The relationship between work status congruence and work-related attitudes and behaviors

Research investigating differences in attitudes among full-time and part-time employees has a long history. Unfortunately, the empirical results have been mixed and conflicting. To resolve inconsistencies in prior research, the authors conducted 2 studies. In the 1st study, the authors developed a measure of work status congruence, which measures the degree to which employers match employee preferences for full-time or part-time status, schedule, shift, and number of hours. The authors hypothesized that a match or congruence between worker preferences and organizational staffing practices would be associated with positive employee attitudes and behaviors. In the 2nd study, the authors tested these hypotheses. The results indicate that work status congruence is positively associated with job satisfaction, organizational commitment, employee retention, as well as in-role and extra-role performance.     

Task familiarity and task efficacy: a study of sports coaches

The purpose of the study was to establish a profile of coaching efficacy with Hong Kong community coaches who differ in knowledge and hours spent in coaching. Coaching efficacy can be described in four dimensions, namely, Motivation, Strategy, Technique, and Character Building. It was hypothesized that coaches who had spent more time coaching and were more knowledgeable about the sport and coaching would score higher on those four dimensions of a Coaching Efficacy Scale. The scale was administered to 252 coaches working with beginning and district-level athletes in a variety of sports. Analysis suggested that their self-reported efficacy on Strategy was least strong. This means that the coaches were not confident in analyzing the strengths and weaknesses of opposing teams, making decisions on the type of game strategy to employ, and maximizing athletes' strength in competitions. Coaches with less coaching experience were also less confident about motivating athletes. This information on coaching efficacy may be useful in deciding content for a program of education for coaching.     

The contribution of postural bias to lateral preferences for holding human infants

When asked to hold an infant, 60-85% of adults hold on their left, so that the infant's head is to the left of their midline (Brüser, 1981; de Chateau, 1983; Saling & Tyson, 1981). The same group bias has been found even when persons are merely asked to imagine holding an infant (Nakamichi & Takeda, 1995; Harris, Almerigi, & Kirsch, 2000). A number of variables have been found to contribute modestly to the bias, including the sex and handedness of the holder. In the current study, the role of a new variable is investigated, namely, the feeling of comfort for holding an infant on a particular side as indexed by one's foot preference for acts of stabilizing or postural support. To test this hypothesis, 282 right-handed college students (218 women, 64 men) were given the imagine-hold task along with 4 questions about their foot preference for posture and balance. The results showed that, at least for women, the two measures were modestly but significantly related.     

A longitudinal analysis of friendships and substance use: bidirectional influence from adolescence to adulthood

The reciprocal relation between deviant friendships and substance use was examined from early adolescence (age 13-14) to young adulthood (age 22-23). Deviance within friendships was studied using direct observations of videotaped friendship interaction and global reports of deviant interactions with friends as well as time spent with friends. Substance use was assessed through youth self-report at all time points. Multivariate modeling revealed that substance use in young adulthood is a joint outcome of friendship influence and selection processes. In addition, substance use appears to influence the selection of friends in late adolescence. Findings suggest that effective preventions should target peer ecologies conducive to substance use and that treatment should address both the interpersonal underpinnings and addiction processes intrinsic to chronic use, dependence, and abuse.     

Psychoanalytic patients in the U.S., Canada,and Australia: II. A DSM-III-R validation study

A study was conducted to validate our previous work on the DSM-III-R disorders diagnosed in patients in psychoanalysis in the U.S., Canada, and Australia and to determine which specific mood, anxiety, and personality disorders were the most common in these patients. The earlier study consisted of three surveys of psychoanalytic practice that together obtained data on 1,718 patients, through extensive mail surveys to analysts in the three countries. In the validation study, 206 patients were diagnosed using a different technique. Analysts similar in important respects to those who participated in the original surveys rated patients diagnostically before and after DSM-III-R training. After training, no significant changes appeared in the rates for any of the specific mood disorders. For the thirty disorders examined, training effects decreased the identification of the generalized anxiety disorder, and increased the identification of three personality disorders: avoidant, dependent, and personality disorder not otherwise specified. Thus, analysts slightly underdiagnosed the number of personality disorders, and some "anxious" patients appear to have qualified for personality disorders. Some limitations of the DSM-III-R notion of narcissistic personality are discussed, as are the importance and stability of the self-defeating (masochistic) personality disorder. The most common Axis I disorder in psychoanalytic patients was dysthymia, followed by major depression, recurrent. This study reinforces the findings of the original three surveys. Minor corrections were developed to adjust the original three surveys.     

