An Investigation of the Dynamic Processes Promoting Citizen Participation

This study expanded the citizen participation literature by examining the dynamic nature of citizen participation and the extent to which the factors associated with citizen participation may be moderated by resident leadership status. Longitudinal survey data collected from 542 residents in one small Midwestern city implementing a community change initiative provide some insight into the challenges surrounding the promotion of an active citizenry. Within this one community, citizenship behaviors of emergent resident leaders and residents uninterested in a leadership role were influenced, to some extent, by different factors and the importance of these factors shifted in only a 2 years time span. Future research is needed to determine if the dynamics uncovered in this study were due to the initiative or to the nature of citizen participation processes.     

When is Nothing Something? Editorial for the Null Results Special Issue of Journal of Business and Psychology

This special issue is focused on how null results can meaningfully advance science and practice. This editorial describes some of the unique aspects of creating a special issue devoted to null results, offers opinions regarding why and under what conditions null results should be valued, and offers recommendations for key stakeholders (i.e., editors, reviewers, and authors) in the publication enterprise with respect to submitting and evaluating research with null findings. This editorial also provides summaries of the papers included in this special issue with emphasis on how they serve as example for what constitutes meaningful null results.     

Promoting Positive Future Expectations During Adolescence: The Role of Assets

Positive future expectations can facilitate optimal development and contribute to healthier outcomes for youth. Researchers suggest that internal resources and community‐level factors may influence adolescent future expectations, yet little is known about the processes through which these benefits are conferred. The present study examined the relationship between contribution to community, neighborhood collective efficacy, purpose, hope and future expectations, and tested a mediation model that linked contribution to community and collective efficacy with future expectations through purpose and hope in a sample of 7th grade youth (N = 196; M_age = 12.39; 60 % female; 40 % African American; 71 % economically disadvantaged). Greater collective efficacy and contribution to community predicted higher levels of hope and purpose. Higher levels of hope and purpose predicted more positive future expectations. Contribution to community and neighborhood collective efficacy indirectly predicted future expectations via hope. Implications of the findings and suggestions for future research are discussed.     

INTRAORGANIZATIONAL EMPLOYEE NAVIGATION AND SOCIALLY DERIVED OUTCOMES: CONCEPTUALIZATION,VALIDATION, AND EFFECTS ON OVERALL PERFORMANCE

Intraorganizational employee navigation (IEN) is conceptualized as a means of better understanding how the organizational actor proactively works across their firm's internal environment in the execution of their jobs. Navigation is argued to be a precursor to the employee's overall performance through a class of mediating variables labeled “socially derived outcomes,” which are variables inside the organization that are bestowed upon the employee as a result of them first engaging in proactive behavior (e.g., IEN). Two studies are reported. Study I sees IEN psychometrically validated versus a range of existing proactive behaviors and individual traits (discriminant, nomological, and criterion‐related validity) with a heterogeneous sample of 704 employees. Study II then tests a model relating IEN to performance through six mediating “socially derived outcomes” by leveraging data from 2 Fortune 500 firms. The results of Study II show that IEN significantly impacts multiple measures of the employee's overall performance through mediating effects brought about by key socially derived outcomes, such as the employee's “manager alignment.” The contributions, broader implications, and limitations of the research are then put into context.     

Specific Features of After-School Program Quality: Associations with Children’s Functioning in Middle Childhood

This longitudinal study examined associations between three after-school program quality features (positive staff–child relations, available activities, programming flexibility) and child developmental outcomes (reading and math grades, work habits, and social skills with peers) in Grade 2 and then Grade 3. Participants (n = 120 in Grade 2, n = 91 in Grade 3) attended after-school programs more than 4 days per week, on average. Controlling for child and family background factors and children’s prior functioning on the developmental outcomes, positive staff–child relations in the programs were positively associated with children’s reading grades in both Grades 2 and 3, and math grades in Grade 2. Positive staff–child relations also were positively associated with social skills in Grade 2, for boys only. The availability of a diverse array of age-appropriate activities at the programs was positively associated with children’s math grades and classroom work habits in Grade 3. Programming flexibility (child choice of activities) was not associated with child outcomes.     

Uneven Profiles: Language Minority Learners' Word Reading, Vocabulary, and Reading Comprehension Skills

English reading comprehension skill development was examined in a group of 87 native Spanish-speakers developing English literacy skills, followed from fourth through fifth grade. Specifically, the effects of Spanish (L1) and English (L2) oral language and word reading skills on reading comprehension were investigated. The participants showed average word reading skills and below average comprehension skills, influenced by low oral language skills. Structural equation modeling confirmed that L2 oral language skills had a large, significant effect on L2 reading comprehension, whereas students' word-level reading skills, whether in L1 or L2, were not significantly related to English reading comprehension in three of four models fitted. The results converge with findings from studies with monolinguals demonstrating the influence of oral language on reading comprehension outcomes, and extend these findings by showing that, for language minority learners, L2 oral language exerts a stronger influence than word reading in models of L2 reading.     

The postdiction superiority effect in metacomprehension of text

Metacomprehension accuracy for texts was greater after, rather than before, answering test questions about the texts-a postdiction superiority effect. Although postdiction superiority was found across successive sets of test questions and across successive texts, there was no improvement in metacomprehension accuracy after participants had taken more tests. Neither prediction nor postdiction gamma correlations with test performance improved with successive tests. Although the results are consistent with retrieval hypotheses, they contradict predictions made by test knowledge hypotheses, which state that increasing knowledge of the nature of the tests should increase metacomprehension accuracy.     

Trust and understanding in the attorney-juvenile relationship

This study investigated whether court-experienced juveniles differ from court-experienced adults in their understanding of the defense counsel role and their trust in attorneys. Court-experienced juveniles and young adults, ages 12 to 20, were compared on measures of trust, attitudes toward authority, understanding about the role of defense counsel, trial-related knowledge, and the Trust in My Lawyer Scale. The findings showed that court-related knowledge is associated with both level of intellectual functioning and age and that court-related misunderstandings are associated with mistrust in attorneys. The findings did not support the assertion that there are significant differences between juveniles and young adults in their trust of their attorneys. Results regarding parental involvement, attorney characteristics, and interaction effects of race and intellectual functioning in relation to trust are also discussed.     

Effects of thematic structure on syntactic comprehension in aphasia

This study assessed aphasic subjects' sensitivity to the given-new structure within simple paragraphs and the extent to which narrative discourse is facilitative of syntactic processing in the absence of semantic constraints. Subjects were divided into four groups along the dimensions of comprehension level and fluency. Stimulus items consisted of reversible active and passive sentences that were presented in the following three conditions: isolation, at the end of paragraphs such that the given-new structure was respected, and at the end of paragraphs such that the given-new structure was violated. Fluency did not significantly influence performance but comprehension level did. The high-comprehension group presented no significant differences between contextual conditions. The low-comprehension group, however, favored both paragraph contexts over isolation with no difference occurring between contextual conditions. These results suggest that lower level aphasic subjects are able to utilize thematic, antecedent verbal information for comprehending sentences in connected discourse even when the discourse is not semantically predictive of the underlying meaning of these sentences. Whether the narrative respects or violates the given-new relationship may not be an important factor. The reasons for these findings are explored.