to sex workers’ involvement, ownership and empowerment, as opposed to a biomedical approach which marginalised sex workers’ concerns. We conclude with lessons learned and implications for current trends in peer education.     

Delay and Inhibition as Early Predictors of ADHD Symptoms in Third Grade

We used data from a large, longitudinal study of children in the community, the NICHD Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development, to examine how well earlier measures of delay capacity, inhibitory control, planning, and attention predicted symptoms of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) assessed in third grade. Children with elevated symptoms of both inattention and hyperactivity-impulsivity (n = 57) and with inattentive symptoms only (n = 80) were identified via mother and teacher reports using the “or” rule, as were children without significant symptoms (n = 790). Multinomial logistic regression analyses indicated that poorer performance on earlier measures of resistance to temptation, delay of gratification, response inhibition, attention, and planning obtained from 36 months to 1st grade predicted membership in the two symptom groups relative to the comparison group in 3rd grade, albeit with somewhat different patterns of predictors. Controls for 36 month school readiness and externalizing symptoms indicated that these results were generally robust and not an artifact of initial cognitive or behavioral differences. Implications for developmental models of ADHD are discussed.

The extent of active processing of a long-duration stimulus modulates the scalp-recorded sustained potential

A long-duration stimulus will elicit a negative sustained potential (SP) that is maximum in amplitude over fronto-central areas of the scalp. This study examines how the duration of active attentional processing of the stimulus might also elicit a nonsensory contingent negative variation (CNV) that overlaps and summates to the SP. Subjects were presented with either a low- or high-pitched 1.4s duration stimulus. In different conditions, a 20 ms gap occurred either 300 or 1300 ms after stimulus onset in half the stimuli. The subject's task was to button press upon detection of the gap in the low-pitched stimulus. The subject was not required to respond to the gap occurring in the high-pitched tone. In a separate Ignore condition, subjects ignored all stimuli and read a book. In the Ignore condition, a SP was apparent to the long-duration stimuli. In the Attend condition, a large amplitude slow wave, probably the CNV, overlapped and summated with the SP. The extent of the overlapping CNV was dependent on whether the gap occurred early or late. The CNV was not apparent following presentation of the high-pitched tone, when the gap did not need to be detected. Consistent with previous studies, a SP was thus elicited even when active processing of the stimulus was not required. The morphology of the scalp-recorded SP was, nevertheless, much modified by an overlapping and summating CNV, depending on the extent to which active processing of the long-duration stimulus was required.     

Individual and Situational Factors Related to Young Women’s Likelihood of Confronting Sexism in Their Everyday Lives

Factors related to young women’s reported likelihood of confronting sexism were investigated. Participants were 338 U.S. female undergraduates (M?=?19 years) attending a California university. They were asked to complete questionnaire measures and to write a personal narrative about an experience with sexism. Approximately half (46%) the women reported confronting the perpetrator. Individual factors (prior experience with sexism, feminist identification, collective action) and situational factors (familiarity and status of perpetrator, type of sexism) were tested as predictors in a logistic regression. Women were less likely to report confronting sexism if (1) they did not identify as feminists, (2) the perpetrator was unfamiliar or high-status/familiar (vs. familiar/equal-status), or (3) the type of sexism involved unwanted sexual attention (vs. sexist comments).     

Ambivalent Sexism and Applicant Evaluations: Effects on Ambiguous Applicants

The purpose of the current research was to evaluate how gender stereotypes and sexist attitudes affect responses to hypothetical job applicants. In Study 1 (N?=?93) undergraduate and graduate students in the Southwestern USA evaluated a male, female, or gender-ambiguous resume. They also completed the Ambivalent Sexism Inventory (ASI; Glick and Fiske 1996). Hypotheses were tested using ANOVA. Results suggested that participants who expressed more hostile sexist attitudes evaluated the gender-ambiguous applicant more negatively than a male or female applicant. In Study 2 (N?=?117), graduate and undergraduate participants were asked to indicate the gender of the ambiguous applicant. Those who scored high on hostile sexism, and perceived a gender-ambiguous applicant to be male, provided the most favorable evaluations.     

Positive and Negative Affect in Parents and Adolescents: Gender and Assessment Method Considerations

This study examined adolescents’ self-reports and parents’ reports of adolescents’ positive and negative affect toward their parents, as well as mothers’ and fathers’ self-reports of positive and negative affect toward their adolescents. Based on behavioral observations, adolescent–parent interactions were examined to determine the relation between adolescent–parent behavior, adolescents’ perceptions of parental affect, and parents’ perceptions of adolescent affect. Gender of adolescents, gender of parents, and adolescent gender by parent gender interaction effects were studied as was adolescents’ age. Findings suggest that parent gender (i.e., mothers and fathers) and adolescent gender (i.e., boys and girls) are important considerations when studying affect in parent–adolescent relationships. Age-related differences were not evident. Results are discussed with an eye toward improving the assessment of parent–adolescent affect by using multiple methods of assessment such as direct behavioral observations and multiple informants on questionnaire measures.     

Measuring Procedural Knowledge More Simply with a Single-Response Situational Judgment Test

Purpose  This paper describes the development of a situational judgment test (SJT) based on single-response options developed directly from critical incidents and reports a study that tested the SJT’s concurrent validity against ratings of job performance. Design/Methodology/Approach  Situational judgment test items were developed from critical incidents provided by administrators of volunteer agencies. Volunteers who worked at another agency completed the SJT and a self-report personality test. Supervisors rated their job performance on three dimensions. Findings  Situational judgment test scores representing procedural knowledge about work effort were significantly correlated with ratings of work effort performance (r = .28). Conscientiousness was correlated with work effort knowledge (r = .26), but not with work effort performance (r = −.02). Implications  These results provide some preliminary evidence that a single-response SJT format based upon critical incidents can produce valid measures of procedural knowledge and might be a useful alternative to the traditional multiple-response format. Originality/Value  This paper presents a novel way to construct SJTs using single-response options that are less laborious to develop than the multiple-response options in traditional SJT formats. Results of the validity study suggest that this new single-response format can predict job performance and encourage further research on the viability of this approach.