Comparing Chinese youth with American youth on adjustment: An illustration of measurement issues in cross-cultural research

In this article, we used results from two studies to show the need to go beyond linguistic equivalence to establish construct validity and measurement invariance in cross-cultural research. Study 1 examined Rosenberg Self-Esteem (RSE; 10 items) data from 156 Mainland Chinese youth (M = 13.8 years, SD = .53) and 213 Chinese-American youth (M = 13.6 years, SD = 2.1) from high socioeconomic status (SES) families. The Chinese translation of the RSE has been widely used. Study 2 included 1060 Mainland Chinese youth (M = 15.6 years, SD = 2.3) and 412 racially diverse American youth (M = 16.0, SD = 2.9) from all SES backgrounds. Data were collected with the third and newest edition of the Behavioural Assessment System for Children-Self Report of Personality (BASC-3-SRP; 189 items). We translated and back-translated the BASC-3-SRP between English and Chinese to establish linguistic equivalence. All participants were females. Study 1 showed that the RSE had acceptable internal consistency but lacked construct validity. Study 2 showed that the original and the translated BASC-3-SRP had good internal consistency and construct validity, but nine of its 16 subscales lacked measurement invariance. These results highlight measurement issues facing international and cross-cultural research.     

Losing My Religion as a Natural Experiment: How State Pressure and Taxes Led to Church Disaffiliations between 1940 and 2010 in Germany

The sociological literature has produced a remarkably consistent picture of the quantitative patterns of religious disaffiliations in Western countries. This article argues, and demonstrates, that strong changes in a social context may lead individuals to disaffiliate rapidly, leading to very different aggregate effects from those in the “western model.” We use the unique situation of the separation of Germany from 1949 to 1989 and its subsequent reunification as a “natural experiment” to show just how much the relationships routinely found can be disrupted under changed conditions. The state socialist “treatment” affected religious disaffiliations in East Germany profoundly as it (a) made disaffiliations 10 times more probable in the East than in the West in the 1950s and 1960s, (b) shielded East German church members from factors that led to mass disaffiliations in the West in the late 1960s and early 1970s, (c) reversed the education‐disaffiliation link in the East, thus making disaffiliation more likely among the less educated, and (d) led to an especially strong increase in disaffiliations in the East right after the reunification     

Changing the Criminal Justice System Response to Sexual Assault: An Empirical Study of a Participatory Action Research Project

In jurisdictions throughout the United States, thousands of sexual assault kits (SAKs; also known as a “rape kits”) have not been submitted by the police for forensic DNA testing. DNA evidence may be helpful to sexual assault investigations and prosecutions by identifying perpetrators, revealing serial offenders through DNA matches across cases, and exonerating those who have been wrongly accused. This paper describes a longitudinal action research project conducted in Detroit, Michigan after that city discovered approximately 11,000 untested sexual assault kits in a police department storage facility. We conducted a root cause analysis to examine individual, organizational, community, and societal factors that contributed to the development of the rape kit backlog in Detroit. Based on those findings, we implemented and evaluated structural changes to increase staffing, promote kit testing, and retrain police and prosecutors so that cases could be reopened for investigation and prosecution. As we conducted this work, we also studied how this action research project impacted the Detroit criminal justice system. Participating in this project changed stakeholders’ attitudes about the utility of research to address community problems, the usefulness of DNA evidence in sexual assault cases, and the impact of trauma on survivors. The results led to new protocols for SAK testing and police investigations, and new state legislation mandating SAK forensic DNA testing.     

Fostering Well‐being through Social Support: The Role of Evangelical Communities in the Lives of Dominican Women of Haitian Descent

Women of Haitian descent living in the Dominican Republic experience oppression due to their gender, ethnicity, and economic status. They also exhibit high rates of participation in evangelical Christian communities, a paradoxical finding given the restricted roles women have traditionally played in these settings. The goals of this study were to explore the perceived benefits of participation in evangelical communities and the setting characteristics that lead to these benefits. The research team interviewed 19 current and former church participants aged 18–59. Thematic analysis revealed three perceived benefits of congregational life. Participants viewed their participation as: (a) an opportunity for personal growth and development; (b) protective against negative social influences; and (c) providing social support in the face of life challenges. In addition, dependable, expected, and reciprocal relational support was a key characteristic of evangelical communities. Findings extend the current understanding of how religious communities enhance well‐being for marginalized women through social support networks. Findings also explore the dialectical nature of settings as both empowering and disempowering. Implications for future interventions are discussed.     

Close‐knit ties through thick and thin: Sharing social exclusion and acceptance enhances social bond

Three experiments investigated whether and why sharing experiences of social exclusion or social acceptance with others strengthens social bonds. Participants experienced either social exclusion or social acceptance alongside another co‐participant who either also experienced the same outcome, or experienced a different outcome, as them. Multilevel modeling results showed that participant dyads who shared the experience of social exclusion or social acceptance felt closer to each other than those who experienced different outcomes, and that perceived similarity mediated the effect of shared experiences on social bonds. Interestingly, participants felt closer to one another after having shared social acceptance, more so than when they have shared social exclusion. Implications of the present findings are interpreted in light of theories of social exclusion, shared experiences, and social bonding.     

Prepared to fake? The relationship between applicants’ job interview preparation and faking

Multiple frameworks and models postulate an effect of job interview preparation on faking. Two studies were conducted to examine if applicants’ interview preparation is correlated with higher faking. Besides analyzing the general extent of preparation, we also distinguished between different preparation categories. In Study 1 (N = 237), a presented preparation video led to higher intentions on image protection but did not increase overall faking intentions. Study 2 (N = 206) focused on past preparation and impression management (IM). The total time spent on preparation was positively correlated with faking. Applicants’ preparation via online videos and professional interview preparation was correlated with higher deceptive and honest IM. Preparation via online videos was additionally correlated with a higher perceived interview difficulty.     

Correlations between Dual-Pathway White Matter Alterations and Language Impairment in Patients with Aphasia: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis

Neuropsychology Review - While converging evidence suggests linguistic roles of white matter tracts, detailed associations between white matter alterations of dual pathways and language abilities...     

Attentional characteristics of different types of individuals with high self-esteem in self-threatening situations

The high self-esteem (HSE) heterogeneity hypothesis provides a new research perspective for investigating differences in the quantity and quality of different types of self-esteem. The present study adopted the emotional Stroop paradigm and the odd-one-out search task to explore how individuals with different types of self-esteem process social information in self-threatening situations. The results showed that individuals with different types of self-esteem had an attentional bias toward negative information and had different attentional biases toward angry faces in self-threatening situations. Individuals with fragile HSE and low self-esteem showed facilitated attention to angry faces and had difficulty drawing attention away from them; secure HSE individuals only showed difficulty disengaging attention from angry faces.