Predicting Self-Esteem, Well-Being, and Distress in a Cohort of Gay Men: The Importance of Cultural Stigma, Personal Visibility, Community Networks, and Positive Identity

ABSTRACT Homosexual and bisexual men (N= 825) enrolled in the Multi-center AIDS Cohort Study in Chicago completed a 90-minute self-administered questionnaire that included the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale, a Well-Being Index, and the Hopkins Symptom Checklist. Participants indicated their experiences with gay stigma, their visihility as gay men, their involvement in the gay community, and their commitment to a positive gay identity. Data from this predominantly white, young, educated, and tniddle-class cohort are consistent with a structural model in which cultural stigma is negatively asso-ciated with positive self-perceptions. This within-group result contrasts sharply with between group results that indicate our gay cohort was neither particularly low in global self-esteetn nor high in psychological distress when compared to nonstigmatized samples.     

Comprehension of two types of negative comparisons in children

English-speaking and Italian-speaking children between the ages of 6 years 8 months and 9 years 10 months were asked to solve instructional relation problems (i.e., to complete a picture on the basis of a sentence). Sentences contained either marked or unmarked adjectival forms in one of three types of comparative construction:positive comparative (e.g., bigger più grande),negative-equative constructions as explicit negative forms (e.g., not as big as, non è grande come), orcomparative-with-less constructions e.g., less big, meno grande) as implicit negative forms. Subjects had to focus on either the grammatical subject or the grammatical object of a sentence to complete, the picture. Three findings were consistent with predictions derived by considering syntactic and pragmatic differences between explicit and implicit types of negative comparisons. First, comprehension depended on the type of comparative construction, with the poorest comprehension for the implicit comparative-with-less construction. Second, the effect of the marked adjective depended on the type of comparison. Third, in all three types of comparison, accuracy was greater when the question was focused on the grammatical subject instead of the grammatical object.     

From Critical Education to An Embodied Pedagogy of Hope: Seeking a Liberatory Praxis with Black,Working Class Girls in the Neoliberal 16–19 College

In this article I present a discussion about the purpose of education of, for and with black, working class, young women within an inner-London, twenty-first century college, and explore the complex and imperfect ways that educational purpose translates into educational practice. I discuss the respective value of two contrasting discourses of education that operate in this college: firstly, a neoliberal discourse of education and educational success; secondly, a critical tradition of education, as traced through the work of Paulo Freire, feminist critics of his work and, ultimately, the work of bell hooks. I argue that a neoliberal rhetoric surrounding education, and the ways it translates into the practice of educating, plays a particular role in Black British, working class girls’ continuing educational marginalization. I thus articulate a more liberatory approach to teaching and learning with young, black women, drawing specifically on a hooksian vision of education as it emerges primarily through the work of, Ruth Nicole Brown and Stephanie D. Sears. Within these discussions, I explore dance as a potentially liberatory pedagogic practice, and articulate a possible approach here as an, always imperfect, embodied pedagogy of hope.     

Stress in youth sport: A developmental investigation of tennis parents

ObjectiveThis study investigated the stage-specific stressors experienced by British tennis parents whose children were situated either in the sampling, specializing or investment stages of participation in the sport [Côtè, J. (1999). The influence of the family in the development of talent in sport. The Sport Psychologist, 13, 395–417].Design and methodA qualitative design was employed with semi-structured interviews conducted with twenty two British tennis parents; six parents representing each of the first two stages of sports participation and ten representing the investment stage. Data was analyzed through a process of inductive content analysis following the method proposed by Miles and Huberman [Miles, M. B., & Huberman, A. M. (1994). Qualitative data analysis. London: Sage]. Data matrices were developed for each category of parent to allow for the comparison of the data between themes.Results and conclusionThree general dimensions of parental stressor emerged: Organizational, Competitive and Developmental. Organizational stressors included demands related to finance, time, training and coaching, and governing body systems; competitive stressors related to behavior, performance and morality-related issues associated with their child's matches; and developmental stressors centered on educational issues, uncertainty of tennis transitions, and future decision making. While sampling stage parents encountered few developmental stressors compared to later stage parents, a range of competitive stressors were highly prominent. Organizational stressors were particularly foremost for specializing and investment stage parents. Implications are discussed with reference to further research into the parental stress process and to the importance of stage-specific parent education initiatives.     

Adolescents' perception of bullying: who is the victim? Who is the bully? What can be done to stop bullying?

The main aim of this study was to describe adolescents' perceptions and experiences of bullying: their thoughts about why children and adolescents are bullied, their ideas about why some bully others, and what they believe is important in order to stop bullying. The adolescents were asked about experiences throughout their school years. The study group was comprised of 119 high school students, with a mean age of 17.1 (SD = 1.2). Of the adolescents who reported, 39% indicated that they had been bullied at some time during their school years and 28% said that they had bullied others; 13% reported being both victims and bullies. The ages during which most students had been bullied at school were between 7 and 9 years. Bullies reported that most of the bullying took place when they were 10 to 12 years old. The most common reason as to why individuals are bullied was that they have a different appearance. The participants believe that those who bully suffer from low self-esteem. The most common response to the question "What do you think makes bullying stop?" was that the bully matures. The next most frequent response was that the victim stood up for himself/herself. Those who were not involved in bullying during their school years had a much stronger belief that victims can stand up for themselves than did the victims themselves.     

The Joint Influence of Supervisor and Subordinate Emotional Intelligence on Leader–Member Exchange

Purpose  

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between supervisor and subordinate levels of emotional intelligence (EI) and leader–member exchange (LMX). Drawing on the similarity-attraction paradigm and behavioral integration theory, we propose that supervisor–subordinate EI similarity will play a prominent role in LMX development.     

Failure to replicate a QTL association between a DNA marker identified by EST00083 and IQ

In a paper published in this journal, a possible QTL association was reported between general cognitive ability and a marker, identified by an expressed sequence tag, EST00083 (Skuder et al., 1995). In two small samples, the frequency of the common allele of this DNA marker, which was shown to be in the threonine transfer RNA gene in mitochondrial DNA, was significantly greater in a high-IQ group than in a low-IQ group. As part of the ongoing IQ QTL Project (Plomin et al., 1995), we have attempted to replicate this QTL association. First, we found that the QTL association remained significant when we compared 51 high- and 51 -average IQ subjects, drawn in part from the samples used in the previous report. However, when we examined the association in new samples of 40 extremely high-IQ subjects and 50 average-IQ subjects, the association did not replicate. This underlies the need for replication in case-control studies of allelic association.     

Children’s mapping between symbolic and nonsymbolic representations of number

When children learn to count and acquire a symbolic system for representing numbers, they map these symbols onto a preexisting system involving approximate nonsymbolic representations of quantity. Little is known about this mapping process, how it develops, and its role in the performance of formal mathematics. Using a novel task to assess children’s mapping ability, we show that children can map in both directions between symbolic and nonsymbolic numerical representations and that this ability develops between 6 and 8 years of age. Moreover, we reveal that children’s mapping ability is related to their achievement on tests of school mathematics over and above the variance accounted for by standard symbolic and nonsymbolic numerical tasks. These findings support the proposal that underlying nonsymbolic representations play a role in children’s mathematical development.