The Engineering and Science Issues Test (ESIT): A Discipline-Specific Approach to Assessing Moral Judgment

To assess ethics pedagogy in science and engineering, we developed a new tool called the Engineering and Science Issues Test (ESIT). ESIT measures moral judgment in a manner similar to the Defining Issues Test, second edition, but is built around technical dilemmas in science and engineering. We used a quasi-experimental approach with pre- and post-tests, and we compared the results to those of a control group with no overt ethics instruction. Our findings are that several (but not all) stand-alone classes showed a significant improvement compared to the control group when the metric includes multiple stages of moral development. We also found that the written test had a higher response rate and sensitivity to pedagogy than the electronic version. We do not find significant differences on pre-test scores with respect to age, education level, gender or political leanings, but we do on whether subjects were native English speakers. We did not find significant differences on pre-test scores based on whether subjects had previous ethics instruction; this could suggest a lack of a long-term effect from the instruction.     

Instructional effects on performance in a matching-to-sample study

Conducting studies using an undergraduate participant pool is fraught with difficulties. Among them are problems with adequately motivating subjects both to come to the study, and once there, to actively engage the experimental task. Thirty-one college students participated in a matching-to-sample (MTS) study involving substantial training, testing, retraining, and retesting of conditional discriminations and equivalence relations among four 4-member classes of nonsensical words. The study was conducted during the end of the semester, when performance often had been observed to be poorer than at other points in the semester. Eleven of the participants, in addition to standard instructions about the task, received additional instructions specifying molar consequences for high rates of "correct" responses throughout the procedure. This subset of participants displayed markedly improved performance as compared to those who did not receive the additional instructions. Results suggest that specification of molar contingencies improves participants' sensitivity to molecular contingencies within the study. Instructions that specify and increase the consequential functions of feedback provided during MTS trials may be one means of reducing unwanted variability in human MTS performance.     

Impact of school sense of community within a faith-based university: administrative and academic staff perceptions on institutional mission and values

Academic staff (n = 305) and administrative staff (n = 595) at a large urban, Catholic, and religious order teaching university completed on-line school sense of community, social desirability, and mission-identity plus mission-driven activity measures. Partial correlates (controlling for social desirability) indicated that for both faculty and staff a sense of community with co-workers and with administrators were significantly related to mission-identity characteristics of the university. Moreover, regression analyses found that for faculty and staff significant predictors of school sense of community variables were perceptions that the university was innovative and inclusive of pragmatic and risk-taking ideas. For staff but not for faculty, a feeling of Catholic pluralism on campus was a significant predictor of a sense of community with co-workers. These outcomes suggest that employees at faith-based universities may strengthen their school sense of community by institutional practices and programs that foster creating a setting for innovative, inclusive, pragmatic, and risk-taking policies, but not necessarily religious practices on campus.     

Perceptual organization of complex auditory sequences: effect of number of simultaneous subsequences and frequency separation

Previous findings on streaming are generalized to sequences composed of more than 2 subsequences. A new paradigm identified whether listeners perceive complex sequences as a single unit (integrative listening) or segregate them into 2 (or more) perceptual units (stream segregation). Listeners heard 2 complex sequences, each composed of 1, 2, 3, or 4 subsequences. Their task was to detect a temporal irregularity within 1 subsequence. In Experiment 1, the smallest frequency separation under which listeners were able to focus on 1 subsequence was unaffected by the number of co-occurring subsequences; nonfocused sounds were not perceptually organized into streams. In Experiment 2, detection improved progressively, not abruptly, as the frequency separation between subsequences increased from 0.25 to 6 auditory filters. The authors propose a model of perceptual organization of complex auditory sequences.     

Development and Evaluation of a Decision Aid About Prenatal Testing for Women of Advanced Maternal Age

Objective: To develop and evaluate a decision aid designed to prepare patients of advanced maternal age for counseling about prenatal diagnostic testing. Setting: A regional genetics center. Design: A before/after study. Interventions: Participants used an audioguided workbook to learn about options and outcomes and to clarify personal risks, values, questions, and predispositions. Subjects: 21 women of advanced maternal age and 17 spouses. Main outcome measures: Knowledge of prenatal testing alternatives, decisional conflict, level of anxiety, and acceptability of the decision aid. Results: After using the decision aid, participants had significantly reduced decisional conflict (uncertainty) and a significant increase in knowledge. There was no effect on state or trait anxiety. More than three-quarters of participants were satisfied with the length, clarity, balance, and acceptability of the decision aid. Conclusions: The decision aid shows promise as a useful aid for preparing couples for counseling.     

Monte Carlo simulations and the chi-square test of independence

A Monte Carlo program for sampling 2 by 2 contingency tables from a user-specified population is discussed. Applications include computer-assisted instruction (CAI) of statistics, evaluation of actual vs nominal Type I error rates of the chi-square test of independence when expected frequencies are less than 10, and estimation of the power of the chi-square test.     

Conceptions of own versus others' outcomes: Manipulation by monaural attentional orientation

Previous research found that greater personal optimism was produced during selective left hemisphere activation. In that research the selective activation was manipulated by contralateral visual orientation of attention. The present experiment replicated and extended this effect using monaural stimulation. In addition, a significant reduction in variability of responding was found, as expected, in the monaural as compared to binaural groups, and a significant correlation was found between individual desire for control and optimism.