Guiding a rural church in a world of change

Conclusion It is not easy to be a rural minister today. Rural churches are small. Their resources are limited, and a church can afford only one minister, who must direct the whole program of the church.Because of the multiple demands upon one who goes to the country it is even dangerous to become a rural minister. In a rural pastorate a man is free to make his own choices, to determine his own discipline in life and study. He confronts two major dangers: He may become so absorbed in such a variety of work that he will fail to do anything well. Because no one is pressing him to fit into patterns already established he may become lazy and undisciplined, following lines of least resistance. Cutting new patterns, doing pioneer work, always carries such dangers. But if one is strong within himself, the kind of freedom he has in a rural community is a source of real strength.If rural America is to be strong, if its people are to possess character and integrity, and if community consciousness is to be preserved in small places, tens of thousands of little churches must have ministers who understand the resources, problems, and needs of rural people. They must be able to show the people how to develop great churches in small communities.The spiritual destiny of our nation in the tomorrows will be affected by what takes place in our rural churches during these decades of revolutionary change.     

Principles for Designing Randomized Preventive Trials in Mental Health: An Emerging Developmental Epidemiology Paradigm

An emerging population-based paradigm is now being used to guide the design of preventive trials used to test developmental models. We discuss elements of the designs of several ongoing randomized preventive trials involving reduction of risk for children of divorce, for children who exhibit behavioral or learning problems, and for children whose parents are being treated for depression. To test developmental models using this paradigm, we introduce three classes of design issues: design for prerandomization, design for intervention, and design for postintervention. For each of these areas, we present quantitative results from power calculations. Both scientific and cost implications of these power calculations are discussed in terms of variation among subjects on preintervention measures, unit of intervention, assignment, balancing, number of pretest and posttest measures, and the examination of moderation effects.     

Ethnic and sex differences in occupational stereotyping by elementary school children

As part of the formative evaluation of an educational television and print package, fourth-, fifth-, and sixth-grade public school Black, Hispanic, and Anglo children were surveyed regarding career choice and perceptions of the appropriateness of selected occupations for male and female adults and children. Responses were analyzed by ethnic membership and sex. Results indicated that in general Hispanic and Anglo girls chose more non traditional, higher-status occupations than Black girls. For boys, however, there was no clear interaction between sex and ethnic group in career choice. Girls and boys in all three ethnic groups indicated preference for careers stereotyped for their own sex, although girls—particularly Anglo girls—showed a greater tendency to cross sex-stereotyped lines. In addition, while both girls and boys in all three groups stereotyped as appropriate only for females those occupations regarded as traditionally female, traditionally male occupations were stereotyped more frequently by boys than by girls, who tended to consider them appropriate for both sexes. No differences appeared between ethnic groups in boys' responses to male and female adult occupations. In general Black girls tended to hold the most stereotypic views of job appropriateness, while Hispanic girls did not show a clear trend. Black boys tended to stereotype more than the other two groups with reference to child jobs on a boy-stereotype scale. Some differences also appeared in both boys' and girls' responses on the basis of a median split between high and low stereotypers on boy and girl child-job stereotype scales. In general, subjects who stereotyped child jobs tended also to stereotype adult occupations, suggesting a link between the child's current experience and the more remote world of adults. Implications of the findings and suggestions for future research are discussed.     

Continuing education,identity, sex role,and psychosocial development in adult women

Comparisons on psychosocial development and sex-role identification were made between 39 adult women returning to college in midlife and 40 traditional homemakers. Significantly more homemakers had foreclosed on the adult identity issues of goals and religion and scored lower on a measure of psychological androgyny. Women in continuing education showed greater evidence of identity crisis as they neared graduation. The two groups did not differ along Eriksonian developmental stages, but there were differences in the pattern of favorable and unfavorable resolutions of psychosocial crises within both groups. The results support the existence of an identity crisis as a response to life events in adulthood and demonstrate a relationship between behavioral and self-report indices of rejection or acceptance of the traditional feminine role.This research was completed in partial fulfillment of the doctorate degree from the Graduate School of Education and Human Development, University of Rochester.     

Context change and retrieval difficulty in the list-before-last paradigm

Using the "list-before-last" paradigm (Jang & Huber, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 34, 112-127, 2008; Shiffrin, Science, 168, 1601-1603, 1970), we examined whether the difficulty involved in retrieving a previously studied list affects the recall of the current list. Participants studied three lists (L1, L2, and L3), and between L2 and L3 study they either engaged in retrieval of L1 or solved math problems for the same duration of time. After L3 encoding, all participants recalled L2. We examined accurate recall of L2, intrusions from L3, and also the first-response function from L2 across all four experiments. In Experiments 1 and 2, retrieval difficulty was manipulated by presenting participants with variable numbers of letter cues for the L1 words, with some participants receiving more cues than others. In Experiment 1, L1 and L2 words shared the first two letters in common to create potential item interference, whereas in Experiment 2, they did not share common cues. In Experiments 3 and 4, we manipulated retrieval difficulty using a delay manipulation-L1 was encoded 1, 24, or 72?h prior to the session during which L2 and L3 were encoded. In Experiment 3, L1 retrieval involved a cued recall test, whereas in Experiment 4, it involved a free recall test. The results of all of these experiments showed that, as compared to solving math problems, retrieving L1 led to forgetting of L2, reduced intrusions from L3, and reduced first-response functions from L2. However, all of the dependent measures were invariant across the various manipulations of retrieval difficulty. We discuss the results in terms of the context-change interpretation of prior-list retrieval.     

Influences on life aspirations among adolescents in a low-income community in Cape Town,South Africa

The aim of this study was to determine the influences on adolescents’ aspirations from a low-income community in Cape Town. A sequential mixed method exploratory design was used following two distinct phases. The qualitative phase comprised focus group interviews with 118 grade 12 learners attending a school in a low-income community (age range: 16–19 years) and focused on identifying factors influencing life aspirations. The quantitative phase with 191 adolescents (males?=?54.45 %, females?=?45.55 %); age range: 14–18 years) from the same community aimed to ascertain the influences of personal attributes on self-aspirations. Participants completed the Expectations/Aspirations measure, the New General Self-Efficacy Scale, the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale and the Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support. Qualitative data were thematically analysed. Quantitative data were analysed using multiple regression. The findings revealed that self-efficacy, self-esteem and social support were the most critical factors influencing adolescents’ aspirations. Self-efficacy was a major determinant of life aspirations among the adolescents. Life skills programmes with youth from disadvantaged communities should seek to incorporate training aimed at developing adolescents’ self-efficacy.     

Cluster randomized trials with treatment noncompliance

Cluster randomized trials (CRTs) have been widely used in field experiments treating a cluster of individuals as the unit of randomization. This study focused particularly on situations where CRTs are accompanied by a common complication, namely, treatment noncompliance or, more generally, intervention nonadherence. In CRTs, compliance may be related not only to individual characteristics but also to the environment of clusters individuals belong to. Therefore, analyses ignoring the connection between compliance and clustering may not provide valid results. Although randomized field experiments often suffer from both noncompliance and clustering of the data, these features have been studied as separate rather than concurrent problems. On the basis of Monte Carlo simulations, this study demonstrated how clustering and noncompliance may affect statistical inferences and how these two complications can be accounted for simultaneously. In particular, the effect of the intervention on individuals who not only were assigned to active intervention but also abided by this intervention assignment (complier average causal effect) was the focus. For estimation of intervention effects considering noncompliance and data clustering, an ML-EM estimation method was employed.