School attainment,self-esteem,and identity: France and England

The Tajfel-Turner Theory of Social Identity was used as a framework from which it was predicted that pupils of low attainment in secondary school should come to define themselves as indifferent to or opposed to the values of their schools. This hypothesis was examined in France and England, on self-report measures covering values, aspirations, perceptions, evaluations, beliefs and motivations. While results show numerous differences between low and high attainers common to both countries, the differences are more pronounced in England. National differences are such that the French pupils are more like high attainers. Results are interpreted as being more consistent with low attaining pupils being victims of boredom rather than failure, with the French school culture providing greater insulation against such reactions.     

The Dutch Identity: A new tool for the study of item response models

The Dutch Identity is a useful way to reexpress the basic equations of item response models that relate the manifest probabilities to the item response functions (IRFs) and the latent trait distribution. The identity may be exploited in several ways. For example: (a) to suggest how item response models behave for large numbers of items—they are approximate submodels of second-order loglinear models for 2 ^J tables; (b) to suggest new ways to assess the dimensionality of the latent trait—principle components analysis of matrices composed of second-order interactions from loglinear models; (c) to give insight into the structure of latent class models; and (d) to illuminate the problem of identifying the IRFs and the latent trait distribution from sample data.This research was supported in part by contract number N00014-87-K-0730 from the Cognitive Science Program of the Office of Naval Research. I realized the usefulness of the identity in Theorem 1 while lecturing in the Netherlands during October, 1986. Because this was in no small part due to the stimulating psychometric atmosphere there, I call the result the Dutch Identity.     

Violence in College Students' Dating Relationships1

In a survey of 504 college students examining predictors of violence in heterosexual relationships, over half of both men and women had committed at least one physically violent act, and men more often than women reported having been the victims of such acts. Most respondents who reported some experience with violence had both committed and received it, were involved in relatively few different types of violence, and first experienced violence when a relationship had moved beyond the casual dating stage. Modest associations between physical violence and sexual aggression were uncovered. In a series of discriminant analyses, men who abused their partners were not readily distinguished from men who did not, but tended to be young, low in family income, traditional in attitudes toward women, abused as children, currently living with a woman, and from Appalachian areas. Women who abused were more readily discriminated and scored low in social desirability, were abused as children, and were from non-Appalachian areas. Men who were abused were likely to be living with a woman and tended to be low in family income; similarly, cohabitation was related among women to being a target of violence, as were having been abused as a child and scoring low in social desirability. Findings are related to those of other studies of dating abuse, as well as to the family violence and aggression literatures.     

Adolescent pregnancy and sex roles

Traditional sex roles are related to the occurrence of adolescent pregnancy in this study. Sex-role orientation and related variables were measured by a questionnaire administered to 161 young women aged 13 to 18 years when they sought pregnancy tests or birth control information at one of several clinics. The hypothesis of the study, that adolescents who get pregnant are more likely than other sexually active young women to be traditional in sex-role orientation, receives some support from the findings. Pregnant adolescents, in comparison with birth control seeking adolescents, perceive themselves to be competent in more highly sex-typed activities, have lower aspirations and school grades, and have less sense of personal control over events in their lives. Pregnant teens do not seem to differ much from birth control seeking teens in sex-role values, and seem less likely to aspire to traditionally female occupations. Socioeconomic status (SES) is the strongest discriminator between pregnant teens and birth control seeking teens, with pregnant teens having lower SES. Pregnant adolescents, in comparison with those experiencing negative pregnancy tests, are younger and are more likely to rely on God to determine the course of their personal lives.Preliminary drafts of this article were prepared for the NSF-sponsored Chautauqua short course entitled The Psychology of the Female Experience, taught by Sharon Lord in 1980–1981, and the Pacific Sociological Association's Annual Meetings, Portland, Oregon, March 1981. The research upon which this article is based was partially supported by the Atkinson Research Fund, Willamette University. The author gratefully acknowledges the insightful comments of Chautauqua participants and staff members of the cooperating agencies.     

The effects of word class on children's reading and spelling

Children's oral language functioning has been shown to be affected by word class (i.e., content vs. noncontent words). The present study reveals comparable effects on children's written language performance. In spelling and reading, third and fifth graders show faster and more accurate responses to nouns and verbs than to noncontent words of matched length and frequency. Further, when the children's performance is examined in relation to level of reading skill, it is found that the less-skilled readers exhibit a greater content/noncontent differential than do the more skilled readers. The results are discussed with reference to differential access for the two word classes and its implication for both oral and written language functioning.     

Counseling the incest offender

The Center Against Sexual Assault in Phoenix, Arizona is currently treating 50 incest offenders in its Offender Group treatment program. The average age range is 31–45 years old, and 80 percent were sexually or physically abused as children. These men have been found to be extremely self-centered, exhibit poor impulse control, and possess a strong denial of reality. The treatment program includes several intake sessions to ascertain suitability of the offender to this type of therapeutic approach and a stated self-admission of at least the possibility of incestuous involvement. The offenders work in groups, as well as individual sessions.     

The role of group therapy in incest counseling

The use of group therapy is an essential component in the treatment program for victims of incest, their families, and offenders at the Center Against Sexual Assault in Phoenix, Arizona. Four types of groups are conducted on a continuous basis: (a) adults who were victims as children, (b) families of victims, (c) offenders, and (d) child victims. Group therapy is the predominant treatment modality for the 400 incestuous families seen at CASA. Details of each of the four groups are given in this article.     

The effects of a career course on undecided college students

The effects of a career course taught by 11 instructors (two sections each) for college students, who were undecided about a major field or career, were evaluated in a pre-post design using the Vocational Identity, Occupational Information, and Barrier scales of the My Vocational Situation (J. A. Holland, D. C. Daiger, & P. G. Power, Palo Alto, Calif.: Consulting Psychologists Press, 1980). Large main effects were observed for the Identity and Occupational Information scales, but not for the Barriers scale. No interactions by instructor or student characteristics were found by using a simple ANOVA procedure or by using a split plot factorial design. The implications for new research and career instructors were discussed.     

Motivational properties of spaced food presentation in hungry rats: Long-lasting effects on drinking and eating

Hungry rats were given 60 food pellets either at spaced intervals or massed in one or two presentations, or no food, followed by a consumption test in the home cage. Drinking was higher after spaced food sessions than after massed food or no food sessions (Experiments 1, 2, 3, and 5) and higher after the presentation of standard food pellets than after quinine-flavored pellets (Experiment 2). An effect of spacing was found even with a delay of 1 hr between the end of the food session and the drinking test (Experiment 3). Spaced food presentation also produced an increase in the consumption of quinine-flavored food pellets after the end of the session (Experiment 4). These results suggest that the enhancement of behavior caused by intermittent reinforcement cannot be attributed entirely to the short-term eliciting effects of the reinforcer or to its thirst-inducing properties.