Demonstratives,demonstrations, and demonstrata

I would like to thank Kate Kearns and an anonymous reviewer for helpful comments and suggestions.     

Sixty seconds about each student–studying qualitative and quantitative differences in teachers’ knowledge and perceptions of their students

Social Psychology of Education - This study explored the content and nature of teachers’ knowledge and perceptions of their students. The knowledge and perceptions of seven Dutch secondary...     

The relationship between organizational trust,resistance to change and adaptive and proactive employees' agility in an unplanned and planned change context

Modern organizations need to adapt quickly to on-going changes. The present study sought to examine employees' agility during periods of sudden, unplanned, and during periods of planned change. It was investigated to what extent one's trust in the organization and resistance to change could predict proactive agility and adaptive agility. Data came from employees (N = 188) in two different organizations, one undergoing an unplanned change and one undergoing a planned change. In both contexts, organizational trust had a negative relationship with resistance to change. In an unplanned change context (organization one), trust of employees in the organization had a positive effect on the adaptive component of agility through the (negative) mediation by affective resistance to change. In this context, trust did not have any (mediated) effect on the proactive component of agility. In contrast, in a planned change context (organization two), trust had a positive effect on the proactive component of agility, partially through the (negative) mediation by resistance to change. In this context, trust also had a positive effect on the adaptive component of agility, partially through the (negative) mediation by resistance to change. These results imply that trust works in different ways depending on the type of change. More trust through less resistance implies better adaptation during unplanned organizational change. More trust works directly and partially through less resistance to change to enhance employee proactivity and adaptability during planned change.     

A Developmental Shift in Black-White Differences in Depressive Affect across Adolescence and Early Adulthood: The influence of early adult social roles and socio-economic status

This study examined black-white differences in growth of depressive affect using a longitudinal sample of middle-class, suburban US subjects (n = 956) that spanned from adolescence to early adulthood. Specifically, this study examined whether black-white differences in growth of depressive affect shift over time, and the extent to which that shift, if any, was associated with racial differences in the rate and mental health consequences of early adult social roles (e.g., living arrangements, work/college status, and single-parenthood) and socio-economic status (SES). As expected, growth in depressive affect pivoted around the onset of early adulthood, with the trajectory pivoting upward for Black Americans and downward for White Americans. Due to deficits in SES, the relation between challenging early adult social roles - under/unemployment in particular - and growth in depressive affect was more positive for Black Americans. This differential "vulnerability" appears to underlie racial differences in early adult growth (and by connection contribute to racial differences in growth pivot). The extent to which Black Americans were at a greater risk (relative to White Americans) for an upward pivot increased as the number of challenging roles increased. Black Americans facing only optimal early adult social roles were not at a greater risk, while those facing only challenging social roles were at the greatest risk.     

Family members' unique perspectives of the family: examining their scope, size, and relations to individual adjustment

Using the McMaster Family Assessment Device (Epstein, Baldwin, & Bishop, 1983) and incorporating the perspectives of adolescent, mother, and father, this study examined each family member's "unique perspective" or nonshared, idiosyncratic view of the family. We used a modified multitrait-multimethod confirmatory factor analysis that (a) isolated for each family member's 6 reports of family dysfunction the nonshared variance (a combination of variance idiosyncratic to the individual and measurement error) from variance shared by 1 or more family members and (b) extracted common variance across each family member's set of nonshared variances. The sample included 128 families from a U.S. East Coast metropolitan area. Each family member's unique perspective generalized across his or her different reports of family dysfunction and accounted for a sizable proportion of his or her own variance in reports of family dysfunction. In addition, after holding level of dysfunction constant across families and controlling for a family's shared variance (agreement regarding family dysfunction), each family member's unique perspective was associated with his or her own adjustment. Future applications and competing alternatives for what these "unique perspectives" reflect about the family are discussed.