Toward a Model Informed Consent Process for BRCA1 Testing: A Qualitative Assessment of Women's Attitudes

As an initial part of a project to develop a model informed consent process for BRCA1 testing, we conducted a series of focus groups. At the groups, women initially expressed great interest in testing, but their interest diminished after learning more. If offered testing, women would most want to learn about test accuracy, practical details of testing, and management options if the result was positive. Perceived benefits of testing included gaining information leading to risk reduction, relief of uncertainty, more responsible parenting, and assisting in research. Perceived risks included the discomfort and cost of the testing process itself, and anxiety after a positive result. The risk of possible insurance discrimination was rarely mentioned spontaneously. Many women would want their providers to make recommendations, rather than be nondirective about testing. We observed that women vary greatly in their informational and counseling needs, and suggest that the informed consent process should be individualized, taking into account a woman's perception and her preferences for how testing decisions should be made.     

Relationships Between Psychological Androgyny, Social Conformity, and Perceived Locus of Control

The decisions and attitudes of sex-stereotyped and androgynous individuals (as defined by the Bem Sex Role Inventory) were compared in a social conformity paradigm and on two measures of locus of control. Stereotypic females conformed significantly more often than androgynous females and stereotypic males (N = 30 per group). In response to a post-experimental questionnaire, stereotypic females indicated that they had been the most influenced, whereas androgynous females reported the least amount of influence from others. Data from the Personal Opinion Survey developed by Coan, Hanson, and Dobyns (1972) showed that androgynous females were reliably more internal in locus of control than stereotypic females on six of the seven factors. Implications of these data are discussed with regard to traditional effects of sex in the social conformity and locus of control literature.     

Motivating safety belt use at a community hospital: An effective integration of incentive and commitment strategies

An effective hospital-based safety-belt program incorporated several advantages over prior attempts to increase safety belt use, including (a) the use of indigenous staff as program sponsors, coordinators, and delivery agents; (b) a yearlong program evaluation; and (c) a combination of extrinsic incentives and intrinsic commitment. To be eligible for a weekly $5, employees met the following contingencies: (a) signed a pledge card; (b) displayed the signed pledge card in their vehicle; and (c) wore a safety belt. Overall, belt use increased from a 2-week baseline mean of 15.6% to 34.7% during the 6-month intervention, and decreased to 25.6% at withdrawal. For the pledge card signers (n = 188) and the nonsigners (n = 533), belt use increased from baseline means of 29.4% and 11.8% to intervention use rates of 75.1 and 17.7%, respectively. Withdrawal and 4-month follow-up use rates were 56.0% and 44.9% for the Pledge group, and 17.2% and 22.1% for the Nonpledge group.     

Engineering technology and behavior analysis for interdisciplinary environmental protection

Engineering strategies for saving environmental resources have been widespread. However, many of those engineering advances have not been widely accepted nor generally applied by large segments of the general population. This paper considers the need to examine behavioral/environmental variables in the application of engineering technology, with particular reference to specific behavioral strategies for encouraging the use of engineering technology from an interdisciplinary perspective. A model for the study of factors contributing to the solution of ecological/environmental problems is presented and examples of interdisciplinary research are described. The model implies a need for the examination of the effects of antecedent and consequent manipulation of a variety of variables including: behavioral, physiological, environmental, technical and legal conditions. It is concluded that while interdisciplinary research efforts between engineering technologists and behavioral analysts are necessary, they have not received sufficient attention in the literature nor have they focused on the comprehensive study of antecedents and consequences as they relate to ecological/environmental problems. Thus, an extended "family" of research efforts is important for the success of these efforts.     

Prompting safety belt use: comparative impact on the target behavior and relevant body language

ResearcherS used two behavioral prompts to compare increases in safety belt use: a Click It or Ticket prompt or a Flash-for-Life prompt. Participants were 1,822 unbuckled drivers exiting two student parking lots of a large university. Research assistants identified unbuckled drivers, flashed one of the two prompts, and recorded whether drivers buckled after the prompt and the drivers' facial expressions and hand gestures. Findings and implications are discussed.     

The impact of help seeking on individual task performance: the moderating effect of help seekers' logics of action

Drawing from achievement-goal theory and the social psychological literature on help seeking, we propose that it is the variance in the logic underpinning employees' help seeking that explains divergent findings regarding the relationship between help seeking and task performance. Using a sample of 110 newly hired customer contact employees, a prospective study design, and archival performance data, we found no evidence of a hypothesized main effect of help seeking on performance. However, we did find that the help seeking-performance relationship was conditioned by the degree to which help seekers endorse 2 alternative help-seeking logics (autonomous vs. dependent logic) such that the level of help seeking is more strongly related to performance among those either more strongly endorsing an autonomous help-seeking logic or more weakly endorsing a dependent help-seeking logic.