Using latent class analysis to identify aggressors and victims of peer harassment

This study used latent class analysis (LCA) to identify and classify individuals into aggressor and victim latent classes. Participants were over 2,000 sixth grade students who completed peer nomination procedures that identified students who had reputations as perpetrators and/or victims of physical, verbal, or relational harassment. Results showed five latent classes. Consistent with previous research, LCA identified latent classes of victims, aggressors, and socially adjusted students. However, rather than a single aggressive-victim subgroup, LCA identified latent classes of highly-victimized aggressive-victims and highly-aggressive aggressive-victims. Comparisons showed differences in mean profiles and classification criteria between LCA and traditional dichotomization approaches. Adjustment outcomes showed that highly-victimized aggressive-victims generally experienced greater negative psychological and social adjustment outcomes than highly-aggressive aggressive-victims. Implications of these findings for better assessment of victim and aggressor subgroups were discussed.     

Exploratory factor analysis: Current use,methodological developments and recommendations for good practice

Current Psychology - Psychological research often relies on Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA). As the outcome of the analysis highly depends on the chosen settings, there is a strong need for...     

More Property,Better Sex? The Relationship Between Property Ownership and Sexual Satisfaction Among Married Vietnamese Women

Since the first sexuality research in Vietnam was conducted in the late 1980s, scholarship on this field has proliferated and the topic is now less of a taboo in public discourse. Nevertheless, little is known about the area of sexual satisfaction as well as factors determining a satisfying sexual life for Vietnamese women. Using data from 2783 married women collected from a national survey, we explore the relationships among their sexual satisfaction, socio-demographic factors, and sexual experiences with a focus on their association with ownership of property. Results demonstrated that income, ethnicity, living region, frequency of sex, and sexual experience had a strong relationship with a satisfying sexual life for married women. Additionally, we found that property ownership was a strong predictor of sexual satisfaction: Women who had a savings or bank account in their own name as well as held ownership over their housing or residential land had higher odds of feeling more sexually satisfied. The present study is an important step toward follow-up research that should delve deeper into the field of human subjective sexual well-being not only from the health point of view, but also through a social and cultural lens. The study also has useful implications for those working on sexual health rights as well as for practitioners of women’s rights in development programs and projects that aim to empower women through altering traditional discourses and practices over women’s role in property ownership.     

Valuing the contribution of ultra-light buyers

Ultra-light buyers, those who, on average, buy a brand once a year or less, are important by number and their contribution to brand purchase occasions. The initial research, however, was limited in scope and did not measure the contribution of these buyers to sales volume or value. By examining over 850 brands in almost 60 categories, we identify that ultra-lights make up 62% of a brand's buyer base over 5 years and contribute 32% of purchase occasions and 31% of sales volume and value. In line with previous findings that brands with higher loyalty exhibit more repeat purchases and thus fewer ultra-light buyers and private label brands often exhibit higher than expected loyalty for their market share—we find the prevalence of ultra-light buyers is higher for national brands than private labels, likely reflecting the higher loyalty often observed for private labels. We also find no difference in ultra-light buyers' contribution between high and low-price brands, indicating that price is not a significant factor affecting the contribution of ultra-light buyers. Finally, we find that both growing and declining brands have fewer ultra-lights than stable brands. As growth occurs via increasing penetration and loyalty, for growing brands, new buyers may be more ‘light’ than ‘ultra-light’ in terms of their loyalty; while for declines, these findings imply that there are not enough ultra-light buyers to maintain brand sales. A failure to recruit ultra-light buyers may be very dangerous for brand health.     

Adapting the Career Development Inventory-Australia for cross-cultural research

This paper describes the adaptation of the Career Planning and Career Exploration scales of the Career Development Inventory-Australia for use in a Thai cultural context. One hundred and fifty-nine Thai high school students participated in the study. The results were compared with data from Australian students collected in earlier studies and from a group of Australian students participating in a career education program. The results indicate that only the Career Planning scale minus one biased item was found to be equivalent across Thai and Australian cultural contexts. The Career Exploration scale was found to be an unreliable measure of career exploration of Thai Year 11 males and its structure was found to be incongruent across Thai and Australian cultural contexts.     

Implications of adolescents' acculturation strategies for personal and collective self-esteem

Berry, Trimble, and Olmedo's (1986) acculturation model was used to investigate the relationship among adolescents' acculturation strategies, personal self-esteem, and collective self-esteem. Using data from 427 high school students, factor analysis results distinguished Collective Self-esteem Scale constructs (Luhtanen & Crocker, 1992) from both ethnic identity and outgroup orientation subscales of the Multigroup Ethnic Identity Measure (Phinney, 1992). Subsequent results showed that: 1) both acculturation dimensions were correlated with personal and collective self-esteems, 2) integrationists shared similar levels of personal and collective self-esteems with assimilationists and/or separationists, and 3) marginalizationists generally had the lowest levels of personal and collective self-esteems. Implications are drawn for understanding acculturation among adolescents and for the utility of group-level measures of self-esteem.     

Self-compassion and Students' Well-Being Among Vietnamese Students: Chain Mediation Effect of Narcissism and Anxiety

Journal of Rational-Emotive & Cognitive-Behavior Therapy - The positive psychology that increases mental health is referred to "health assets." Among those assets, self-compassion...     

Lexical and sublexical cortical tuning for print revealed by Steady-State Visual Evoked Potentials (SSVEPs) in early readers

There are multiple levels of processing relevant to reading that vary in their visual, sublexical, and lexical orthographic processing demands. Segregating distinct cortical sources for each of these levels has been challenging in EEG studies of early readers. To address this challenge, we applied recent advances in analyzing high-density EEG using Steady-State Visual Evoked Potentials (SSVEPs) via data-driven Reliable Components Analysis (RCA) in a group of early readers spanning from kindergarten to second grade. Three controlled stimulus contrasts—familiar words versus unfamiliar pseudofonts, familiar words versus pseudowords, and pseudowords versus nonwords—were used to isolate coarse print tuning, lexical processing, and sublexical orthography-related processing, respectively. First, three overlapping yet distinct neural sources—left vOT, dorsal parietal, and primary visual cortex were revealed underlying coarse print tuning. Second, we segregated distinct cortical sources for the other two levels of processing: lexical fine tuning over occipito-temporal/parietal regions; sublexical orthographic fine tuning over left occipital regions. Finally, exploratory group analyses based on children's reading fluency suggested that coarse print tuning emerges early even in children with limited reading knowledge, while sublexical and higher-level lexical processing emerge only in children with sufficient reading knowledge.

Research Highlights

• Cognitive processes underlying coarse print tuning, sublexical, and lexical fine tuning were examined in beginning readers.
• Three overlapping yet distinct neural sources—left ventral occipito-temporal (vOT), left temporo-parietal, and primary visual cortex—were revealed underlying coarse print tuning.
• Responses to sublexical orthographic fine tuning were found over left occipital regions, while responses to higher-level linguistic fine tuning were found over occipito-temporal/parietal regions.
• Exploratory group analyses suggested that coarse print tuning emerges in children with limited reading knowledge, while sublexical and higher-level linguistic fine tuning effects emerge in children with sufficient reading knowledge.