The Relationship Between Racial Identity Status Attitudes and Acculturation Among Chinese and Korean Americans: A Criterion Profile Analysis

This study tested the relationship between racial identity and acculturation among 223 Asian Americans self‐identifying as Chinese American or Korean American. Findings showed within‐group variations among the study participants with regard to their racial identity status attitudes and acculturation. Using criterion profile analysis, the authors found 2 distinctive criterion profiles of racial identity status attitudes that significantly related to higher levels of acculturation among Chinese American and Korean American participants. Implications for multicultural counseling, racial identity, and acculturation research are discussed. Este estudio puso a prueba la relación entre identidad racial y aculturación entre 223 individuos asiático‐americanos que se identifican a sí mismos como chino‐americanos o coreano‐americanos. Los resultados mostraron variaciones dentro del miso grupo entre los participantes del estudio en cuanto a su aculturación y sus actitudes hacia el estatus de su identidad racial. Usando un análisis de perfil de criterio, los autores encontraron 2 perfiles de criterio distintivos para las actitudes hacia el estatus de identidad racial que estaban relacionados significativamente con niveles más altos de aculturación entre los participantes chino‐americanos y coreano‐americanos. Se discuten las implicaciones para investigaciones sobre consejería multicultural, identidad racial y aculturación.     

Burger or yogurt? Indulgent consumption in impression management contexts

We conducted three studies to investigate indulgent choice in settings with and without impression management by public–private manipulation with evaluation. Study 1 showed that the participants were less indulgent under public scrutiny due to the employment of impression management. Study 2 focused on the impression management context to test the moderate effect of self‐consciousness in two impression managed contexts. Study 3 focused on context without impression management to test the moderate effects of self‐awareness on choices. We found that depending on differences in primed personality, individuals tended to make choices other than those they favoured privately when anticipating that others might form impressions of them based on the decisions made. The findings of all three studies support our basic prediction that people are less indulgent under impression management and suggest that people tend to manage their impression by eating healthier (less indulgently) in public.     

The economy and suicide in Japan, 1985-2000

From 1985-2000, unemployment was the strongest correlate of Japanese suicide rates.     

Factors Moderating Children's Adjustment to Parental Separation: Findings From a Community Study in England

Research findings show that there is marked variability in children's response to parental separation, but few studies identify the sources of this variation. This prospective longitudinal study examines the factors modifying children's adjustment to parental separation in a community sample of 5,635 families in England. Children's behavioral/emotional problems were assessed when children were aged 47 and 81 months; marital quality, maternal depression, socioeconomic circumstances, and demographic variables were assessed prior to the separation from maternal report. Results indicated that 346 mothers separated from their partners in the 3-year period. Preseparation differences were found for measures of family process and parent risk factors, with effect sizes ranging from small to trivial. Parental separation was associated with a significant but modest increase in behavioral/emotional problems, independent of marital quality, maternal depression, socioeconomic circumstances, and demographic variables. Moderation analyses showed that children of cohabiting parents had a greater increase in adjustment problems following parental separation than children of married parents. Further research elucidating the factors that moderate children's adjustment to parental separation is needed to improve our understanding of who may most likely benefit from preventive interventions.     

Gaze allocation in a dynamic situation: effects of social status and speaking

Human visual attention operates in a context that is complex, social and dynamic. To explore this, we recorded people taking part in a group decision-making task and then showed video clips of these situations to new participants while tracking their eye movements. Observers spent the majority of time looking at the people in the videos, and in particular at their eyes and faces. The social status of the people in the clips had been rated by their peers in the group task, and this status hierarchy strongly predicted where eye-tracker participants looked: high-status individuals were gazed at much more often, and for longer, than low-status individuals, even over short, 20-s videos. Fixation was temporally coupled to the person who was talking at any one time, but this did not account for the effect of social status on attention. These results are consistent with a gaze system that is attuned to the presence of other individuals, to their social status within a group, and to the information most useful for social interaction.     

Two simple approximations to the distributions of quadratic forms

Many test statistics are asymptotically equivalent to quadratic forms of normal variables, which are further equivalent to with z_i being independent and following N(0,1). Two approximations to the distribution of T have been implemented in popular software and are widely used in evaluating various models. It is important to know how accurate these approximations are when compared to each other and to the exact distribution of T. The paper systematically studies the quality of the two approximations and examines the effect of the λ_i and the degrees of freedom d by analysis and Monte Carlo. The results imply that the adjusted distribution for T can be as good as knowing its exact distribution. When the coefficient of variation of the λ_i is small, the rescaled statistic is also adequate for practical model inference. But comparing T_R against will inflate type I errors when substantial differences exist among the λ_i, especially, when d is also large.     

Developing a screening instrument and at-risk profile for nonsuicidal self-injurious behavior in college women and men

Archival data (N = 1,048 women, 1,136 men) from a mental health survey of college students were used to investigate incidence of nonsuicidal self-injury (NSSI), including cutting. Significant levels (defined as 4-5 lifetime incidents) were found in 9.3% of women and 5.3% of men. The Counseling Center Assessment for Psychological Symptoms (a global symptom inventory) and an assessment of trauma had been field tested with this sample. We randomly partitioned half of these data into a holdout sample and used the remainder to develop an NSSI screening inventory that included (a) 5 women's screening items, including 1 item to assess trauma experienced; (b) 11 men's screening items; and (c) 12 items common to men and women, including depression, dissociation, anger, unwanted thoughts, nightmares or flashbacks, and having witnessed trauma. Logistic regression and receiver-operating characteristic curve analysis suggested the inventory significantly discriminated NSSI men and women in the holdout sample, p < .001. Cutoff scores were identified to correctly classify about 48% of the true positive male and female NSSI cases, with false positive rates of 13.2% and 8.4% for women and men, respectively.     

Determinants of Standard Errors of MLEs in Confirmatory Factor Analysis

This paper studies changes of standard errors (SE) of the normal-distribution-based maximum likelihood estimates (MLE) for confirmatory factor models as model parameters vary. Using logical analysis, simplified formulas and numerical verification, monotonic relationships between SEs and factor loadings as well as unique variances are found. Conditions under which monotonic relationships do not exist are also identified. Such functional relationships allow researchers to better understand the problem when significant factor loading estimates are expected but not obtained, and vice versa. What will affect the likelihood for Heywood cases (negative unique variance estimates) is also explicit through these relationships. Empirical findings in the literature are discussed using the obtained results.