Crossover of job demands and emotional exhaustion within teams: a longitudinal multilevel study

This study investigated the crossover of job demands and emotional exhaustion among team members and the moderating effect of cohesiveness and social support on this process. Participants were 310 employees of an employment agency in the Netherlands, working in one of 100 teams. Multilevel analysis using a longitudinal design did not reveal a main effect of crossover. However, consistent with the study's hypotheses, the results showed a moderating effect of team cohesiveness and social support. We detected crossover of job demands and emotional exhaustion across time from the group to individual team members only in teams characterized by high levels of cohesiveness and social support. Teams characterized by low levels of cohesiveness and social support showed no crossover of job demands and exhaustion. The findings demonstrate that team-level moderators play an important role in crossover processes. Moreover, social support and cohesiveness may not always be positive.     

The Role of Hope, Spirituality and Religious Practice in Adolescents’ Life Satisfaction: Longitudinal Findings

This longitudinal study presents the first examination of the relation between hope, spirituality, religious practice and life satisfaction of students in Portugal. A sample of 227 adolescents aged 15–19 completed the Portuguese versions of the Children Hope Scale, Students’ Life Satisfaction Scale and a single item for each spirituality and religious practice variable. The results from the cross-sectional and longitudinal analyses suggest that hope and spirituality, but not religious practice, were strongly linked to adolescents’ life satisfaction. Hope significantly predicted life satisfaction at a single time point, 6-months and 1-year later, and spirituality scores added significant variance beyond hope scores. All the variables demonstrate moderate to high stability across 6-months and 1-year time frame; no significant changes were found between the variables across the administrations. These results parallel recent studies of adult and child life satisfaction and suggest strategies to promote life satisfaction in adolescents.     

Peer Victimization and Social-Psychological Adjustment in Hispanic and African-American Children

We examined the relation of overt and relational victimization to depressive symptoms, fear of negative evaluation (FNE), social avoidance, and loneliness in a sample of Hispanic and African-American children. The Social Experience Questionnaire, Children's Depression Inventory, Social Anxiety Scale for Children—Revised, and Asher Loneliness Scale were administered to 190 children in the fifth and sixth grades of an urban elementary school. Consistent with prior work, overt victimization was positively associated with depressive symptoms, FNE, social avoidance, and loneliness for both boys and girls. Relational victimization was found to be uniquely associated with depressive symptoms, FNE, and social avoidance of general situations for girls only. Prosocial behaviors from peers moderated the effects of relational victimization on loneliness, but no other social-psychological adjustment variables. Implications of our findings for the role of peer victimization and prosocial behaviors in the peer relationships of Hispanic and African-American children are discussed.     

Working well with a disability: Health promotion as a means to employment

Purpose/Objective: The purpose of this study was to test the utility of the Working Well with a Disability health-promotion program with vocational rehabilitation (VR) clients. Health-promotion interventions have been shown to reduce limitation from secondary conditions, which can be a significant barrier to labor force participation among people with disabilities. The state and federal VR system represents a potential access point for delivery of health-promotion activities. Research Method/Design: A total of 297 VR clients participated in a randomized trial of the Working Well health promotion program. Control and intervention participants provided baseline and four waves of quarterly follow-up data. Data were analyzed with repeated-measures ANOVA. Results: Intervention-group participants who attended over half of the Working Well sessions reported significantly lower rates of limitation from secondary conditions over the 1-year study span, F(1, 124) = 4.11, p = .004. Control-group participants also experienced significantly lower rates of limitation, but pre- to postdifferences were less dramatic, F(1, 308) = 4.19, p = .006. Conclusions/Implications: Overall, health data indicated that the Working Well program may be particularly helpful to VR clients with higher rates of secondary health conditions and may represent one strategy for overcoming barriers to employment. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved).     

Estimating the effect of gang membership on nonviolent and violent delinquency: a counterfactual analysis

This study reconsiders the well‐known link between gang membership and criminal involvement. Recently developed analytical techniques enabled the approximation of an experimental design to determine whether gang members, after being matched with similarly situated nongang members, exhibited greater involvement in nonviolent and violent delinquency. Findings indicated that while gang membership is a function of self‐selection, selection effects alone do not account for the greater involvement in delinquency exhibited by gang members. After propensity score matching was employed, gang members maintained a greater involvement in both nonviolent and violent delinquency when measured cross‐sectionally, but only violent delinquency when measured longitudinally. Additional analyses using inverse probability of treatment weights reaffirmed these conclusions. Aggr. Behav. 36:437–451, 2010. © 2010 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.     

Judgements of a 2 × 2 contingency table: Sequential processing and the learning curve

Shanks (1985) has used a video game to investigate how subjects estimate the effect of their behaviour in a task defined by a 2×2 contingency table. The subjects were able to distinguish positive and negative contingencies from zero contingencies. In addition, they showed a learning curve and a bias to rate zero contingencies with a high outcome density higher than low-density zero contingencies. He interpreted these data as being consistent with associative models derived from animal learning. In Experiment 1 we replicated these results using a task and instructions similar to his. In a second experiment we showed that the subjects' tendency to overestimate high-density zero contingencies did not arise because the “game” was so difficult that it interfered with processing the events. In this experiment subjects were given tables of the outcome frequencies that had been determined by the earlier subjects. These subjects were, if anything, less accurate in rating the zero contingencies. We point out several logical problems with Shanks's initial task. The task did not represent a true 2×2 contingency, and aspects of it were physically impossible. In Experiment 3 we modified the task to represent a true 2×2 contingency. Using this task, we found a similar pattern of results, except that there was no evidence of the learning curve predicted by the associative models. We conclude that there is little in our data to rule out a “rule-based” analysis of contingency judgements.     

Development or restoration of trust in interpersonal relationships during adolescence and beyond

Individuals low in interpersonal trust have been found to be less confident, less popular with others, and more lonely--all indicators of a need for attitudinal and behavioral change. A student who has reached a point of sufficient discomfort to seek therapeutic assistance can be aided in increasing trust in others through specific tasks cooperatively established by the counselor or other helping professional.