Parent-Reported Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Symptomatology in Preschool-Aged Children: Factor Structure, Developmental Change, and Early Risk Factors

Although Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) has increasingly been studied in preschool-aged children, relatively few studies have provided a comprehensive evaluation of the factor structure and patterns of developmental changes in parent-reported ADHD symptomatology across the early childhood period. This study used confirmatory factor analyses to test for longitudinal measurement invariance of ADHD symptoms and semi-parametric finite mixture models to identify prototypic patterns of developmental changes in ADHD symptomatology from 3 to 5?years of age. Participants were 1155 children and their parents who participated in a prospective longitudinal study involving a representative sample of children who resided in six non-metropolitan counties in the United States. Results indicated that (1) ADHD symptomatology was best represented by a single latent factor that exhibited partial measurement invariance from 3 to 5?years of age, (2) 8.5?% of children exhibited sustained high levels of ADHD symptoms from age 3–5?years, and (3) a variety of risk factors differentiated children with sustained high from those with sustained low levels of ADHD, relatively few (most notably caregiver education) were able to differentiate children with sustained high levels of ADHD symptoms from all other groups. Children who exhibit persistent ADHD symptomatology across the early childhood period may define a clinically important group for etiologic research and/or early intervention efforts.     

Bad but bold: Ambivalent attitudes toward men predict gender inequality in 16 nations

A 16-nation study involving 8,360 participants revealed that hostile and benevolent attitudes toward men, assessed by the Ambivalence Toward Men Inventory (P. Click & S.T. Fiske, 1999), were (a) reliably measured across cultures, (b) positively correlated (for men and women, within samples and across nations) with each other and with hostile and benevolent sexism toward women (Ambivalent Sexism Inventory, P. Click & S.T. Fiske, 1996), and (c) negatively correlated with gender equality in cross-national comparisons. Stereotype measures indicated that men were viewed as having less positively valenced but more powerful traits than women. The authors argue that hostile as well as benevolent attitudes toward men reflect and support gender inequality by characterizing men as being designed for dominance.     

On the (In)Validity of Tests of Simple Mediation: Threats and Solutions

Mediation analysis is a popular framework for identifying underlying mechanisms in social psychology. In the context of simple mediation, we review and discuss the implications of three facets of mediation analysis: (a) conceptualization of the relations between the variables, (b) statistical approaches, and (c) relevant elements of design. We also highlight the issue of equivalent models that are inherent in simple mediation. The extent to which results are meaningful stem directly from choices regarding these three facets of mediation analysis. We conclude by discussing how mediation analysis can be better applied to examine causal processes, highlight the limits of simple mediation, and make recommendations for better practice.     

Socio-ethical Education in Nanotechnology Engineering Programmes: A Case Study in Malaysia

The unique properties of nanotechnology have made nanotechnology education and its related subjects increasingly important not only for students but for mankind at large. This particular technology brings educators to work together to prepare and produce competent engineers and scientists for this field. One of the key challenges in nanotechnology engineering is to produce graduate students who are not only competent in technical knowledge but possess the necessary attitude and awareness toward the social and ethical issues related to nanotechnology. In this paper, a research model has been developed to assess Malaysian nanotechnology engineering students’ attitudes and whether their perspectives have attained the necesary objectives of ethical education throughout their programme of study. The findings from this investigation show that socio ethical education has a strong influence on the students’ knowledge, skills and attitudes pertaining to socio ethical issues related to nanotechnology.     

Open hearts build lives: positive emotions, induced through loving-kindness meditation, build consequential personal resources

B. L. Fredrickson's (1998, 2001) broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions asserts that people's daily experiences of positive emotions compound over time to build a variety of consequential personal resources. The authors tested this build hypothesis in a field experiment with working adults (n = 139), half of whom were randomly-assigned to begin a practice of loving-kindness meditation. Results showed that this meditation practice produced increases over time in daily experiences of positive emotions, which, in turn, produced increases in a wide range of personal resources (e.g., increased mindfulness, purpose in life, social support, decreased illness symptoms). In turn, these increments in personal resources predicted increased life satisfaction and reduced depressive symptoms. Discussion centers on how positive emotions are the mechanism of change for the type of mind-training practice studied here and how loving-kindness meditation is an intervention strategy that produces positive emotions in a way that outpaces the hedonic treadmill effect.     

Profile-likelihood Confidence Intervals in Item Response Theory Models

Confidence intervals (CIs) are fundamental inferential devices which quantify the sampling variability of parameter estimates. In item response theory, CIs have been primarily obtained from large-sample Wald-type approaches based on standard error estimates, derived from the observed or expected information matrix, after parameters have been estimated via maximum likelihood. An alternative approach to constructing CIs is to quantify sampling variability directly from the likelihood function with a technique known as profile-likelihood confidence intervals (PL CIs). In this article, we introduce PL CIs for item response theory models, compare PL CIs to classical large-sample Wald-type CIs, and demonstrate important distinctions among these CIs. CIs are then constructed for parameters directly estimated in the specified model and for transformed parameters which are often obtained post-estimation. Monte Carlo simulation results suggest that PL CIs perform consistently better than Wald-type CIs for both non-transformed and transformed parameters.