First‐time mothers in home visitation services utilizing child development specialists

Professionals in the field of child development were employed to provide home visitation services to 156 mothers and infants prenatally through the infants' first birthdays. Compared to a control group of mothers (n = 107), the intervention mothers utilized more community resources, had safer homes, had more appropriate developmental expectations, had better understanding of noncorporal punishment, and had behaviors that were more accepting and respectful to their infants. The home visitors were well educated, with experience in home visitation, and supervised. Program implementation procedures were documented and supervised. Program fidelity and the efficacy of using child development specialists as home visitors are discussed in regards to the positive findings. ©2004 Michigan Association for Infant Mental Health.     

AQS security scores: What do they represent? A study in construct validation

In a sample of 129 Dutch 15‐month‐old infants, attachment security was assessed both with the Attachment Q‐Set (AQS; Waters, 1995) and with a short version of Ainsworth, Blehar, Waters, and Wall's (1978) Strange Situation (SSS). Infants classified as secure using the SSS had significantly higher AQS scores than insecure and disorganized infants in particular. At the AQS item level, disorganized infants were described as significantly more noncompliant, fussy, and angry relative to secure infants. When security as assessed using the SSS was controlled, the observed quality of parental interactive behavior, parental ego‐resilience, high levels of infant task orientation and pleasure, and low levels of infant anger proneness were found to explain significant and unique portions of the variance in the AQS security scores. The apparently unfavorable set of characteristics associated with low AQS security scores suggests such scores to predict later developmental problems. ©2004 Michigan Association for Infant Mental Health.     

对儿童认知发展水平诊断工具IPDT的信度效度检验

修订了以皮亚杰认知发展理论为基础的儿童认知发展诊断工具IPDT的信度效度资料,在390名北京小学生样本中的修订结果表明,该测验具有稳定的信度、良好的效度、适当的难度和理想的区分度,适合作为小学生认知发展诊断工具。对应用的范围、存在的问题和未来的研究需要进行了讨论。     

中国消费者价格容忍度的特点

运用多维线性模型,对我国消费者对不同产品价格涨落的容忍态度进行了研究。研究对象为26384名购买过各类产品的消费者。结果表明：（1）消费者对不同产品的价格容忍度不同,对日用消费品的价格容忍度较高,对耐用消费品的价格容忍度相对较低;（2）消费者的年龄和受教育程度对价格容忍度有负向的影响,消费者的年龄和受教育程度越高,对产品的价格容忍度越低;（3）男性消费者的价格容忍度高于女性消费者,女性消费者对价格较为敏感。     

Ethnic Match and Treatment Outcomes for Child and Adolescent Mental Health Center Clients

This study investigated the effects of client ethnicity and client‐counselor ethnic match on treatment outcomes (i.e., GAF‐difference [from the Global Assessment of Functioning Axis V rating of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, fourth edition, American Psychiatric Association, 1994] and client visitation) of 1,946 child and adolescent community mental health center clients. After controlling for 7 other variables, no differences were observed after adjustment among client ethnicities, age groups, or ethnic match on the GAF‐difference dependent measure. Ethnically matched African American child and adolescent clients had fewer mental health visits than did their nonmatched counterparts. Implications of these findings are discussed.     

Flexible coping responses to severe acute respiratory syndrome-related and daily life stressful events

Based on the theoretical framework of coping flexibility, the present study examined the coping flexibility of university students in response to severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS)-related and daily life stressful events. The Coping Flexibility Questionnaire was used to investigate 93 university students' coping responses toward 10 SARS-related stressful events and 10 daily life stressful events that generally occur among university students. Results showed that the patterns of coping flexibility were different for the two types of stressful events. The flexible and the active-inflexible patterns were most commonly found in coping with daily life stressful events. By contrast, the passive-inconsistent pattern was dominant when coping with daily life stressful events. Moreover, participants showed lower discriminating ability to situation controllability, and displayed poorer strategy-situation fit to cope with SARS-related events than with daily life stressful events. The theoretical and practical implications of this study are discussed.     

'The double identity' of Taiwanese Chinese: A dilemma of politics and culture rooted in history

The 'double identity' of Taiwanese as both Chinese and Taiwanese identity was measured among both general and student samples using categorical and continuous measures. As predicted, Mingnan (native province) Taiwanese were higher in Taiwanese identity whereas outside-province Taiwanese were higher in Chinese identity. Both groups shared similar representations of the history of Taiwan, but evaluations of leaders followed patterns of in-group favoritism. These representations of history were used to predict and find zero correlations between Chinese and Taiwanese identity. Taiwanese and Chinese identities were mutually compatible in cultural domains, and mediated the effect of demographic group. However, in issues concerning politicized allocation decisions (and language), Taiwanese and Chinese identity worked in opposite directions, and demographic group (and a critical evaluation of an historical leader) were significant even after controlling for identity. Implications for social identity theory, realistic group conflict theory, and the cross-straits relationship are discussed.     

Effect of brand name on consumers' risk perceptions of online shopping

The purpose of the present study was to investigate the relationship between brand names and consumers' perceived risk. Hypotheses dealt with whether the presence of a product's brand name affects consumers' perceived risk towards shopping online; whether the familiarity with a brand name influences consumers' perceived risk; and whether online shoppers and non‐shoppers perceive risk towards shopping online differently. Results indicate that the presence or absence of a product's brand name affects online shoppers' perceived risk, but in the opposite direction to that expected. There was no significant difference between online shoppers' perceived risk vis‐à‐vis brand familiarity; however, online shoppers possessed lower perceived risk than non‐shoppers. Implications and limitations are discussed and recommendations for future research are provided. Copyright © 2004 Henry Stewart Publications Ltd.     

Healthy and chronically‐ill children's generalisation of illness to biological and non‐biological categories

Using children's naïve theory of biology as a framework, this study investigated children's developing understanding of illness by examining their generalisation of illness to biological and non‐biological categories. In addition to differences associated with age, the children's health status was investigated for any possible linkwith their understanding. Healthy and chronically‐ill children, aged 4–11 years, were randomly assigned to one of three conditions, according to which exemplar (child, dog or duck) was described as suffering from an imaginary illness. Using a card‐sorting technique, the children assessed whether each entity out of 30 entities (five representatives in each of six categories: humans, mammals, non‐mammals, birds, plants and artifacts) could be afflicted by that illness. The children's generalisations indicated a grasp of the distinctiveness of the various categories, although they seemed less certain about the biological status of plants. Furthermore, the type of exemplar on which the children had been taught influenced their responses. However, the children's reasoning appeared unaffected by their health status and largely unaffected by age or gender. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Hierarchy of interactive functions in father‐mother‐baby three‐way games

In developmental research, the family has mainly been studied through dyadic interaction. Three‐way interactions have received less attention, partly because of their complexity. This difficulty may be overcome by distinguishing between four hierarchically embedded functions in three‐way interactions: (1) participation (inclusion of all participants), (2) organization (partners keeping to their roles), (3) focalization (sharing a common focus) and (4) affective contact (being in tune). We document this hierarchical model on a sample of 80 families observed in the Lausanne Trilogue Play situation across four different sites. Hierarchy between functions was demonstrated by means of Guttman scalability coefficient. Given the importance of the child's development in a threesome, the pertinence of this model for family assessment is discussed. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.