Religious Attendance and Volunteering: Testing National Culture as a Boundary Condition

Numerous studies have documented the importance of religion, and especially of religious congregational attendance, in regard to volunteering. Most of these studies focus on individual and contextual factors, usually within one country. Recent studies suggest that the association between religious attendance and volunteering varies among countries. We hypothesize that national culture plays an important role in explaining volunteering mainly as a moderator of the relationship between religious attendance and volunteering, especially on volunteering to help people in need. To support this position, we used individual‐level data from the World Values Survey (WVS) coupled with national data on cultural measures. This enabled assessment of these relationships using a multilevel analysis of individuals nested in countries. We used two models of national culture, Hofstede (1984) and WVS to explain the differences between countries. We found direct relationships between national culture constructs (power distance and survival/self‐expression values) and volunteering. We also found that individualism, power distance, and survival/self‐expression values moderated the effect of religion on volunteering, with a stronger relationship between religious attendance and volunteering in nationalities with self‐expression values, high power distance, and low individualism. Theoretical and practical implications of this approach are discussed.     

Coping With Academic Problems: An Empirical Examination of Brickman et al.'s Models of Helping and Coping1

According to Brickman et al. (1982), people facing problems make attributions about responsibility for causing and for solving the problem. Four models of helping and coping emerge. The present investigation examined 2 key questions. First, do individuals assign responsibility exclusively to the person or external forces, or do they exhibit a pattern of distributing responsibility among several causes? And second, do the models provide superior explanatory power relative to the individual attributions? College students provided information about their assumptions about causes and solutions to their own academic problems. Students revealed all 3 patterns. Furthermore, those making self‐attributions of responsibility for solutions had higher grade point averages (GPAs) than did those making other attributions. Implications for the Brickman et al. analysis and framework are discussed.     

Influence of the penalty point system on driving behaviour: drivers' point of view

On July 1, 2006 a penalty point system was introduced in Spain. One year later, a reduction of 14.3% was observed in road traffic casualties, whilst the previous year that figure was 4.9%. A national telephone survey was conducted on a sample of 2.014 respondents to explore the drivers' point of view about the influence of the penalty point system on driving behaviour. Results point to a moderate behavioural change, mainly in relation to speeding and mobile phone misuse, this change being slightly more intense in drivers who were fined during the previous year. Awareness of road traffic accidents increased in around 40% of drivers. Lastly, mobility loss stands out as the most worrying and presumably most influential consequence of driving license loss.     

The shape of thought

When children learn the name of a novel object, they tend to extend that name to other objects similar in shape – a phenomenon referred to as the shape bias. Does the shape bias stem from learned associations between names and categories of objects, or does it derive from more general properties of children's understanding of language and the world? We argue here for the second alternative, presenting evidence that the shape bias emerges early in development, is not limited to names, and is intimately related to how children make sense of categories.     

The Implementation of Mindfulness‐Based,Trauma‐Informed Parent Education in an Underserved Latino Community: The Emergence of a Community Workforce

In this practice‐oriented program review, a mindfulness‐based, trauma‐informed parent intervention, called Safe, Secure and Loved? (SSL), designed to strengthen nurturing parenting and children's resilience, was implemented in an underserved Latino community. Across 5 years, a volunteer community workforce of promotoras transformed an academic–community research partnership into a community‐led program partnership and established sustainable agency parent education programming. To better understand this transformation, we used a modified implementation science (IS) framework to structure interviews from members of the academic–community research partnership. Findings suggest that the commitment and cultural expertise of the volunteer community workforce acted as the major leadership drivers to create the community‐led program partnership. Employing mindfulness‐based, trauma‐informed parent education designed to promote nurturing parenting and children's resilience may be an effective training model to engage and mobilize a volunteer community workforce from an underserved community.     

Abuse Experiences in a Community Sample of Young Adults: Relations with Psychiatric Disorders, Sexual Risk Behaviors, and Sexually Transmitted Diseases

This study documents significant associations among lifetime abuse experiences, psychiatric diagnoses, and sexual risk behaviors in a multiethnic community sample of young men and women (N = 1803) in South Florida. Self-report data were collected via structured interviews as part of a longitudinal follow-up of a larger school-based study. Participants were grouped according to extent of lifetime abuse experiences. Cumulative lifetime abuse experiences were associated with increased risk for a broad range of individual lifetime psychiatric disorders, as well as cumulative lifetime psychiatric disorders. Both cumulative abuse experiences and cumulative psychiatric disorders were independently associated with (a) higher levels of sexual risk behaviors and (b) higher risk for lifetime sexually transmitted diseases (STDs). Implications for selective prevention of sexual risk behaviors and STDs among young adults with histories of abuse and psychiatric disorders are discussed.     

A simple system for the remote detection and analysis of sniffing in explosives detection dogs

In this article, we describe a device that we have developed, for both research and operational purposes, to assist handlers of sniffer dogs and improve efficiency of search. The device transmits sounds from the dog’s muzzle area to a listener, enabling determination of whether the dog is actually sniffing during a search. Both the aural and the computerized sound analyses enable study of the dog’s sniffing behavior under a variety of situations. Correlation of these data with the visually monitored behavior of the working dog contributes additional and important information and leads to a greater under-standing of detector dogs’ behavior and abilities.     

Linguistic signatures of regulatory focus: how abstraction fits promotion more than prevention

In 3 experiments, the authors investigated how strategic inclinations associated with promotion versus prevention orientations--that is, eager approach versus vigilant avoidance, respectively--affect the use of language. It is hypothesized that eager promotion strategies used to attain desired end states entail using more abstract language than used with vigilant prevention strategies. This is shown to hold for experimentally induced relationship goals (Experiment 1) and communication goals (Experiment 2). In the 3rd experiment, the authors examined the impact of abstractly and concretely worded messages upon the behavioral intentions of chronically prevention- and promotion-oriented individuals and found support for the hypothesis that behavioral intentions to engage in specific activities are stronger when there is a fit between message wording and chronic orientation than when there is no fit. The broader implications of these findings are discussed.     

La evaluación de la escritura

Resumen

En este estudio se realiza una revisión de los sistemas de evaluación de la escritura y de estudios relacionados. Se comienza con una visión de conjunto de las dificultades principales en el estudio de la evaluación de la escritura, y de la importancia y utilidad que tiene un sistema de evaluación de la escritura en distintas áreas de conocimiento. Posteriormente se analiza cuál es el objeto de evaluación de los diferentes sistemas y qué medidas se utilizan en las investigaciones acerca de la escritura. A este respecto se expone un modelo del producto de la escritura que permite organizar, de modo prácticamente exhaustivo, las medidas del producto escrito. Tras resumir los requisitos, que según distintos autores debería cumplir cualquier sistema de evaluación de la escritura, se clasifican los sistemas de evaluación en base a si el objeto de análisis es el proceso o el producto de la escritura, definiendo sus características generales. A su vez, se exponen diferentes clasificaciones de los sistemas de evaluación del producto escrito, realizadas principalmente en función de la estrategia de evaluación. Esta revisión muestra la falta de acuerdo existente entre los diferentes autores respecto al objeto y el modo de evalución, así como a la terminología utilizada.