Social support and psychosocial competence: Explaining the adaptation to college of ethnically diverse students

Examined relationships among social support, psychosocial competence, and adaptation to college in a sample of 357 African American, Asian American, Latino, and white college students. Social support and active coping were significant predictors of adaptation to college, whereas locus of control was not. However, there was an interaction between ethnicity and locus of control indicating that although internal African American, Latino, and white students had higher adaptation-to-college scores than external students, the opposite was true for Asian Americans. The relationships among social support, internality, and active coping were also explored. Satisfaction with social support and internality were positively related to active coping, but locus of control and social support were unrelated. Active coping and internality were significantly related to each other for all groups except for African Americans. Although most relationships were the same across groups, these findings call attention to the role of ethnicity as a moderator of college adjustment processes.     

Children’s acquisition of language: General linguistic competence or dimensions of style?

Previous studies have described children’s acquisition of language as reflecting either a referential or an expressive style. A multivariate approach, characterizing “referentiality” and “expressivity” as partially dissociable dimensions, is advantageous because it allows children to vary along one dimension as they vary along another, allowing children to have high or low degrees of both characteristics simultaneously. The present study applies multivariate techniques to an “exploratory” sample of 87 children, all of whom were 20 months old, and by subsequently validating the exploratory phase with 56 of the original children seen one month later. Using parental reports to assess children’s multiword productions, exploratory factor analyses revealed two correlated dimensions of language style which indeed reflected referential and expressive characteristics. Confirmatory factor analyses “confirmed” these factors in the test sample. This two-dimensional model of language acquisition was superior to a unidimensional, general linguistic competence model. There is also strong short-term stability for both dimensions across the one-month period.     

Assessment of Major Life Events for Hong Kong Adolescents: The Chinese Adolescent Life Event Scale

Previous Chinese research on adolescent life stress adopted life event scales that were directly translated from Western measures. To address the methodological and cultural issues overlooked by the import approach, the present research aimed at constructing a life event scale for Hong Kong adolescents. Study 1 was conducted to congregate items for the Chinese Adolescent Life Event Scale (CALES). The CALES contains 44 items derived from 618 Hong Kong adolescents. Study 2 revealed adequate test–retest reliability and criterion-related validity for the CALES. Moreover, the CALES yielded stronger relationships with depression than did the translated life event measures. Results suggest that the CALES is appropriate for assessing life events for Hong Kong adolescents. Both unique features of the CALES and life events found only in the translated measures are examined. Implications for Chinese research on life stress are discussed.     

A Controlled Explosion? a Decade of Counselling Training

The dramatic increase in size of counselling courses in Leicester is illustrated. Opportunities and problems created both by their location within an adult education programme and also by large numbers are outlined. The incentive for innovative development as a result of working with such large numbers is suggested. Questions are raised about the relationship between quality and quantity, especially for the depth of personal and professional learning.     

Development and analysis of a community-based resource recovery program

Five studies were conducted over a 10-month period to determine the effectiveness of specific procedures in encouraging recycling among residential neighborhoods. Results indicated that: (a) initial levels of participation in neighborhoods were frequently related to housing values; (b) weekly recycling pick-ups that coincided with garbage collection days resulted in higher levels of participation than pick-ups that occurred at other times; (c) notifying homes about the recycling program through distributed door-to-door brochures was more effective than soliciting participation through newspaper ads; (d) distributing containers to help residents separate recyclable from nonrecyclable material proved to be an effective procedure, especially when combined with frequent prompting (prompting alone did not have much effect); and (e) procedures that facilitated the greatest levels of participation were not always cost-effective. The subsequent combination of these procedures into a package program resulted in high levels of neighborhood participation that were cost-effective and maintained over a 6-month period.     

The effect of divorce on fathers: An overview of the literature

Divorce is becoming a major mental health problem in the United States. With rare exceptions psychological attention has usually focused on the effect of divorce on children and mothers. The author suggests that as some fathers become more involved in family nurturing they will be more intensely affected by marital disruption, particularly as it involves changes in the relationship to their children. A review of the recent psychological literature on divorce and custody is presented as a framework for understanding the divorcing father who is requesting psychiatric help.This paper is reprinted here from theAmerican Journal of Psychiatry, 1982,139:10, pp. 1235–1241, with the permission of the original publisher.     

A developmental examination of ratings of associative strength

Ratings of associative strength between members of pairs of categorically related words were obtained for children from Grades 3,4,6, and 8 and for college adults. Correlations of ratings were high among the five grade levels, indicating that associative relations are an early form of semantic representation that change minimally in development.     

Effects of four psychological primary colors on anxiety state.

Effects of the four psychological primary colors were assessed by randomly assigning 40 undergraduates (13 male, 27 female) to 4 treatment groups, with each group receiving either red, yellow, green, or blue illumination. Anxiety state was assessed at 5-min. intervals using the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory. The red and yellow groups had significantly higher A-state scores than the blue and green groups, and these values did not change significantly during the 15-min. testing session.     

Psychology and self-help groups. Predictions on a partnership

Continued growth and increased legitimacy are anticipated for the American self-help group (SHG) phenomenon. Currently estimated at six and a quarter million participants annually, self-help groups will assume a central role in the nation's mental health delivery system over the next two decades. The first part of this article illuminates the self-help group phenomenon itself. Its scope, characteristics, supporting social climate, and associated research issues are reviewed. The second part is a futuristic examination of its interface with the newly industrializing world of health care. Massive increases in mental health services are predicted, especially via the SHG format. Theory development, research sophistication, changing SHG formats, a place in public policy, and acceptance into graduate curricula are also expected, as are collaborative relationships with a variety of professional disciplines. Psychologists are urged to enhance the relevance of the profession by taking an early leadership role in these developments.     

Relativism,rationality and repression

This paper was presented at the Pacific Division Meeting of the APA on 28 March 1987.