Stop With the Questions Already! Does Data Quality Suffer for Scales Positioned Near the End of a Lengthy Questionnaire?

Research questionnaires frequently include dozens—if not hundreds—of self-report items. Lengthy questionnaires, however, are often a necessity. In some cases, they are needed to assess the many variables found in a complex model; in other cases, they are the result of the inclusion of a single lengthy measure. This raises an important question: Do participants provide accurate responses to measures positioned at the end of a lengthy questionnaire? One possibility is that participants experience fatigue during questionnaire completion, leading them to engage in careless responding, and thus compromising the accuracy of their responses. Another possibility is that even the longest research questionnaires are generally too short to evoke participant fatigue. This latter possibility suggests that participants are largely able to maintain their attention while completing most questionnaires. Given the lack of clarity on this issue, we conducted two experiments (Study 1 N = 244; Study 2 N = 461) in which we randomly assigned each participant to complete a block of target scales at either the beginning or the end of a lengthy (> 300-item) questionnaire. Each participant also recruited an informant who provided reports of the participant’s personality, attitudes, and behaviors. These informant data allowed us to examine the effects of the experimental manipulation on the target scales’ convergent and criterion-related validity. The findings of both studies indicated that the target scales performed similarly across the two conditions. Given the ubiquity of lengthy questionnaires, these findings have far-reaching practical implications.

     

Parenting Adolescents with ADHD: Maternal and Adolescent Contributions and the Intervening Role of Stress

Journal of Child and Family Studies - Compared to parents of typically developing youth, parents of children and adolescents with ADHD tend to engage in fewer positive and more negative parenting...     

Closing the Gap in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Youth Suicide: A Social–Emotional Wellbeing Service Innovation Project

Objective

The suicide rate for Queensland's Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander young people is over four times that of their non‐Indigenous counterparts, with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children (under 15) dying by suicide at 12 times the non‐Indigenous rate. There is a need for interventions that are culturally validated and community‐endorsed. The aim of this article is to describe the design and implementation of a group‐based intervention, as well to report the results of the various qualitative and quantitative measures.

Method

Sixty‐one Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander persons aged 11–21 years completed a social–emotional wellbeing (SEWB) program at headspace Inala. Data were available through to 2‐month follow‐up for 49 participants. The program was designed and delivered in collaboration with the local Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community.

Results

There was a statistically significant decrease in suicidal ideation experienced by the participants after completing the program. Qualitative measures indicated that participants experienced improved understanding of holistic health and an increased number of coping skills.

Conclusions

Not only was this the first evaluated intervention in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander youth to ever report a decrease in individual suicidality, the program was carefully designed and implemented in consultation with community in a culturally sensitive manner and thus provides an invaluable framework for future SEWB work.     

Avoiding the Last Ride: Can DUI Programming Address Multiple Risk Factors to Reduce Recidivism?

A review of DUI education literature reveals weak evidence of effective interventions. New models are suggested that offer a combination of psychoeducation and evidence‐based counseling approaches. Existing DUI programming models are explored with recommendations for areas for future research.     

How to Retain Real Estate Sales People: What Things Work

Abstract

This study examines the residential real estate salesperson as one population and the real estate sales manager as a second population in an effort to identify those rewards important to successful sales and career development, as well as retention. Indepth interviews were conducted in order to provide more reliable results for this career field. It was determined that the management of real estate salespeople can be improved by focusing upon selection procedures as well as by developing a greater identification of the salesperson with the firm.     

Qualitative similarities in the visual short-term memory of pigeons and people

Visual short-term memory plays a key role in guiding behavior, and individual differences in visual short-term memory capacity are strongly predictive of higher cognitive abilities. To provide a broader evolutionary context for understanding this memory system, we directly compared the behavior of pigeons and humans on a change detection task. Although pigeons had a lower storage capacity and a higher lapse rate than humans, both species stored multiple items in short-term memory and conformed to the same basic performance model. Thus, despite their very different evolutionary histories and neural architectures, pigeons and humans have functionally similar visual short-term memory systems, suggesting that the functional properties of visual short-term memory are subject to similar selective pressures across these distant species.     

Clark’s nutcrackers (<Emphasis Type="Italic">Nucifraga columbiana</Emphasis>) use gestures to identify the location of hidden food

Heterospecific cues, such as gaze direction and body position, may be an important source of information that an animal can use to infer the location of resources like food. The use of heterospecific cues has been largely investigated using primates, dogs, and other mammals; less is known about whether birds can also use heterospecific gestures. We tested six Clark’s nutcrackers in a two-way object-choice task using touch, point, and gaze cues to investigate whether these birds can use human gestures to find food. Most of the birds were able to use a touch gesture during the first trial of testing and were able to learn to use point and gaze (eyes and head alternation) cues after a limited number of trials. This study is the first to test a non-social corvid on the object-choice task. The performance of non-social nutcrackers is similar to that of more social and related corvids, suggesting that species with different evolutionary histories can utilize gestural information.     

How the adoption of impression management goals alters impression formation

Five experiments (N = 390) tested the hypothesis that adopting an impression management goal leads the impression manager to view an interaction partner as having less of the trait he or she is attempting to express. This hypothesis was confirmed for the impression management goals of appearing introverted, extraverted, smart, confident, and happy. Experiment 2 shows that adoption of the impression goal could alter judgments even when participants could not act on the goal. Experiment 3 provides evidence that adopting an impression management goal prompted a comparison mind-set and that this comparison mind-set activation mediated target judgments. Experiment 4 rules out a potential alternative explanation and provides more direct evidence that comparison of the impression manager's self-concept mediates the impression of the target. Experiment 5 eliminates a potential confound and extends the effect to another impression goal. These experiments highlight the dynamic interplay between impression management and impression formation.