Barriers to mother-adolescent communication about sex,maternal monitoring and sexual behaviour among adolescents in Mexico

Mexican mothers have an important role in adolescent sexuality; however, they report multiple barriers to parent–child sex communication, which may impact adolescent sexual behaviour. This cross-sectional study examines whether adolescent perceptions of maternal barriers to communication are associated with adolescent sexual behaviour frequency indirectly through its association with maternal monitoring, and whether these associations differ by age and gender. Mexican adolescents (N = 1433), ages 12–19 (53% girls), completed a survey on normative sexual behaviours, adolescent perceptions of maternal barriers to sex communication, and maternal monitoring. Structural equation modelling analyses revealed that more barriers to communication (adolescent perceptions) were associated with more sexual behaviour frequency (i.e., oral and vaginal sex) among Mexican adolescents indirectly through its association with maternal monitoring. Findings were stronger for adolescents in 8th grades, but no differences were found by gender. This model expands our understanding of the parenting factors that impact Mexican adolescent sexuality.     

Report of the Working Group on Education and Training

Prepared by the Working Group on Education and Training from the November 1995 Georgetown conference sponsored by the Association of Medical School Psychologists, this paper focuses upon the education and training of psychologists and education and training of other health care professionals about psychology in academic medical settings. Seven specific topic recommendations are offered that help psychologists define their educational and training missions into the next century.     

Suicide by Teenagers in Middle School: A Postvention Team Approach

Volumes have been written (American Association of Suicidology, 1998) and programs have been developed (Befrienders International, 2000) to deal with the prevention of and intervention for teen suicides in middle school. Less prominent is attention to postvention efforts in the aftermath of these acts. The authors describe a child's suicide through the eyes of the school counselor, identify issues unique to teenagers, present symptoms common to presuicidal youth, and suggest a postvention CAPT (counselors, administrators, parents, and teachers)Team Approach.     

A Review of “Personality and the fate of organizations”

In this study, we compared self-ratings and informant ratings of personality as predictors of implicit motives, need for achievement (nAch), and need for affiliation (nAff). A total of 120 participants wrote creative stories to 5 images from the Picture Story Exercise (Smith, 1992 Smith, C. P., Feld, S. C. and Franz, C. E. 1992. “Methodological considerations: Steps in research employing content analysis systems”. In Motivation and personally: Handbook for thematic content analysis, Edited by: Smith, C. P. 515–536. New York: Cambridge University Press.  [Google Scholar]) and completed the Revised NEO Personality Inventory (Costa &; McCrae, 1992 Costa, P. T. and McCrae, R. R. 1992. Revised NEO Personality Inventory and NEO Five-Factor Inventory: Professional manual, Odessa, FL: Psychological Assessment Resources.  [Google Scholar]). Three well-acquainted informants rated each participant's personality with the Big Five Inventory (John &; Srivastava, 1999 John, O. P. and Srivastava, S. 1999. “The Big Five trait taxonomy: History, measurement, and theoretical perspectives”. In Handbook of personality: Theory and research, , 2nd ed., Edited by: Pervin, L. A. and John, O. P. 102–138. New York: Guilford.  [Google Scholar]) and Saucier's (1994) Saucier, G. 1994. Mini-Markers: A brief version of Goldberg's unipolar Big-Five markers. Journal of Personality Assessment, 63: 506–516. [Taylor &; Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar] Mini-Markers. Consistent with the study hypotheses, peer ratings of Conscientiousness significantly predicted nAch scores after controlling for word count and self-rated Conscientiousness. Contrary to hypotheses, peer ratings and self-ratings in all 5 domains did not significantly predict nAff scores. The findings are considered in the interest of bridging the gap between trait and motive concepts in personality assessment.     

Religious coping,drinking motivation,and sex

The relations for religious coping with types of drinking motivation were examined in 178 college students. Participants completed the Ways of Religious Coping Scale and the Drinking Motives Questionnaire. As expected, correlations suggested that amount of alcohol used as well as social and enhancement motives for using were negatively related to religious coping scores. These relations were more clearly evident among women than among men. Coping motivation for alcohol use and religious coping were not significantly correlated.     

Masculinity, femininity, and psychosocial adjustment in medical students: a 2-year follow-up

As part of a longitudinal study of medical students, relations between masculinity and femininity and psychosocial well-being were investigated over a 21-month interval. Of a class of medical students, 82% (N = 99) completed measures of masculinity and femininity during orientation and, 21 months later, completed a broad array of measures of psychological well-being, interpersonal functioning, humanistic attitudes toward patient care, and alcohol consumption. Hierarchical multiple regression analyses with interaction terms revealed main effects of masculinity on self-esteem, extraversion, and confidence, and main effects of femininity on hedonic capacity, interpersonal satisfaction, sharing of personal problems, and alcohol consumption. Little evidence for additive or balance androgyny formulations was found. Findings for masculinity were consistent with earlier findings from this study and others, but they were weaker in magnitude. Findings for femininity were surprisingly robust and enrich the construct validity of this measure. Measures of impaired mood and of alcohol and drug impairment were also studied in relation to masculinity and femininity. Both variables contribute to the prediction of depressed mood; femininity also contributes to the prediction of drug involvement. Neither scale has sufficient sensitivity or specificity to be used by itself as a test of impairment.     

Measuring Theodicy: Individual Differences in the Perception of Divine Intervention

The attribution of control to God may have particularly interesting psychological properties. Theodicy refers to the perception of God controlling history—even the minutiae of daily events. The current study examines the psychometric properties of a new instrument, the Theodicy Scale. Results support the reliability of the brief scale when administered to college students, and some evidence is provided suggesting construct validation. Theodicy appears to represent a unitary construct and scores vary independent of social desirability bias. The absence of a relationship between Theodicy scores and simulated medical advice raises questions to be addressed in future research.     

Marital interaction in alcoholic and nonalcoholic couples: alcoholic subtype variations and wives' alcoholism status

The authors examined problem-solving marital interactions of alcoholic and nonalcoholic couples (N = 132). Four alcoholic groups (husband alcoholic with antisocial personality disorder or not, paired with alcoholic or nonalcoholic wives) were compared with each other and with a both-spouses-nonalcoholic group. Consistent with the alcoholic subtypes hypothesis, couples with an antisocial alcoholic husband had higher levels of hostile behavior regardless of wives' alcoholism status. In contrast, rates of positive behaviors and the ratio of positive to negative behaviors were greatest among couples in which either both or neither of the spouses had alcoholic diagnoses and were lowest among alcoholic husbands with nonalcoholic wives. Discussion focuses on possible mechanisms linking antisocial alcoholism and discrepant alcoholic diagnoses to poorer marital outcomes.