Relationships between conscientiousness,self-efficacy,self-deception,and learning over time

The present study examined the dual mediating effects of self-efficacy and self-deception on the relationship between conscientiousness and learning over time. Data from 134 college students were used to investigate the relative impact of self-efficacy and self-deception. Consistent with the hypothesized model, conscientiousness was significantly and positively related to both early training self-efficacy and self-deception, and both self-efficacy and self-deception had significant effects on learning but in opposite directions. Furthermore, the relative impact of self-efficacy and self-deception on learning changed over time as expected. The negative effect of self-deception in early stages of training disappeared at later stages of training but the positive effects of self-efficacy remained. Support was not found for self-efficacy and self-deception as mediators of the conscientiousness-learning relationship.     

The lack of pseudohomophone priming effects with short durations in reading and naming

The priming effect of pseudohomophones was assessed in reading and naming tasks. In two experiments using the fast priming paradigm in reading, there were no pseudohomophone priming effects when the prime duration was 32, 44, or 56 ms from the beginning of a fixation. In a third experiment, using a naming task with isolated words, there were also no pseudohomophone priming effects with prime durations of 32, 44, and 56 ms, but there was with a 200-ms prime duration. The results suggest that pseudohomophone priming doesn't occur at an early stage of reading (in the first 60 ms from the beginning of fixation), but occurs at a later stage (within the first 200 ms).     

Effects of the testing situation on item responding: cause for concern

The effects of faking on personality test scores have been studied previously by comparing (a) experimental groups instructed to fake or answer honestly, (b) subgroups created from a single sample of applicants or nonapplicants by using impression management scores, and (c) job applicants and nonapplicants. In this investigation, the latter 2 methods were used to study the effects of faking on the functioning of the items and scales of the Sixteen Personality Factor Questionnaire. A variety of item response theory methods were used to detect differential item/test functioning, interpreted as evidence of faking. The presence of differential item/test functioning across testing situations suggests that faking adversely affects the construct validity of personality scales and that it is problematic to study faking by comparing groups defined by impression management scores.     

Determining the Dimensionality of Multidimensional Scaling Representations for Cognitive Modeling

Multidimensional scaling models of stimulus domains are widely used as a representational basis for cognitive modeling. These representations associate stimuli with points in a coordinate space that has some predetermined number of dimensions. Although the choice of dimensionality can significantly influence cognitive modeling, it is often made on the basis of unsatisfactory heuristics. To address this problem, a Bayesian approach to dimensionality determination, based on the Bayesian Information Criterion (BIC), is developed using a probabilistic formulation of multidimensional scaling. The BIC approach formalizes the trade-off between data-fit and model complexity implicit in the problem of dimensionality determination and allows for the explicit introduction of information regarding data precision. Monte Carlo simulations are presented that indicate, by using this approach, the determined dimensionality is likely to be accurate if either a significant number of stimuli are considered or a reasonable estimate of precision is available. The approach is demonstrated using an established data set involving the judged pairwise similarities between a set of geometric stimuli. Copyright 2001 Academic Press.     

On the Complexity of Additive Clustering Models

Additive clustering provides a conceptually simple and potentially powerful approach to modeling the similarity relationships between stimuli. The ability of additive clustering models to accommodate similarity data, however, typically arises through the incorporation of large numbers of parameterized clusters. Accordingly, for the purposes of both model generation and model comparison, it is necessary to develop quantitative evaluative measures of additive clustering models that take into account both data-fit and complexity. Using a previously developed probabilistic formulation of additive clustering, the Bayesian Information Criterion is proposed for this role, and its application demonstrated. Limitations inherent in this approach, including the assumption that model complexity is equivalent to cluster cardinality, are discussed. These limitations are addressed by applying the Laplacian approximation of a marginal probability density, from which a measure of cluster structure complexity is derived. Using this measure, a preliminary investigation is made of the various properties of cluster structures that affect additive clustering model complexity. Among other things, these investigations show that, for a fixed number of clusters, a model with a strictly nested cluster structure is the least complicated, while a model with a partitioning cluster structure is the most complicated. Copyright 2001 Academic Press.