Childhood vaccine refusal and hesitancy intentions in Croatia: insights from a population-based study

Considering that programmatic data suggest a recent rise in vaccine refusal in Croatia, this study, first of its kind in Southeast Europe, aimed to estimate the prevalence, and sociodemographic, and sociocultural determinants of childhood vaccine refusal and hesitancy (CVRH) intentions among Croatian adults. Multi-stage stratified population-based survey included 1000 individuals aged 18–88 years (M_age = 47.7, SD = 17.8), of whom 51.7% were women. The outcome, a categorical indicator, distinguished among individuals who would approve vaccinating their children (vaccine accepting), those who would approve some but not all vaccines (vaccine hesitant), and those who would refuse vaccination (vaccine refusing). A sizeable minority of participants was characterized by childhood vaccine refusal (10.6%) and hesitancy intentions (19.5%). In a multivariate assessment controlling for parenthood, the odds of vaccine hesitancy were significantly increased by a younger age (AOR = 1.96–3.03, p < .01). Religiosity (AOR = 1.12, p < .05) and the use of alternative medicine (AOR = 2.85, p < .001) increased the odds of vaccine refusal. However, individual characteristics seem to be relatively poor predictors of CVRH intentions in Croatia. Following the social contagion model, future research should move beyond individual-level approach and take into account social interaction and social network effects.     

Keeping up day-specific effects of transformational leadership: the role of followers’ emotion regulation

This diary study examines the role of day-specific transformational leadership for followers’ personal initiative. Building on Affective Events Theory, we proposed a direct effect of day-specific transformational leadership on followers’ personal initiative on the same day. Furthermore, we took a closer look at lagged effects of day-specific transformational leadership. More specifically, we hypothesized that positive effects of one day’s transformational leadership can endure until the next day for followers who apply beneficial emotion regulation strategies. We conducted a diary study over five consecutive working days among 97 employees. Two-level hierarchical linear modelling supported our hypotheses. As expected, day-specific transformational leadership positively predicted followers’ personal initiative on the same day. Furthermore, concerning the association between day-specific transformational leadership and followers’ personal initiative on the following day, there was a positive relation for followers applying beneficial emotion regulation strategies in terms of high cognitive reappraisal and low expressive suppression, respectively.     

Towards a conceptual and empirical differentiation between workplace bullying and interpersonal conflict

This study investigates the defining features that distinguish workplace bullying from interpersonal conflict – being frequency, negative social behaviour, power imbalance, length and perceived intent – by contrasting the characteristics of conflict incidents in a group of workplace bullying victims versus a group of non-victims. A group of 47 victims and 62 non-victims were identified based on a questionnaire time 1 and time 2 (time lag of 6 months). The conflict incidents were assessed between time 1 and time 2 using an event-based diary study that was filled out for a period of two times 20 working days with a break of 4 months in between. Hierarchical linear modelling (HLM) showed that conflict incidents differed for victims versus non-victims, in line with the defining aspects of workplace bullying: victims’ conflict incidents related more to the work context and included more personal and work-related negative social behaviour. Victims perceived more inferiority and less control in the conflicts, indicated more continuation of previous conflict incidents and reported more negative intentions from their opponent. These findings validate the conceptual differentiation between interpersonal conflict and workplace bullying, while at the same time adhering to their related nature.     

Multi-dependence in the formation and development of the distributed psychological contract

The psychological contract (PC) describes the implicit and explicit promises and obligations exchanged by individuals and organizational agents in an employment relationship. While it has typically been assumed that each employee establishes the PC with a single agent (i.e., the organization), it seems more realistic to treat PCs as multi-focused, involving various organizational agents. In a qualitative study of 41 professors employed at two public universities in Spain, we investigate the organizational agents involved in the formation and development of PCs, the mutual promises and obligations made by each party and the degree of PC fulfilment. Our findings reveal the multiplicity of organizational sources involved in the development of PCs and the complications that arise owing to multiple dependence. Based on our results, we discuss the need for a deeper examination of PCs from a multi-foci perspective in order to more fully understand the complex nature of the PC.     

Academic self-confidence effects on test anxiety among Nigerian university students

The study investigated academic self-confidence effects on test anxiety indicators of performance impairment and intrusive worry. Respondents were 206 Nigerian undergraduate students (mean age = 20.29, SD = 2. 22; female = 43.2%). The students took the Westside Test Anxiety Scale (Driscoll, 2004) and the Academic Self-confidence Scale (Jones, 2001). Data were analysed to predict performance impairment and intrusive worry from academic self-confidence, taking into account students’ year of study and gender. Results suggest that academic self-confidence influenced both performance impairment and intrusive worry dimensions of test anxiety. Students who were high in academic self-confidence reported lower performance impairment or intrusive worry. Also, first year students reported higher intrusive worry than those in second, third, or fourth year of study. High manifestation of academic self-confidence is an asset for coping with test anxiety.     

