The Influence of Holland's Vocational Interests on Work-Family Conflict: An Exploratory Analysis

Drawing on a sample of 438 working professionals from various organizations across the central United States, the authors investigated the relationship between Holland's (1959, 1997) RIASEC (Realistic, Investigative, Artistic, Social, Enterprising, Conventional) model and employee perceptions of work-family conflict. Results revealed that the RIASEC model contributed unique variance in predicting work-family conflict beyond demographic characteristics and the Big Five personality constructs. The RIASEC interests were found to be associated with different dimensions of work-family conflict. These results signal that vocational interests may influence not only work-related attitudes and behaviors (e.g., job satisfaction, performance), but also one's ability to balance work and family demands.     

How Far Have we Come? An Integrative Review of the Current Literature on Sense of Community and Well-being

Sense of community and well-being are considered core tenets in the field of community psychology, acting as focal points for theory, research, and action. This integrative review synthesizes the empirical literature on sense of community and well-being with respect to four research questions focused on the relationships between these variables, the methodologies used to study those relationships, and how future research might expand upon the current literature. A search of the available literature produced 30 articles that met the search criteria, based primarily on conceptualizations and measurement of both sense of community and hedonic and eudaimonic well-being. This review suggests a general consensus across the literature of a positive relationship between sense of community and well-being among both youth and adults in a variety of settings, and discusses the strengths and limitations of this area of research, pointing to the need for more nuanced, ecologically valid research that incorporates more qualitative and critical methodologies. We hope that this review can promote a more thorough understanding of how sense of community and individual well-being relate to each other, and that ongoing research in this area can be a catalyst for action research and interventions that are applied to pressing contemporary issues as well as strengths-based approaches focused on how to foster and support the well-being of individuals within their community contexts.     

Relationship between poverty and health among adolescents

Although the effect of low socioeconomic status on the health of adolescents has been documented, the mechanism by which this occurs is not well understood. Furthermore, improving adolescent health through public health policy typically requires the presence of one or more modifiable risk factors which can be targeted for intervention. In spite of the well-documented negative associations between poverty and health, few modifiable risk factors have been identified. This study used the Evans-Stoddart Model of Health and Well-Being as a framework to examine data on 1,759 adolescents, aged 12 to 19, collected as part of the 1994 National Population Health Survey. Results not only confirm the relationship between income and health, but suggest how the pathway operates through the social environment, lifestyle differences, access to health care, and a reduced sense of self-esteem and self-mastery. Bivariate and multivariate analyses found positive associations between physical activity levels and self-esteem and mastery. We interpret these findings as preliminary evidence that it might be possible to buffer the impact of poverty on health through policies which increase physical activity levels among those living in poverty. Such policies could also include a secondary goal of increasing the activity levels among inactive adolescents who are not living in poverty, as they will derive benefits from this increase, both psychologically and physiologically.     

Specificity of the MMPI-2 Fake Bad Scale as a marker for personal injury malingering

Psychologists who evaluate patients in medicolegal contexts should utilize objective assessment data with empirically established sensitivity and specificity for identifying negative response bias. The purpose of this study was to investigate the specificity of the Fake Bad Scale for identifying negative response bias in personal injury claimants. The cutoff scores proposed by Lees-Haley and colleagues were applied a federal prison, medical outpatients, and patients from to inmate volunteers from substance abuse unit. Half of the inmates were given instructions to malinger psychopathology to affect the adjudication process, and the remaining inmates and all of the hospital patients were given standard instructions. The original cutoff scores correctly identified the majority of inmates instructed to malinger psychopathology, but these scores resulted in unacceptably high rates of false positive classifications. The revised cutoff scores resulted in fewer false positives, i.e., 8%-24%.     

Perceptions of another person's heavy drinking as a function of one's relationship to the drinker a pilot study

Of 301 participants in a telephone survey, 201 could identify a problem drinker within their social networks. In 67 cases the drinker was a partner, in 45 another family member, in 61 a friend, and in 28 a work colleague. Another person's heavy drinking was reported as most disrupting to one's life when that person was a partner or other family member or if one was living in the same residence as the drinker. The exception to this was that reported disruption to respondents' work life was greatest when the drinker was a work colleague. While there appear to be problems for friends and work colleagues, partners and other family members appear to report the most disruption so providing services to family members seems appropriate.     

Perceptual assignment of opacity to translucent surfaces: the role of image blur

In constructing the percept of transparency, the visual system must decompose the light intensity at each image location into two components one for the partially transmissivc surface, the other for the underlying surface seen through it. Theories of perceptual transparency have typically assumed that this decomposition is defined quantitatively in terms of the inverse of some physical model (typically, Metelli's 'episcotister model'). In previous work, we demonstrated that the visual system uses Michelson contrast as a critical image variable in assigning transmittance to transparent surfaces not luminance differences as predicted by Metelli's model [F Metelli, 1974 Scientific American 230(4) 90 98]. In this paper, we study the contribution of another variable in determining perceived transmittance, namely, the image blur introduced by the light-scattering properties of translucent surfaces and materials. Experiment 1 demonstrates that increasing the degree of blur in the region of transparency leads to a lowering in perceived transmittance, even if Michelson contrast remains constant in this region. Experiment 2 tests how this addition of blur affects apparent contrast in the absence of perceived transparency. The results demonstrate that, although introducing blur leads to a lowering in apparent contrast, the magnitude of this decrease is relatively small, and not sufficient to explain the decrease in perceived transmittance observed in experiment 1. The visual system thus takes the presence of blur in the region of transparency as an additional image cue in assigning transmittance to partially transmissive surfaces.     

On the relation between maternal state of mind and sensitivity in the prediction of infant attachment security

Attachment theorists assume that maternal mental representations influence responsivity, which influences infant attachment security. However, primary studies do not support this mediation model. The authors tested mediation using 2 mother-infant samples and found no evidence of mediation. Therefore, the authors explored sensitivity as a moderator, studying the (a) interaction of mental representation and sensitivity as it predicts infant attachment security and (b) level of sensitivity in mothers whose infants' attachment security is either concordant or discordant with their own. The interactional analyses were not significant. But the match-mismatch data showed that when mother-infant attachment strategies were discordant, maternal sensitivity was more consistent with infant than maternal attachment strategy. These findings are congruent with an interpretation of sensitivity as a moderator that can block transmission of attachment strategy.     

Validity and reliability of the audit and CAGE-AID in Northern Plains American Indians

According to the Indian Health Service, substance abuse and Type 2 diabetes are serious problems among Native Americans. To assess substance use in a medical setting, valid screening tests are needed so the Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test (AUDIT), a simple brief screen for excessive drinking, and the CAGE-adapted to Include Drugs (CAGE-AID) for identifying primary care patients with alcohol and drug disorders were given 50 Northern Plains American Indians with diabetes. Both are short, easy to administer, have good sensitivity and specificity, and can be easily incorporated into a medical history protocol or intake procedure. Reliability coefficients were above .90 and appeared to have sufficient concurrent and divergent validity indicated by moderate correlations with the General Well-being Schedule (rs=-.39 and -.36), the Family-Adaptation, Partnership, Growth, Affection, & Resolve (r =-.47 and -.36), and the Beck Depression Inventory-IT (r = .36 and .29).