The job climate for women in traditionally male blue-collar occupations

Rapid growth has been observed in recent years in the number of women entering traditionally male blue-collar occupations, yet researchers have paid little attention to this pioneering group. The present study undertook a comparison of the job conditions of two groups of nontraditional women workers, tradeswomen (N=71), and transit workers (N=151); a third group, school secretaries (N=389), was studied as a comparison group of traditionally female workers. Results from a 16-page mail questionnaire revealed that women in traditionally male occupations encountered significantly more adverse working conditions than did their traditional counterparts, and, in addition, reported significantly less satisfaction and more stress at work. Tradeswomen were the most likely to experience sexual harassment and sex discrimination, and black tradeswomen to experience race discrimination. The degree of job satisfaction expressed by the secretaries was unexpected, since most evidence suggests that clerical workers lack autonomy, and encounter boredom and routinization on the job. These findings are discussed in terms of gender segregation and the need to focus future research efforts on specific occupational groups in order to make appropriate policy recommendations as well as to provide help for women in these jobs.This research was supported by grants from the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (Grant No. 1 RO1 OH02162-01A1) and the College of Health and Human Development, The Pennsylvania State University. The authors wish to acknowledge the invaluable contributions of Patty Lambert, Ming Qi Wang, Mary Harmon, Joseph Vasey, Gina Jay, Darrell Harvey, and Haleh Rastegary.     

"FEMINIZATION" OF PSYCHOLOGY

Women are participating in the field of psychology in increasing numbers relative to men. This development has been referred to as the "feminization of psychology," and it carries with it a number of implications. This article reviews statistical data relating to the changing sex ratio and discusses their implications. Participation rates of women in psychology are examined as they pertain to enrollment in doctoral programs, graduation from baccalaureate programs, and career progress within the profession. Implications of changing sex ratios for occupational prestige, income and economics, work structure, education and training, and theory, research, and practice are then discussed. In conclusion, the concept of "feminization" is challenged as questions are raised about whether the increase in the number of women in psychology is a problem, as has been alleged, or a symptom of other problems within the field     

Role saliency cues and children's sentence comprehension

Forty-eight children at four age levels (3, 4, 5, and 7 years) acted out active and passive sentences immediately after exposure to matching information, mismatching information, and no-information cues. The matching information cues yielded the highest comprehension scores, followed in order by the no-information and the mismatching information cues. Active sentences were easier to comprehend than passive sentences, and comprehension scores improved with age. Processing context information in the form of role saliency cues is a component of children's language comprehension and development. It was found that context is used differentially depending on age and linguistic knowledge. The results indicated that the analysis of children's comprehension skills is a multifaceted process not solely dependent upon syntactic processing.This research is in part a revision of a dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at Kent State University, Kent, Ohio. A summarized version was presented at the Annual Convention of the American Speech and Hearing Association, San Francisco, 1978.     

Life change and the sensation seeking motive

College undergraduates were administered the Life Experiences Survey, the Discomfort scale of the Psychological Screening Inventory, and the most recent version of the Sensation Seeking Scale. The findings did not replicate Smith et al.'s results concerning the role that sensation seeking plays in the relationship between negative life change and psychological distress. However, the data suggest that the sensation seeking motive is a causal variable that is predictive of recent life events that college students have experienced, and that future life-stress research should examine the occurence of controllable life events as a function of subjects' personality traits.     

Ambiversion: characteristics of midrange responders on the Introversion-Extraversion continuum

Sixty-nine midrange responders on the Introversion-Extroversion (IE) scale of the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire (EPQ) were given an experimental measure to assess tendency toward ambivalence (i.e., both strongly introverted and strongly extraverted responses) vs. moderation (i.e., midrange responses), and degree of importance given to IE types of activities. The participants were divided into those showing ambivalence vs. those showing moderate responses, and into those reporting high vs. low importance of such activities. As was predicted, the ambivalent group showed significantly higher scores on the neuroticism scale of the EPQ, while the low importance group tended to show more psychoticism, but not to a significant degree. Both of the midrange scores were unrelated to the Bem Sex Role Inventory. Based on the findings, at least two groups are posited in the midrange of the IE dimension: an ambivalent group with mixed strong introversive and extraversive tendencies, and an ambiverted group with midrange scores.     

Communication patterns in pedodontics.

This investigation examined communication patterns between 16 randomly selected senior dental students and their child patients. Interactions were videotaped during a regular treatment appointment and analyzed according to four Practitioner Communication categories and four Child Cooperation categories. Communication categories included Directive Guidance Behavior, Permissive Behavior, Coercive Behavior, and Other Behavior. Child behavior categories included Cooperation, Resistance, Noncooperation, and Other. The probability that a given category of child's behavior would follow a given category of practitioner's behavior was calculated. Results indicated a .85 probability that Directive Guidance would be followed by Cooperation; a .67 probability that Permissiveness would lead to Noncooperation; and a .97 likelihood that Coerciveness would lead to either Noncooperation or Resistance. Practitioners' confidence was also considered; less confident operators account for 95% of the Coercive behaviors, 86% of Permissive behaviors and 87% of Uncooperative behaviors.     

Children at risk for delinquency: A follow-up comparison of aggressive children and children who steal

This study compared the follow-up incidence of court-recorded nonstatus offenses for three groups of adolescent children. These children had been seen 2 to 9 years earlier for problems with aggression in the home (N = 21), for stealing problems (N = 25), or for normative comparisons (N = 14). The results showed that 77% of the children with stealing problems had court-recorded offenses. This was significantly higher than the aggressive children, whose rate did not differ from the normative sample. These findings suggested that young aggressive children were not at risk for adolescent court contact. Instead, it was the young child with identified stealing problems who was highly likely to become an official delinquent. It also appeared that parental reports of stealing events constituted a predictive measure of later criminal acts.     

Social facilitation

Video-recording procedures have been used in previous research as a motivational manipulation. The present study investigated the permanent recording of behavior as a manipulation of evaluation apprehension and its effects upon behavioral performance and upon autonomic arousal. Twenty-four subjects (12 males, 12 females) were randomly assigned to one of four conditions formed by completely crossing two levels of audience status (peer or authority) with two levels of behavioral record (non-permanent or permanent). Another 24 subjects were assigned to an external control group to the 2×2 design. Subjects' performance on a hidden-word task and their arousal level (as assessed by the Palmar Sweat Index) were measured. Analyses of variance results showed a significant performance (p<.05) and a significant arousal (p<.05) difference between the behavioral record conditions as predicted. The control group was also found to be significantly (p<.05) different from the experimental groups on the behavioral performance measure. The results were related to previous research findings and interpreted within the context of the evaluation apprehension notion presented within social facilitation research.The author would like to thank Angelia Mellors, Valerie K. Golish, and Judy Cohen for serving as experiments, and Susan L. Doman and Cheryl Primmer for scoring the PSI measures.