Lifetime and 12‐Month Nonsuicidal Self‐Injury and Academic Performance in College Freshmen

We examined whether nonsuicidal self‐injury (NSSI) is associated with academic performance in college freshmen, using census‐based web surveys (N = 7,527; response = 65.4%). NSSI was assessed with items from the Self‐Injurious Thoughts and Behaviors Interview and subsequently linked with the administratively recorded academic year percentage (AYP). Freshmen with lifetime and 12‐month NSSI showed a reduction in AYP of 3.4% and 5.9%, respectively. The college environment was found to moderate the effect of 12‐month NSSI, with more strongly reduced AYPs in departments with higher‐than‐average mean departmental AYPs. The findings suggest that overall stress and test anxiety are underlying processes between NSSI membership and academic performance.     

Fahrenheit 9‐11, Need for Closure and the Priming of Affective Ambivalence: An Assessment of Intra‐affective Structures by Party Identification

This study extends priming research in political communication by focusing on an alternative political information source (i.e., Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9‐11), affect rather than cognitions, and the existence of intra‐affective ambivalence. In addition, two moderator variables are analyzed: political party identification and need for closure. There is a statically significant three‐way interaction between the viewing of F 9‐11, political party identification, and need for closure relative to the dependent variable of affective ambivalence toward George W. Bush. High need for closure Republicans who viewed F 9‐11 exhibited pronounced levels of Bush‐affective ambivalence. In addition, high need for closure Independents who viewed F 9‐11 exhibited far lower ambivalence toward Bush relative to their control group peers. The findings are discussed relative to the roles performed by emerging alternative political media and the expansion of the theory of priming within the context of political communication.     

African-American Male Academies: A Positive View

African-American male academies are advocated to promote the positive academic and holistic development of an endangered segment of our society—the young African-American male.     

National Suicide Rates a Century after Durkheim: Do We Know Enough to Estimate Error?

Durkheim's nineteenth‐century analysis of national suicide rates dismissed prior concerns about mortality data fidelity. Over the intervening century, however, evidence documenting various types of error in suicide data has only mounted, and surprising levels of such error continue to be routinely uncovered. Yet the annual suicide rate remains the most widely used population‐level suicide metric today. After reviewing the unique sources of bias incurred during stages of suicide data collection and concatenation, we propose a model designed to uniformly estimate error in future studies. A standardized method of error estimation uniformly applied to mortality data could produce data capable of promoting high quality analyses of cross‐national research questions.