Emotion regulation strategies in daily life: mindfulness,cognitive reappraisal and emotion suppression

Most empirical studies of emotion regulation have relied on retrospective trait measures, and have not examined the link between daily regulatory strategies and every day emotional well-being. We used a daily diary methodology with multilevel modelling data analyses (n = 187) to examine the influence of three emotion regulation strategies (mindfulness, cognitive reappraisal and emotion suppression) on the experience of daily negative and positive affect. Our results suggested that daily mindfulness was associated with lower negative and higher positive affect whereas the converse pattern was found for daily emotion suppression; cognitive reappraisal was related to daily positive, but not negative affect. When daily mindfulness, suppression and reappraisal were included in the same models, these strategies predicted unique variance in emotional well-being. Random slope analyses revealed substantial variability in the utility of these strategies. Indeed the presumably “adaptive” cognitive reappraisal strategy seemed to confer no benefit to the regulation of negative affect in approximately half the sample. Additional analyses revealed that age moderates the effect of cognitive reappraisal on daily negative affect: Higher use of reappraisal was associated with more negative affect for adolescents (aged 17 to 19) but became associated with less negative affect with increasing age. We interpret these results in line with a contextual view of emotion regulation where no strategy is inherently “good” or “bad”.     

一年级汉语儿童语素意识与口语词汇的双向关系:追踪研究的证据

以145名小学一年级儿童为被试,进行为期6个月的追踪,考察了儿童复合、同音和同形等不同层面语素意识与口语词汇的双向关系。结果发现:(1)控制了年龄、一般认知能力、语音意识及口语词汇的自回归效应后,同音和复合语素意识对口语词汇的发展具有显著的预测作用。(2)控制了相关变量及自回归效应后,口语词汇能够显著预测复合、同音和同形语素意识的发展。     

Gender differences in severity of writing and reading disabilities

Gender differences in mean level of reading and writing skills were examined in 122 children (80 boys and 42 girls) and 200 adults (115 fathers and 85 mothers) who showed behavioral markers of dyslexia in a family genetics study. Gender differences were found in writing and replicated prior results for typically developing children: Boys and men were more impaired in handwriting and composing than were girls and women, but men, who were more impaired in those writing skills, were also more impaired in spelling than women. Men were more impaired than women in accuracy and rate of reading passages orally, but boys were not more impaired than girls on any of the reading measures. Males were consistently more impaired than females in orthographic skills, which may be the source of gender differences in writing, but not motor skills. Population-based studies that report gender differences in reading in children with dyslexia may be confounding reading and writing disorders—the latter being the true source of gender differences in both children and adults with dyslexia.     

The instrumental use of group prototypicality judgments

Recently, Waldzus et al. [Waldzus, S., Mummendey, A., Wenzel, M., & Boettcher, F. (2004). Of bikers, teachers and Germans: Groups’ diverging views about their prototypicality. British Journal of Social Psychology, 43, 385-400] have shown that ingroup members often tend to judge the ingroup as more prototypical of the superordinate group than other subgroups. In this paper, we argue that, in addition to the motivational processes that have been posited to explain this phenomenon, prototypicality judgments may vary according to instrumental considerations. In particular, those who believe their ingroup interest to be undermined by remaining part of the common group will downplay ingroup’s prototypicality as a way to sustain their separatist position. In a first study (N = 63), we found that Scottish respondents who support Scottish independence judged the Scots to be less prototypical of Britain than the English, as compared with Scots who do not support independence. In a second study (N = 191), we manipulated the rhetorical context within which prototypicality judgments were made. Results showed that the pattern found in study 1 only applied when the issue of independence was made salient. When the issue of the importance of Scottish history in Britain was made salient, the opposite pattern appeared, i.e. supporters of independence judged the Scots more prototypical than the English compared to non-supporters. These results were also interpreted in instrumental terms.     

Addressing confounding errors when using non-experimental, observational data to make causal claims

In their recent book, Is Inequality Bad for Our Health?, Daniels, Kennedy, and Kawachi claim that to “act justly in health policy, we must have knowledge about the causal pathways through which socioeconomic (and other) inequalities work to produce differential health outcomes.” One of the central problems with this approach is its dependency on “knowledge about the causal pathways.” A widely held belief is that the randomized clinical trial (RCT) is, and ought to be the “gold standard” of evaluating the causal efficacy of interventions. However, often the only data available are non-experimental, observational data. For such data, the necessary randomization is missing. Because the randomization is missing, it seems to follow that it is not possible to make epistemically warranted claims about the causal pathways. Although we are not sanguine about the difficulty in using observational data to make warranted causal claims, we are not as pessimistic as those who believe that the only warranted causal claims are claims based on data from (idealized) RCTs. We argue that careful, thoughtful study design, informed by expert knowledge, that incorporates propensity score matching methods in conjunction with instrumental variable analyses, provides the possibility of warranted causal claims using observational data.