Changes in Fear of AIDS and Homophobia in a University Population

A survey measuring attitudes toward fear of AIDS and homophobia, taken in the fall of 1985, was repeated in the fall of 1989 on the same university population. The results indicated that whereas fear of AIDS decreased, the degree of homophobia remained essentially unchanged. In addition, although respondents were much more knowledgeable about AIDS in 1989 than in 1985, there was no evidence of any change in the relatively high correlation between the fear of AIDS and homophobia.     

Life Tasks and Daily Life Experience

ABSTRACT This article explores the assumption that the goals on which an individual works structure the experience of daily life. One set of important goals are those consensual tasks that reflect the age-graded expectations of a living environment (e.g., the task of being on one's own at college). Whereas most members of a common age group share these consensual life tasks, individuals in a group differ in the relative importance they place on different tasks and in their appraisals of them. In the present study of 54 women living in a college sorority, the importance of a life task was associated with increased relevance of the task to daily life events, as revealed in experience sampling. The women were more emotionally involved in events that they saw as highly relevant to their life tasks than in less relevant events and, for each person, positive affect and emotional involvement in task-relevant events were related to her initial life task appraisals.     

Behavioral contrast and generalization across settings in the treatment of autistic children

Previous research on the generalization of treatment gains across settings has typically focused on the question of whether generalization occurs or does not occur. However, the experimental literature suggests another possibility: that behavioral contrast may occur in extra-therapy settings if the reinforcement procedures in the therapy setting are highly discriminable from those in other settings. Therefore, this investigation was designed to systematically assess whether: (1) a highly discriminable treatment procedure in one setting would produce a behavioral contrast effect in other unmanipulated settings; and (2) such contrast-like trends could be eliminated if initially different reinforcement procedures in two settings were subsequently made similar. The results for the eight autistic children who participated in this investigation showed that: (1) When very different reinforcement procedures (primary rewards or punishment in therapy settings, and no rewards or punishment in extra-therapy settings) were in effect, the children showed contrast-like behavior changes in the untreated extra-therapy settings; and (2) such trends in responding could be eliminated, resulting in generalization of treatment gains, if the reinforcement procedures were subsequently made relatively similar in the two settings, even if the procedures consisted essentially of noncontingent reinforcement.     

Teaching preschoolers to avoid abduction by strangers: Evaluation of maintenance strategies

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the use of effective training procedures for teaching preschoolers to avoid abduction by strangers and to evaluate strategies to promote maintenance of the acquired skills. The study was conducted in three Head Start classrooms with a total of 46 children. A multiple probe design across groups within each class and replicated across the three classrooms was used to evaluate two strategies for promoting maintenance: (a) monthly reviews involving verbal rehearsal, modeling, and feedback; and (b) monthly reviews involving verbal rehearsal, modeling, feedback, and in-class role play. The findings of the study indicate: (a) classroom teachers implemented the training procedures with a high degree of procedural fidelity, (b) all children were taught to resist the lures of strangers, (c) children maintained the critical abduction avoidance behavior (moving away from a stranger) while the maintenance promotion strategies were used, and (d) minimal differences were noted in the effectiveness of the two maintenance promotion strategies for the critical abduction avoidance behavior.     

Teenagers and illicit drug use—expanding the ‘user vs non-user’ dichotomy

The present study examines proximal and distal factors associated with the use and non-use of illegal substances within a sample of 860 teenagers in North Wales. Arguing that there is predictive utility in expanding the traditional ‘users vs non-users’ design dichotomy, four groups are identified — resistant and vulnerable non-users and experimental and repeated users. ‘Person’ variables (life satisfaction, deviance, hopelessness and drug-related attributions) appeared to primarily differentiate the vulnerable group from their resistant counterparts and identify this, as yet non-using group, with user samples. It is suggested that these variables might represent ‘risk’ factors for illicit substance use and that the group design employed suggests they precede, rather than follow as a consequence of, illicit drug use. Like their resistant counterparts however, the vulnerable group are differentiated from user samples on some lifestyle and context indices. It is argued that these represent ‘protective’ influences in an otherwise at-risk group of non-users. Variables associated with an escalation of illicit drug use are discussed in considering the differences between the experimental and repeated user groups. Apart from the more proximal factor of drug-related attributions, ‘person’ variables appeared less involved here. Repeated users did however, tend to use a greater number of drugs, have a greater proportion of friends who also used illegal substances and significantly fewer had a Welsh cultural identity.     

Innovations in Family Support: What Are We Learning?

As family support programs develop across the United States through grassroots efforts by families, state demonstration projects, and local initiatives, new opportunities have become available to examine the experiences of families with service delivery systems. In this study, the research team examined key principles of innovative family support and their effects on families with children at high risk for out-of-home placements. The research team used a multi-case study design with indepth participant observation and semi-structured interviews with a purposeful sample of families. The findings on agency implementation and the families' perspectives are described, together with implications for agency change in family support. The findings point to the need for a re-examination of the emerging approaches to family support innovations, including in the context of national policy reform and the agency-based, service delivery system.     

Correlates of Regimen Adherence in Cystic Fibrosis

The present investigation studied psychological and familial factors associated with self-care adherence in a sample of 50 children (ages 9 to 17 years) with cystic fibrosis (CF). Children and their parents were recruited through an outpatient pediatric pulmonary medicine clinic at a metropolitan children's hospital. Participants were interviewed and administered measures of family behavior and child psychological variables. Regimen adherence was measured using a telephone interview approach across three occasions per participant. Hierarchical multiple regression with age, perceived family behaviors, health locus of control, and self-competency as predictors, accounted for 53.8% of the variance in regimen adherence. Findings suggest that higher self-esteem and younger age are related to higher rates of regimen adherence among children with CF.     

Matching Messages to Motives in Persuasion: A Functional Approach to Promoting Volunteerism1

This study examined a functional strategy for investigating audience responses to motivationally-based persuasive appeals. It was predicted that people exposed to advertisements informing them how they could satisfy personally relevant motivations through volunteering (i.e., functionally matched messages) would judge these ads to be more persuasive, more emotionally positive, and would report being more likely to volunteer than people exposed to advertisements unrelated to their personally relevant motivations (i.e., functionally mismatched messages). These predictions were confirmed in an experiment wherein participants whose attitudes toward volunteerism served a Social Adjustive, Value Expressive, Utilitarian, Knowledge, or Ego Defensive function viewed advertisements promoting volunteerism that either matched or mismatched their personally relevant motivations. Results confirmed predictions as participants responded more favorably to the functionally matched than mismatched messages. The implications of this research for understanding the mechanisms by which functionally matched messages exert persuasive influence and the ramifications of the research for the practice of volunteerism are discussed.     

Measures of job perceptions: Gender and age of current incumbents,suitability, and job attributes

Two ways of examining the gender and age stereotypes of jobs, characteristics of current incumbents and potential suitability, were compared. Female (n = 70) and male (n = 66) college students, predominantly Caucasian ranging in age from 18 to 57 years, provided their gender and age perceptions for 58 jobs. Although the two concepts have not been clearly distinguished in the literature, they are conceptually and (as found here) empirically distinct. The important roles of current incumbents, suitability, and job attribute perceptions for discrimination research are presented.