Recruiting Teen Smokers in Shopping Malls to a Smoking-Cessation Program Using the Foot-in-the-Door Technique

Persuading teen smokers to volunteer for smoking-cessation programs is a challenging yet understudied problem. As a method of dealing with this problem, we used and tested a foot-in-the-door (FITD) approach. Teen smokers were intercepted at malls and were assigned randomly to request compliance with a small behavior request of either (a) answering a few questions (light FITD) or (b) answering the same questions and a few additional ones, plus watching a short video about the effects of nicotine (heavy FITD). Participants were then called back by telephone several weeks later and asked to comply with a large behavior request of joining a cessation program that involved the use of self-help materials and telephone counseling. Although no differences were found in responses from the light and heavy groups, consent to enter the program was obtained from 12% of the pooled qualified intercepts and their parents (for those under 18 years). This recruitment rate was considered good, given that this is one of the only reported studies that recruited teen smokers from the general population to cessation programs.     

Migrant Well-Being is a Multilevel, Dynamic, Value Dependent Phenomenon

Research demonstrates that the well-being of migrants is a multilevel, dynamic, and value dependent phenomenon. It is multilevel because risk and protective factors are present at various ecological planes, from the individual to the social sphere. It is dynamic because objective and subjective risk and protective factors interact across ecological levels, creating favorable or unfavorable conditions for migrants to adjust to the new surroundings. Finally, it is value dependent because access to resources is conditioned by norms of justice prevalent in the host society. Findings from this special section on acculturation are combined with previous literature to support the three claims advanced in this article.     

Why indeterminate probability is rational

This essay has two objectives: (1) To offer a general motivation for the use of sets of probabilities to represent states of credal probability judgment. Doubt as to which of rival answers to a given question is true is representable by the set of potential answers that have not ruled out as impossible. Doubt concerning probability is representable by the set of probability distributions over potential answers that are not ruled out as impermissible to use in delibration. (2) To defend a more specific thesis that the set of permissible probability distributions ought to be convex.     

Undercutting and the Ramsey test for conditionals

There is an important class of conditionals whose assertibility conditions are not given by the Ramsey test but by an inductive extension of that test. Such inductive Ramsey conditionals fail to satisfy some of the core properties of plain conditionals. Associated principles of nonmonotonic inference should not be assumed to hold generally if interpretations in terms of induction or appeals to total evidence are not to be ruled out.     

Test Difficulty and Stereotype Threat on the GRE General Test1

This study investigated (a) the ability to minimize or eliminate stereotype threat by reducing the difficulty of items administered via a computer‐adaptive version of the Graduate Record Examinations General Test; and (b) the generalizability of these findings for Black students as well as women, and for verbal as well as quantitative sections of the test. Standard and easier versions of the test, and measures of stereotype threat and possible symptoms or sequelae of stereotype threat were administered to students bound for graduate school or already there. Reducing test difficulty did not have any differential effects on test performance or on explicit indexes of stereotype threat for White and Black students, and for men and women, that were statistically and practically significant. However, such effects did occur for some symptoms or sequelae, mainly for White students and women.