Nonstandard Work Arrangements among Women and Men Scientists and Engineers

This paper draws on a sample of 48,444 scientists and engineers in the United States to analyze nonstandard work arrangements among women and men, 8,773 of whom worked in such arrangements. With few exceptions, women were overrepresented in these arrangements and particularly in those characterized by lower wages and benefits, but their overrepresentation in the worst arrangements failed to explain the gender pay gap. Unlike in the general labor force where “equality at the bottom” tends to prevail, the gender pay gap in science and engineering is greater in the worst nonstandard work arrangements than in the best, and gender equality is greater in the best arrangements than in the worst, possibly because of a selection effect.     

The relation between off-job recovery and job resources: person-level differences and day-level dynamics

It is well-known that recovery from work and job resources can counteract negative effects of high job demands, but less is known about how off-job recovery and job resources are related to each other. In this two-level daily diary study, 67 employees filled out daily surveys over the course of 8 days to examine this issue. Consistent with our expectations, multilevel analyses revealed that previous day’s detachment from work is positively related to the state of being recovered before going to work, and that the state of being recovered is positively related to one’s level of job resources. Moreover, the results indicated that both person-level differences and day-level dynamics play a role in these relations. Our study highlights the importance of recovering from work in the sense that it does not only help individuals by repairing negative strain effects but can also function as a catalyst in the activation of job resources.     

Predicting black and white differential item functioning in verbal analogy performance

Differential item functioning (DIF) is one technique for comparing ethnic populations that test makers employ to help ensure the fairness of their tests. The purpose of this ethnic comparison study is to investigate factors that may have a significant influence on DIF values associated with 217 SAT and 234 GRE analogy items obtained by comparing large samples of Black and White examinees matched for total verbal score. In one study, five significant regression predictors of ethnic differences were found to account for approximately 30% of the DIF variance. A second study replicated these findings. These significant ethnic comparisons are interpreted as consistent with a cultural/contextualist framework although competing explanations involving social-economic status and biological contributions could not be ruled out. Practical implications are discussed.     

A mediational model of power, affiliation and achievement motives and product involvement

A model based on McClelland's theory of human motivation was proposed in which motive incentives mediated the relationship between motive level (n Power, n Affiliation and n Achievement) and product involvement. This hypothesis was tested with 142 college students. Results indicate that power motive incentives successfully mediated the relationship between power motive level and product involvement for the expensive car and interview clothing conditions. Affiliation motive incentives mediated the relationship between affiliation motive level and involvement for greeting cards but not gifts. The two achievement products (scientific calculator and computer manual) failed to meet most of the criteria for mediation.Laura Schmidt is a psychology doctoral student and Irene Frieze is a professor of psychology and business administration at the University of Pittsburgh. This paper was based on the Master's thesis of the first author.We would like to thank S. Golin and Audrey Murrell for their helpful suggestions on this project.     

On the Algebraizability of Annotated Logics

Annotated logics were introduced by V.S. Subrahmanian as logical foundations for computer programming. One of the difficulties of these systems from the logical point of view is that they are not structural, i.e., their consequence relations are not closed under substitutions. In this paper we give systems of annotated logics that are equivalent to those of Subrahmanian in the sense that everything provable in one type of system has a translation that is provable in the other. Moreover these new systems are structural. We prove that these systems are weakly congruential, namely, they have an infinite system of congruence 1-formulas. Moreover, we prove that an annotated logic is algebraizable (i.e., it has a finite system of congruence formulas,) if and only if the lattice of annotation constants is finite.     

Political Attitudes and the Vietnam War: A Study of College-Educated Men of the Vietnam Generation1

Groups of Vietnam veterans (n= 52), Vietnam era veterans (n= 77), and nonveterans (n= 249), all of whom had graduated from an Ivy League university in 1966, were compared in terms of their retrospectively reported general political orientation in 1966 and their current orientation and specific political attitudes in 1990–1991. The Vietnam veterans rated themselves as being more conservative than the nonveterans on political orientation and on specific political issues in 1990–1991. The Vietnam-era veterans tended to take an intermediate position politically between the other two groups. Controlling for retrospective political orientation in 1966, intensity of military experience predicted more ideological conservatism and more support for the war against Iraq, as well as a more conservative position on a number of specific political issues of current interest. Results are consistent with the idea that critical experiences in young adulthood, namely military service in Vietnam, may affect political attitudes over many years.     

Convergence of clinically derived diagnoses and parent checklists among inpatient children

The extent to which parent rating scales differentiated children according to DSM III diagnoses was examined. A total of 113 psychiatric inpatient boys (ages 6–11) were rated by their mothers or maternal figures on the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL) and the Behavior Problem Checklist (BPC). Children with DSM III diagnoses of conduct disorder or depression were compared to children without these diagnoses. Externalizing and internalizing scales of the parent checklists and additional measures of child aggression and depression differentiated children according to major diagnoses. The use of parent checklists to classify children indicated a high level of sensitivity for both CBCL and BPC scales for diagnosing conduct disorder and depression. However, specificity of the subscales, particularly for the CBCL, was relatively low, indicating a high rate of false positives. The need for further work that extends the range of diagnosis, that examines subtypes of disorders, and that increases the specificity of the measures for diagnostic purposes is discussed.Completion of this project was supported by a Research Scientist Development Award (MH00353) and a grant (MH35408) from the National Institute of Mental Health, and by a Clinical Research Center Grant for the Study of Affective Disorders (5 P50 MH30915) from the National Institute of Mental Health. The authors are grateful to Elaine Meyer, Karen Esveldt-Dawson, Antoinette Rodgers, and the clinical research team and staff of the Child Psychiatric Treatment Service.     

Studies of mood and humor appreciation

A total of 189 students in two studies rated jokes on funniness and several other scales after rating their own mood on the Nowlis-Green Mood Adjective Check List. Subjects in Experiment 1 gave a second and third set of mood ratings after their joke-funniness ratings. Three mood factors—surgency, elation, and vigor—reliably predicted joke appreciation in both studies. More tentative evidence linked humor appreciation to concentration, social affection, excitement, freedom, and (lack of) fatigue, but humor appeared independent of aggression, anxiety, tension, and inhibition. Relationships among joke-scale ratings were highly similar for subjects reporting relatively positive moods and those reporting more negative moods. Results were discussed with reference to several humor theories.The authors would like to thank Carol Pierce, Marguerite Ponder, and Ron Fox for their help with this research.