An introduction to association rule mining: An application in counseling and help-seeking behavior of adolescents

Association rule mining (ARM) is a technique used to discover relationships among a large set of variables in a data set. It has been applied to a variety of industry settings and disciplines but has, to date, not been widely used in the social sciences, especially in education, counseling, and associated disciplines. This article thus introduces ARM and presents aspects of existing work that will be relevant and useful to researchers practitioners in the social sciences. Definitions and concepts are presented, and examples of ARM applications are highlighted to strengthen these ideas. We also discuss an example from our existing research to show that ARM can be used to investigate help-seeking behavior in a sample of secondary school students in Singapore. We also present some guidelines and recommendations for using ARM.     

Teaching Engineering Ethics using BLOCKS Game

The aim of this study was to investigate the use of a newly developed design game called BLOCKS to stimulate awareness of ethical responsibilities amongst engineering students. The design game was played by seventeen teams of chemical engineering students, with each team having to arrange pieces of colored paper to produce two letters each. Before the end of the game, additional constraints were introduced to the teams such that they faced similar ambiguity in the technical facts that the engineers involved in the Challenger disaster had faced prior to the space shuttle launch. At this stage, the teams had to decide whether to continue with their original design or to develop alternative solutions. After the teams had made their decisions, a video of the Challenger explosion was shown followed by a post-game discussion. The students’ opinion on five Statements on ethics was tracked via a Five-Item Likert survey which was administered three times, before and after the ethical scenario was introduced, and after the video and post-game discussion. The results from this study indicated that the combination of the game and the real-life incident from the video had generally strengthened the students’ opinions of the Statements.     

Recognition memory for foreign language lexical stress

This study investigated whether English speakers retained the lexical stress patterns of newly learned Spanish words. Participants studied spoken Spanish words (e.g., DUcha [shower], ciuDAD [city]; stressed syllables in capital letters) and subsequently performed a recognition task, in which studied words were presented with the same lexical stress pattern (DUcha) or the opposite lexical stress pattern (CIUdad). Participants were able to discriminate same- from opposite-stress words, indicating that lexical stress was encoded and used in the recognition process. Word-form similarity to English also influenced outcomes, with Spanish cognate words and words with trochaic stress (MANgo) being recognized more often and more quickly than Spanish cognate words with iambic stress (soLAR) and noncognates. The results suggest that while segmental and suprasegmental features of the native language influence foreign word recognition, foreign lexical stress patterns are encoded and not discarded in memory.     

Language Difficulty at School Entry and the Trajectories of Hyperactivity-Inattention Problems from Ages 4 to 11: Evidence from a Population-Representative Cohort Study

Latent growth curve modelling was used to contrast the developmental trajectories of hyperactivity-inattention (H-I) problems across childhood for children with a language difficulty at the start of school and those with typical language and to examine if the presence of a language difficulty moderates the associations of child, parent and peer predictors with these trajectories. Unconditional and language-status conditional latent growth curves of H-I problems were estimated for a large nationally representative cohort of children, comprising 1627 boys (280 - language difficulty) and 1609 girls (159 - language difficulty) measured at age 4 to 5, 6 to 7, 8 to 9 and 10 to 11. Multiple regression tested interaction between language status and predictors of the level and slope of the trajectory of H-I problems. On average, boy’s H-I behaviours showed temporal stability while for girls H-I decreased over time with a slower rate of decrease with age. For both boys and girls, the levels of H-I problems were persistently elevated for those with a language difficulty compared to their peers. Neither the shape nor rate of change of H-I problems were associated with language status. Child sociability predicted the rate of growth in H-I for boys with a language difficulty but not for other boys. Child prosocial behaviours and parental psychological distress predicted the rate of growth in H-I for girls with a language difficulty but not for other girls. Parental hostility was associated with the rate of growth only for boys with typical language. The findings indicate that having a language difficulty at school entry is associated with persistently higher levels of H-I problems across childhood and moderates the rate of their growth in some circumstances.     

