M > 1

Increasingly, communication experiments are incorporating replication/actors for the purpose of controlling confounds and increasing generalizability. If replications are considered to be samples of possible treatment implementations, treating the replication factor as random is more appropriate than treating it as fixed. Study 1 shows that treating sampled replications as a fixed effect leads to potentially serious alpha inflation in the test of the treatment effect while treating sampled replications as random controls alpha at its nominal level. Study 2 addresses a common objection to treating replications as random: the argument that to do so will lead to unacceptably low power in statistical testing. Although experiments with very few replications are likely to be deficient in power, the results of Study 2 establish that power can be improved to an unexpected degree by a relatively modest increase in the number of replications.     

暴食症的影响因素及其机制

暴食症表现为反复发作的暴饮暴食症状, 并伴随着强烈的沮丧感, 个体在进食时通常感觉失去控制, 进食大量食物。暴食行为受到应激、负性情绪、冲动性人格、身体不满意与限制性进食以及父母的喂养方式影响。关于暴食症发生和维持的理论模型主要有情感调节理论、食物成瘾模型、人际关系模型以及完美主义模型。未来要进一步探究影响暴食的因素, 完善暴食症的理论模型, 运用脑成像等技术深入研究暴食症的认知神经机制并加强对暴食症的干预与治疗研究。     

Low Subjective Social Status Promotes Ruminative Coping1

Correlational research has shown that lower social standing is associated with poorer health, but it is unknown if this association is causal. Two experiments tested whether randomly assigned low subjective social status would promote ruminative coping, a mechanism leading to the development of poor health outcomes. Participants were college females, split about evenly between Blacks and Whites. Experiment 1 (N = 39) found those imagining themselves at the bottom (vs. top) of a social ladder showed more ruminative coping using rater‐assessed responses. Experiment 2 (N = 42) replicated these results, extended them with a self‐report outcome measure, and demonstrated that negative affect did not mediate between subjective social status and ruminative coping. Across both experiments, race/ethnicity had no effect.     

THE INFLUENCE OF RELATIONAL DEMOGRAPHY ON PANEL INTERVIEW RATINGS: A FIELD EXPERIMENT

The influence of relational demography (assessor race, candidate race, and the racial composition of rating panels) was examined in a structured interview setting. Twenty assessors (10 White and 10 Black) comprising five, 4-person panels of all possible racial compositions, evaluated videotaped responses of police officers participating in a promotion process. Each panel rated the same 73 (36 White and 37 Black) candidates' responses to a complex, structured interview question. An examination of mean overall ratings revealed a same race bias and a significant difference between panels based upon the relational demography of the interview panel; nevertheless, the size of these effects was small. Net reconciliation (i.e., between initial and final scores) differed significantly between minority and majority panel conditions for only Black assessors and, again, the effects here were very small. The practical implications of these findings are discussed.     

Reflexive Ecclesiology: A Challenge to Applied Research in Religious Organizations

This essay addresses the issue of applied research in, on, and for religious organizations, especially trends in how research has been carried out in relation to religious organizations. It asks how applied research has changed, and what are the implications for the larger field of social scientific research. The essay begins with some general comments about the challenges that face religious organizations in a post‐traditional world that require reflexive monitoring of their traditions and ecclesial practices if these organizations are to survive and engage the future in a significant way. Applied research is defined as one form of reflexive monitoring and includes both (1) research commissioned by leaders of religious organization as an aid for understanding a particular situation or shaping policy or programs, and (2) research that, though not commissioned by religious organizations, has as its primary intent providing religious organizations with policy‐relevant information. Using this definition, the essay then traces trends in applied research from the earlier part of the twentieth century to the present, focusing especially on the past fifty years. It concludes with an assessment of these research efforts as examples of reflexive monitoring.     

Issue-Event Extensions and Interaction Involvement Text-Based and Meaning-Based Discourse Strategies

Prior research focusing on textual features in the talk of high and low-involved speakers has characterized the discourse strategy of low-involved speakers as text-based and that of high-involved speakers as meaning-based. This study examined the extensions of issue-event structures by high-involved and low-involved participants to determine if this characterization of discourse strategies held on a pragmatic level as well. Results indicated that low-involved communicators extended the event significantly more directly than high-involved communicators. Furthermore, the issue extensions of low-involved communicators were shown to be more sensitive to the comprehensibitity and information value of the stimulus utterance than the issue extensions of high-involved communicators. The results confirm that low-involved communicators have more difficulty than high-involved communicators in responding to the flow of conversation and that low-involved communicators compensate by relying on a text-based discourse strategy.