Factors Influencing Condom Use Among African American Women: Implications for Risk Reduction Interventions

Examined factors associated with condom use in a community-based sample of 423 sexually active African American women. Measures were selected to reflect the components in prevailing models of health behavior. Condom users were higher on AIDS health priority, prevention attitudes, stage of change, behavioral intentions, reported more frequent and comfortable sexual communication with partners, perceived greater partner and peer approval for condom use, and reported that peers also used condoms. Women in exclusive relationships evidenced earlier stage of change, lower intentions to use condoms, fewer peers who engaged in preventive behaviors, perceived themselves to have lower risk, and had lower rates of condom use, higher education, and family income. Women in fluid relationships were at particularly high risk, with lower rates of condom use relative to women not in a relationship and greater sexual risk for HIV. Implications for HIV-risk reduction interventions with African American women are discussed.     

Penalized Best Linear Prediction of True Test Scores

Psychometrika - In best linear prediction (BLP), a true test score is predicted by observed item scores and by ancillary test data. If the use of BLP rather than a more direct estimate of a true...     

Providing Relationship Interventions to Same-Sex Couples: Clinical Considerations,Program Adaptations,and Continuing Education

Despite remarkable similarities to different-sex couples in terms of core relationship processes and outcomes, same-sex couples differ from different-sex couples in important ways, including relational strengths (e.g., more egalitarian) and challenges associated with their sexual minority identity (e.g., discrimination). Given that most cognitive-behavioral relationship interventions have been designed for and tested on different-sex couples, clinicians wishing to serve same-sex couples will need to make appropriate adaptations to these interventions in order to remove heterosexist bias and sensitively meet the unique needs of same-sex couples. Further, clinicians should strive to be culturally competent in serving this population by developing knowledge of same-sex couple dynamics and issues, and by building a sense of comfort working with these families, which may involve addressing personal biases. The current paper seeks to provide an introduction to same-sex couple relational processes, and offers clinical recommendations and intervention adaptations to better serve this population. Some examples will refer to the development of the Strengthening Same-Sex Relationships programs, culturally sensitive relationship education programs specifically designed for and successfully piloted with male and female same-sex couples.     

Failure is not an option for Black women: Effects of organizational performance on leaders with single versus dual-subordinate identities

We contribute to a current debate that focuses on whether individuals with more than one subordinate identity (i.e., Black women) experience more negative leader perceptions than do leaders with single-subordinate identities (i.e., Black men and White women). Results confirmed that Black women leaders suffered double jeopardy, and were evaluated more negatively than Black men and White women, but only under conditions of organizational failure. Under conditions of organizational success, the three groups were evaluated comparably to each other, but each group was evaluated less favorably than White men. Further, leader typicality, the extent to which individuals possess characteristics usually associated with a leader role, mediated the indirect effect of leader race, leader gender, and organizational performance on leader effectiveness. Taken together, these results suggest that Black women leaders may carry a burden of being disproportionately sanctioned for making mistakes on the job.     

Agreeableness and Conscientiousness promote successful adaptation to the Covid-19 pandemic through effective internalization of public health guidelines

Motivation and Emotion - Social distancing (SD) was an effective way of reducing virus transmission during the deadly and highly infectious COVID-19 pandemic. Using a prospective longitudinal...     

An Empirical Investigation of Population Invariance in the Value of Subscores

Recently there has been an increasing level of interest in subtest scores, or subscores, for their potential diagnostic value. Haberman (2008 Haberman, S. J. 2008. When can subscores have value?. Journal of Educational and Behavioral Statistics, 33: 204–229. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) suggested a method to determine if a subscore has added value over the total score. Researchers have often been interested in the performance of subgroups—for example, those based on gender or ethnicity—on subtests. Several researchers found that the difference in performance between the gender-based subgroups varied over the different subtests. In this article, we examine whether the added values of the subscores vary between subgroups using data from several operational tests, including an international English proficiency test. For these data sets, the added values of the subscores occasionally vary over the subgroups, but the added values of the augmented subscores are invariant over the subgroups.     

Diminished ability to identify facial emotional expressions in children with disorganized attachment representations

The development of children's ability to identify facial emotional expressions has long been suggested to be experience dependent, with parental caregiving as an important influencing factor. This study attempts to further this knowledge by examining disorganization of the attachment system as a potential psychological mechanism behind aberrant caregiving experiences and deviations in the ability to identify facial emotional expressions. Typically developing children (N = 105, 49.5% boys) aged 6–7 years (M = 6 years 8 months, SD = 1.8 months) completed an attachment representation task and an emotion identification task, and parents rated children's negative emotionality. The results showed a generally diminished ability in disorganized children to identify facial emotional expressions, but no response biases. Disorganized attachment was also related to higher levels of negative emotionality, but discrimination of emotional expressions did not moderate or mediate this relation. Our novel findings relate disorganized attachment to deviations in emotion identification, and therefore suggest that disorganization of the attachment system may constitute a psychological mechanism linking aberrant caregiving experiences to deviations in children's ability to identify facial emotional expressions. Our findings further suggest that deviations in emotion identification in disorganized children, in the absence of maltreatment, may manifest in a generally diminished ability to identify emotional expressions, rather than in specific response biases.