Psychometric properties of the Chinese version of the diabetes empowerment scale

Metabolic control is central to positive clinical outcome in patients with diabetes. Empowerment has been linked to metabolic control in this clinical group. The current study sought to determine key psychometric properties of the Chinese version of the Diabetes Empowerment Scale (C-DES) and to explore the relationship of the C-DES sub-scales to metabolic control in 189 patients with a diagnosis of diabetes. Confirmatory factor analysis established that the five sub-scales of the C-DES offered a highly satisfactory fit to the data. Furthermore, C-DES sub-scales were found to have generally acceptable internal consistency and divergent reliability. However, convergent reliability of C-DES sub-scales could not be established against metabolic control. It is concluded that future research needs to address ambiguities in the relationship between empowerment and metabolic control in order to afford patients an evidenced-based treatment package to assure optimal metabolic control.     

The impact of AIDS/sex education by schools or family doctors on Hong Kong Chinese adolescents

Despite the rapid increases of HIV and sexually transmitted infections (STIs) in East Asia, the sex-related knowledge among Chinese adolescents is limited and the standard of sex education is both variable and inconsistent in Hong Kong. The aim of this study is to review the overall effectiveness of the school-based or doctor-based sexual health education currently provided for Hong Kong adolescents. In 1999 - 2000, a large survey on youth risk behaviours was carried out among 15 - 18-year-old students from 21 secondary schools. Of the 8,039 questionnaires, 377 students (4.7%) admitted sexual experience. Multiple logistic regression showed that students who had received school AIDS education were found to be less likely to have sexual intercourse in the past 3 months (odds ratio, OR 0.5; 95% confidence interval, CI 0.3 - 0.9) or use drugs or alcohol before the previous intercourse (OR 0.5; 95% CI 0.3 - 0.9). They were twice as likely to discuss emotional (95% CI 1.4 - 4.0) or puberty issues (95% CI 1.1 - 3.0). Although not statistically significant, sex education by family doctors showed a similar pattern. This result provides the strongest available evidence that school-based sex education programmes can modify sexual behaviour, which, in turn, reduces risk among Chinese students.     

Thinking within the box: The relational processing style elicited by counterfactual mind-sets

By comparing reality to what might have been, counterfactuals promote a relational processing style characterized by a tendency to consider relationships and associations among a set of stimuli. As such, counterfactual mind-sets were expected to improve performance on tasks involving the consideration of relationships and associations but to impair performance on tasks requiring novel ideas that are uninfluenced by salient associations. The authors conducted several experiments to test this hypothesis. In Experiments 1a and 1b, the authors determined that counterfactual mind-sets increase mental states and preferences for thinking styles consistent with relational thought. Experiment 2 demonstrated a facilitative effect of counterfactual mind-sets on an analytic task involving logical relationships; Experiments 3 and 4 demonstrated that counterfactual mind-sets structure thought and imagination around salient associations and therefore impaired performance on creative generation tasks. In Experiment 5, the authors demonstrated that the detrimental effect of counterfactual mind-sets is limited to creative tasks involving novel idea generation; in a creative association task involving the consideration of relationships between task stimuli, counterfactual mind-sets improved performance.     

Reexamining personal, social, and cultural influences on compliance behavior in the United States, Poland, and Hong Kong

Researchers have extended the literature on strategies of gaining compliance with a request to incorporate cultural variations into the analytic framework. In the present investigation, the authors sought to go beyond previous studies of the factors increasing compliance rates by reexamining how researchers conceptualize and measure personal, social, and cultural influences on compliance behavior in the United States, Poland, and Hong Kong. The authors found that different levels of compliance were affected by culture, principles of influence, and the individual's personal orientation of idiocentrism/allocentrism (I/A). In the present study, the authors extended previous cross-cultural work by decomposing the I/A into 2 separate individual difference variables: normative perceptions and evaluative perceptions. The interaction of person and situation on compliance showed the power of situational demands and the strength of different aspects of personal collectivism. Different patterns of compliance at the culture level revealed the importance of culture in shaping this behavioral tendency. Thus, the authors' integration of personal, social, and cultural influences provided an interactive model to help researchers explain compliance more comprehensively.     

High risk drinking and college students' self-perceptions

The present study examined the relationship between high risk drinking and college students' self-perceptions. High risk drinking was defined as the consumption of four or more drinks in a row for women and five or more drinks in a row for men during a single sitting (within the last year). Historical trends regarding college-age drinking indicate that 44% of college students fit the criteria for high risk drinking at least once over the past year. A survey was administered to 210 college students (52 men and 158 women) between 18 and 22 years of age (M = 20.9, SD = 1.3) to assess their use of alcohol and their self-perceptions. Students' self-perceptions were measured with four subscales from the Neemann-Harter Self-perception Profile for College Students. Students either volunteered to participate in this study outside of class or were solicited during class. It was predicted that students' self-perceptions would differ significantly depending upon their alcohol consumption, i.e., 17.1% were Abstainers, 25.2% were Nonproblem Drinkers, and 57.6% were High Risk Drinkers. Analysis gave significant difference on Global Self-worth between students who abstained and those who were High Risk Drinkers. However, students' perceptions of Scholastic Competence, Intellectual Ability, and Social Acceptance did not differ significantly for the alcohol consumption groups. In addition to high risk drinking, a number of other variables were associated with self-perceptions, such as high school alcohol use, low high school GPA, and students' reported academic involvement. These relations are discussed.     

Innovation across cultures: Connecting leadership,identification, and creative behavior in organizations

Innovation is considered essential for today's organizations to survive and thrive. Researchers have also stressed the importance of leadership as a driver of followers' innovative work behavior (FIB). Yet, despite a large amount of research, three areas remain understudied: (a) The relative importance of different forms of leadership for FIB; (b) the mechanisms through which leadership impacts FIB; and (c) the degree to which relationships between leadership and FIB are generalizable across cultures. To address these lacunae, we propose an integrated model connecting four types of positive leadership behaviors, two types of identification (as mediating variables), and FIB. We tested our model in a global data set comprising responses of N = 7,225 participants from 23 countries, grouped into nine cultural clusters. Our results indicate that perceived LMX quality was the strongest relative predictor of FIB. Furthermore, the relationships between both perceived LMX quality and identity leadership with FIB were mediated by social identification. The indirect effect of LMX on FIB via social identification was stable across clusters, whereas the indirect effects of the other forms of leadership on FIB via social identification were stronger in countries high versus low on collectivism. Power distance did not influence the relations.     

The relationship between masculine gender role stress and psychological adjustment: A question of construct validity?

Masculine gender role stress is a theoretical construct that describes the stress created in men when they feel they are not meeting society's expectations for masculinity, or when the situation forces men to act in feminine-typed ways. The stress produced by these feelings or actions are thought to be related to negative psychological outcomes for men, but should be unrelated to well-being for women. The present study investigated the validity of the masculine gender role stress construct, especially with regard to the assumption that masculine gender role stress is related to negative psychological outcomes for men more than for women. Participants were a group of mostly Caucasian undergraduates. Results indicated that masculine gender role stress was related to depression, hostility, and anxiety, but to the same degree for both men and women. These findings suggest that, if MGRS is a valid construct, then researchers need to explore other ways in which this type of stress can negatively affect men, but not women.