Student perceptions of the effectiveness of education in the responsible conduct of research

Responsible conduct of research (RCR) courses are widely taught, but little is known about the purposes or effectiveness of such courses. As one way to assess the purposes of these courses, students were surveyed about their perspectives after recent completion of one of eleven different research ethics courses at ten different institutions. Participants (undergraduate and graduate students, post-doctoral fellows and faculty, staff and researchers) enrolled in RCR courses in spring and fall of 2003 received a voluntary, anonymous survey from their instructors at the completion of the course. Responses were received from 268 participants. Seventy-seven percent of open-ended responses listed specific kinds of information learned; only a few respondents talked about changes in skills or attitudes. The perception that courses did more to provide information than to foster skills or attitudes was verified in quantitative responses (P<0.0001). Over 75% of the respondents specifically noted that courses were useful in preparing them to recognize, avoid, and respond to research misconduct. The two principal findings of this multi-institutional study are that respondents reported: (1) a wide variety of positive outcomes for research ethics courses, but that (2) the impact on knowledge was greater than that for changes in skills or attitudes.     

Paths to Learning Ten-Structured Understandings of Teen Sums: Addition Solution Methods of Japanese Grade 1 Students

A group of 64 Israeli twelfth-grade students of two different ethnic backgrounds participated in an experiment exploring the effects of argumentative design and social identity on the learning of a charged, ethnicity-related historical controversy. Students were divided into two learning conditions: an argumentative-disciplinary condition and a conventional textbook-based control condition. Students wrote short essays about Israel's “Melting Pot” policy of immigration absorption, prior to and after evaluation of historical sources and discussion. In the argumentative-disciplinary condition the final argumentative level of writing and the frequencies of stand and plot change were higher than in the control essays. As for confirmation bias, primary plot, stand, and argumentative level of pre-essays predicted final outcomes in the conventional textbook-based learning condition; no such relation existed in the argumentative-disciplinary condition. Narratives from the different ethnic groups differed in the frequency, direction, and degree of change, all toward improved in-group image. The design decisions toward the facilitation of argumentative activity seemed to facilitate narrative change, while social identity needs seemed to motivate it.     

Assessing Individual Differences: Effects of Responding to Prior Questionnaires on the Substantive and Psychometric Properties of Self-Esteem and Depression Assessments

It has become a common practice among psychological researchers to administer batteries of individual difference assessments to research participants, although little is known about whether the substantive and psychometric integrity of the questionnaires are maintained when they are administered after the subject has completed other instruments. The studies presented here consider these issues in relation to the assessment of self-esteem and depression. In the first study, college students responsed to a self-esteem inventory (a) by itself (control group), (b) after one prior questionnaire, (c) after three prior questionnaires, or (d) after five prior questionnaires. Results indicated that filling out one or more questionnaires before an assessment of self-esteem resulted in repots of lower self-esteem relative to the control condition. Additional analyses revealed that filling out three or five prior questionnaires created lower reliabilities of subscale scores and lower estimates of concurrent validity between self-esteem and depression. When the effect of prior questionnaires on the General Self-Esteem subscale was examined, the aforementioned results were replicated, and the prior questionnaire treatment created heterogeneous variances across the experimental groups. The second study was designed as a replication of the first study, using an assessment of depression as the target questionnaire. These results revealed that reports of depressive symptomatology increased as the number of prior questionnaires increased. Again, the prior or questionnaire treatment created heterogeneity of variance between the groups, but did not adversely affect its internal consistency.     

Resilience Among Women with HIV: Impact of Silencing the Self and Socioeconomic Factors

In the U.S., women account for over a quarter of the approximately 50,000 annual new HIV diagnoses and face intersecting and ubiquitous adversities including gender inequities, sexism, poverty, violence, and limited access to quality education and employment. Women are also subjected to prescribed gender roles such as silencing their needs in interpersonal relationships, which may lessen their ability to be resilient and function adaptively following adversity. Previous studies have often highlighted the struggles encountered by women with HIV without focusing on their strengths. The present cross-sectional study investigated the relationships of silencing the self and socioeconomic factors (education, employment, and income) with resilience in a sample of women with HIV. The sample consisted of 85 women with HIV, diverse ethnic/racial groups, aged 24–65 enrolled at the Chicago site of the Women’s Interagency HIV Study in the midwestern region of the United States. Measures included the Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale -10 item and the Silencing the Self Scale (STSS). Participants showed high levels of resilience. Women with lower scores on the STSS (lower self-silencing) reported significantly higher resilience compared to women with higher STSS scores. Although employment significantly related to higher resilience, silencing the self tended to predict resilience over and above the contributions of employment, income, and education. Results suggest that intervention and prevention efforts aimed at decreasing silencing the self and increasing employment opportunities may improve resilience.     

Communicating about the risks of terrorism (or anything else)

Communication is essential to preventing terrorists from achieving their objectives. Effective communication can reduce terrorists' chances of mounting successful operations, creating threats that disrupt everyday life, and undermining the legitimacy of the societies that they attack. Psychological research has essential roles to play in that communication, identifying the public's information needs, designing responsive communications, and evaluating their success. Fulfilling those roles requires policies that treat two-way communication with the public as central to ensuring that a society is strengthened, rather than weakened, by its struggle with terror. There are scientific, organizational, and political barriers to achieving those goals. Psychological research can help to overcome them-and advance its science in the process.