Mobilizing positive reinforcement in communities to reduce youth access to tobacco

A community intervention to mobilize positive reinforcement for not selling tobacco to young people was evaluated. The intervention had five components: (a) mobilization of community support, (b) merchant education, (c) changing consequences to clerks for selling or not selling to those under 18, (d) publicity about clerks’ refusals to sell, and (e) feedback to store owners or managers about the extent of their sales to adolescents. A multiple baseline design experiment was conducted, in which two small Oregon communities received the intervention, while two others continued in baseline. Outlets’ willingness to sell was assessed repeatedly by teenage volunteers. The intervention significantly reduced the proportion of stores willing to sell. Mobilizing socia and material reinforcement for stores not selling tobacco to young people is a viable means of reducing such sales. It may be especially valuable in communities where laws against sales to minors go unenforced. This paper supported in part by the National Cancer Institute Grant CA38273.     

Use of item ratings to examine personality test item cognitive response processes

This research examines the processes respondents use to answer personality test items. A total of 158 true/false items from four scales of the Personality Research Form and the California Psychological Inventory were used as stimuli. University students (N = 120) responded to each item and indicated one of nine strategies used in deciding on a response. Obtained response strategy ratings for items were reliable and their frequencies corresponded closely to previous findings with other items. Subsequently, the associations between item response strategy frequencies and item-total correlations were computed. Congruent with previous research, better items avoided behaviours or experiences and evoked responding based on traits and on referring to the statements of others. The associations between item response strategies and other indices of item quality are discussed and implications regarding scale development are offered.     

Self and Identity in Career Development: Implications for Theory and Practice

This article expands the conceptual framework of considerations of the self and identity in career development theory and practice. A brief review of the existing self and identity constructs in career development theory is provided. Selected advances in theoretical considerations of the self and identity emerging from fields outside of the purview of career development are presented with a focus on the importance of the relational and cultural contexts. An “embeddedness” perspective is offered that describes the interdependence between intrapersonal experience and social, relational, historical, and cultural contexts. A case vignette is provided to illustrate the implications for practice of that perspective.     

Using Personality Testing for Personnel Selection: Faking and Test-Taking Inductions

This research assessed whether warning subjects that faked responses could be detected would reduce the amount of faking that might occur when using a personality test for selection of police officers. Also, personality test subscales which best differentiated honest from dissimulated responses were determined. Subjects (N=120) were randomly assigned to a straight-take (that is, respond honestly), fake good, or modified fake good group. Both fake good groups were instructed to respond to the test so as to appear favourably for the job; additionally, the modified fake good group was warned that faking could be detected and could reduce hiring chances. Multivariate analyses revealed significant differences on the Denial and Deviation subscales between the three conditions (p <0.01). The pattern of differences suggested that the threat of faking detection reduced faking. Potential application of these findings in personnel selection was discussed.     

Depression,anxiety, hostility,and physical health

This study assessed the relationship of depression, anxiety, and hostility to physical health in a multicultural student population (N=106). When controlling for a variety of demographic and health risk factors (viz., age, sex, body mass, smoking, alcohol, salt, caffeine, and exercise), hostility, depression, and anxiety were related to higher reported incidences of physical symptoms and somatic illness. Depression and hostility had the strongest relationships with physical health, although the most striking single relationship was between depression and illness. Results suggest that it may be premature to focus our attention on hostility in research on the personality-illness relationship. They also suggest that the health behavior model of the relationship between personality and disease does not provide an adequate explanation, since negative affect was significantly associated with illness even when controlling for a variety of health risk factors. This work was supported, in part, by an intramural grant from the University of Hawaii, #R511.     

Assessing MMPI constructs through the measurement of response latencies

Responses to the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) were assessed with respect to their relevance to schema theory. The relation between scores on self-reported personality dimensions and the speed of processing test items associated with each dimension was examined. With previously derived factor analytic content scales, negative correlations were obtained between scale scores and mean latencies for endorsing relevant items, and positive correlations were found between scale scores and mean latencies for rejecting relevant items. A similar analysis completed on the traditional clinical scales revealed no such pattern. Results were interpreted as supporting the conceptualization of item responding as a content-based, schema-relevant process.     

Reading skill and the use of orthographic knowledge by Mature Readers

Summary Butler and Hains (1979) found individual differences in the effect of word length on RT in word naming and lexical-decision tasks; subjects scoring high on a vocabulary test were much less affected by word length than subjects with low scores. The present study attempted to determine whether such differences could be due to differences in the use of intraword structure, since word recognition has been linked, both empirically (Mason, 1978; Scheerer-Neumann, 1981) and theoretically (Mewhort & Campbell, 1981) to the use of orthographic redundancy. In Experiment 1, subjects were shown tachistoscopically presented letter strings varying in approximation to English. High vocabulary subjects were more capable of capitalizing on the redundancy with the higher-order approximations. Experiment 2 then established that performance on the vocabulary test was correlated with reading skill, measured by the Nelson-Denny Reading Test, and that skilled readers were more sensitive to the syllable structure in words. In the experiment, subjects were shown eight-letter words presented as three separate word units which either matched or violated syllable boundaries in the word. Skilled readers were more sensitive to the difference between syllable and nonsyllable units than were less skilled readers. The results obtained by Butler and Hains appear to reflect differences in reading skill and the efficiency of letter sequence parsing prior to word recognition.