Untying tongues: negotiations and innovations of faith and gender among Malaysian Christian trans men

Although Malaysian trans men experience discrimination and stigmatisation, their vicissitudes are under-documented. This article uncovers the negotiations and innovations of Malaysian Christian trans men in relation to their Christian faith. By using Constructivist Grounded Theory Methodology to analyse and interpret selected narratives of four Christian trans men, and building on Jason Cromwell’s theoretical insistence on meaningful self-representation of trans people by trans people, this article discloses how trans men reconfigure these beliefs to affirm their gender nonconformity through three major strategies. First, trans men engage in the meaning-making of faith through an intimate relationship with God/Christ or ascribe some fortuitous event to divine intervention. Second, those who experience the love of God/Christ embark on a self-appointed mission to educate and radiate love, namely to those who are antagonistic towards gender nonconformity. Third, some trans men deem it necessary to challenge official Christian approaches and attitudes that pertain to gender variance and sexual diversity.     

When Social Perception Goes Wrong: Judging Targets’ Behavior toward Gay Versus Straight People

Accurate social perception depends on many factors, including the extent to which perceivers hold correct beliefs about how behaviors reflect the characteristic being judged. In Study 1, target participants recorded videos introducing themselves to either a gay or straight student who was ostensibly in another room. Unbeknownst to the targets, the other student was illusory and not real. Analysis of the targets’ videos revealed that they behaved more positively toward the gay than straight student. Two subsequent studies demonstrated that new perceivers were below chance in guessing the illusory student’s sexual orientation from watching the male targets’ behavior, presumably because they expected to see negative behavior toward the gay illusory student. The study documents processes whereby social perception can go awry.     

Distributional analyses in auditory lexical decision: Neighborhood density and word-frequency effects

In the present article, the effects of phonological neighborhood density and word frequency in spoken word recognition were examined using distributional analyses of response latencies in auditory lexical decision. A density × frequency interaction was observed in mean latencies; frequency effects were larger for low-density words than for high-density words. Distributional analyses further revealed that for low-density words, frequency effects were reflected in both distributional shifting and skewing, whereas for high-density words, frequency effects were purely mediated by distributional skewing. The results suggest that word frequency plays a role in early auditory word recognition only when there is relatively little competition between similar-sounding words, and that frequency effects in high-density words reflect postlexical checking.     

“You Must Follow Our Belief or Else You Can't Receive God”: Constructing a Sexual Bi/Theology of Eucharist

Embodied experiences and insights of LGBTQ persons can challenge and contradict grand metanarratives of sacramental theology that exclude and/or censure these persons. Through a theological investigation of the narratives of Vincent, a 26‐year old Malaysian, I examine the dynamics of his self‐identifying as bisexual and Roman Catholic in relation to his perception of the Eucharist. Drawing from his narratives and aided by the theologisings of Marcella Althaus‐Reid, Andrea Bieler and Luise Schottroff, I explore alternative ways in which the Eucharist can be imagined for LGBTQ Christians.     

Supportive supervisors improve employees' daily lives: The role supervisors play in the impact of daily workload on life satisfaction via work–family conflict

This article presents a multilevel approach that uncovers how day-to-day variations in workload influence life satisfaction by creating work–family conflict, as well as the role supportive supervisors play in influencing these daily relationships. In this experience-sampling study, 135 employees responded to 2 daily surveys (one at work and one at home) for 5 days and a one-time post-study survey. With a total of 810 surveys, hierarchical linear modeling revealed that employees' daily perceived workload positively predicted daily work–family conflict, which in turn negatively predicted daily life satisfaction. Importantly, we found support for a cross-level interaction where supervisor work–family specific support (measured once in the post-study survey) negatively moderated the relationship between daily workload and work–family conflict, attesting the importance of supervisory support in reducing daily interference between work and family.