Locus of control and delinquency

A sample of delinquent and nondelinquent male adolescents was assessed with respect to locus of control and intellectual achievement responsibility. Data were also gathered concerning age, family size, birth order, socioeconomic status, race, and school grade. Results were subjected to a multivariate analysis and showed support for a multidimensional model of locus of control. There was no difference in expectancy of control for negative academic events between delinquents and nondelinquents. In general, birth order and delinquency were the two most important determinants of locus of control. Results are discussed in terms of previous literature on locus of control with particular consideration paid to expectations of control.     

Adolescent health care in Brazil

The period of youth and adolescence has been shown to have continuous demographic growth in the developing world. Young nations thus have to contend with the specific health needs of teenagers and young adults. This is illustrated by an analysis of the health-care needs of Brazilian adolescents. The issues highlighted here are adolescent morbidity and mortality, current delivery of adolescent health care, and future directions of adolescent programs in Brazil.     

Relationships between adolescent drug use and parental drug behaviors

The present study examined some previously reported relationships between drug use by adolescents and perceived attitudes and behaviors of their parents. An anonymous questionnaire was administered to the student body of an inner-city secondary school for difficult students. Relationships between parental use of drugs and adolescent use of the same drugs were moderate and roughly equivalent across drugs. However, parental use of marijuana was strongly related to the adolescent's use of other, harder drugs such as opiates, cocaine, amphetamines, and barbiturates. This finding is explained within the framework of Kandel's postulated stages of drug initiation. It points to a need for further study of parental influences, which may be increasingly problematic as more individuals who have grown up in our marijuana-accepting society become parents of adolescents.     

Achieving sex education program outcomes: points of view from students and alumni

Several inherent limitations to secondary school sex education program evaluations are: limited generalizability, lack of longitudinal research, and no clear consensus of program outcomes. With a Bureau of Health Education, Center for Disease Control study as the criterion for program outcomes, a study was undertaken to examine the immediate and long-term impact of sex education upon program participants. Two of the 20 schools in the CDC study identified as having exemplary sex education programs provided access to their students and alumni. Inventories which measured perceived achievement of 33 sex education outcomes were piloted for reliability and validity. Each inventory examined participant changes in knowledge, understanding of self, values, interaction skills, self-esteem, and fear of sex-related activities. Students were surveyed in school; alumni were surveyed through the mail. Response rates ranged from 30 to 100 percent for students and alumni at both schools. Overall there was no statistically significant difference between the perceptions of students and alumni as to achievement of investigated outcomes. Alumni responses at one school did, however, indicate some potentially weak areas of their school's program with respect to values and interaction skills outcomes. It appears that program impact may decrease with time. Thus, isolating and addressing the factors involved may be necessary. This would assist program planners and instructors to strengthen curricula and program activities in order to enhance the overall impact of sex education. The present study supports the notion that positive gains are achieved as a result of each school's sex education program, and these gains remained over time.     

Decision making styles and progress in occupational decision making

This study provides a reexamination of the role of different decisional strategies in facilitating progress in occupational decision making. Although the assumptions that a rational decision making style is the preferred mode of vocational functioning has been endorsed in a variety of career theories and interventions, there has been conflicting evidence about the validity of this assumption. To examine the role of different decisional approaches in the progress of making an occupational decision, the rational, intuitive, and dependent decision making style scores of 71 undergraduate students were used to predict progress in occupational decision making. The results of the regression analyses failed to provide support for the assumption that a rational style is the most effective in accomplishing this careerrelated task, but indicated strong support for the conclusion that the use of dependent decisional strategies is damaging, particularly in early stages of the decisional process.     

Developmental analysis of the effects of reward on selected Wechsler subscales

The authors recently proposed that adverse effects of material rewards on Wechsler subscale performance may be the result of a reward-produced developmental regression. The present study further explores that idea through an attempt to replicate earlier findings with adults and to extend the inquiry to children. Selected Wechsler subscales were administered to 32 subjects at each of three ages (5, 10, and 18 years) under either reward or nonreward conditions. Subscales were chosen to represent both algorithmic and heuristic types of tasks. Reward and nonreward groups (8 males and 8 females per group at each age) were matched initially on age and ability. For adults, consistent with earlier findings, reward had an adverse effect on performance on the heuristic subscales and tended to facilitate performance on the algorithmic subscales. However, rewards generally had no effect at the fourth-grade level and had a reverse effect at the nursery school level, i.e., rewards facilitated heuristic and hampered algorithmic performance. These findings appear to be more consistent with an explanation based on developmental regression than on any available alternative mechanism.     

Potential Social Action As A Function Of Expectation-Outcome Discrepancies Among Employed And Unemployed University Graduates

Full-time employed (N = 255), partly employed (N = 48), and unemployed (N = 43) male and female university graduates completed a questionnaire that included measures designed to assess expected job levels and current job levels and two measures of potential social action (willingness to volunteer actions and hours to a fictional Campaign to Assist Unemployed Youth). Comparisons between groups and the results of multiple regression analyses provided mixed support for the prediction that larger negative gaps between expected and current employment status would be associated with a greater willingness to assist the Campaign. The unemployed respondents tended to volunteer more actions and more hours to the Campaign than did the other two groups. A multiple regression analysis showed that the current level by expected level interaction term was statistically significant as predicted, but only for the fully employed graduates. Within the full-time employed group, female graduates and those from the humanities/social sciences/education schools expressed more willingness to assist the Campaign than did male graduates and those from the sciences/medicine schools of the university. Results were discussed in relation to current research on relative deprivation and reported affect and to recent studies of job satisfaction.     

Induction by reinforcer schedules.

Traditional strategies for determining whether a reinforcer schedule enhances the occurrence of an activity are reviewed and critically evaluated. A basic assumption underlying these strategies is that it is possible to isolate the effect of reinforcer intermittency on schedule induction. It is concluded that this is not, in fact, possible. An alternative approach is proposed that emphasizes the inductive effects of the reinforcer schedule as a unit and the effects of particular aspects of the reinforcer schedule (e.g., interreinforcer interval, repetition of the reinforcer, reinforcer magnitude).