Peer networks and bullying in schools

This study looked at how the social constellations in school classes relate to bullying problems. Using peer-evaluation questionnaires, the peer networks of children with different participant roles (such as victim, bully, assistant of bully, reinforcer of bully, defender of victim, outsider) were explored. The subjects were 459 sixth-grade-children (218 girls, 241 boys), aged 11 to 12 years, in Finland. The main findings were: 1) Children who tended to behave in either similar or complementary participant roles in situations of bullying formed networks with each other. The individual child's behavior in bullying situations was strongly connected to how the members of his/her network behaved in such situations. 2) Bullies, assistants, and reinforcers belonged to larger networks than did defenders, outsiders and victims. 3) Children outside the networks were most often victims. It was concluded that behavior in bullying situations can be said to be one feature around which the peer networks in school classes are organized. Thus prevention, as well as intervention strategies against bullying should focus not only on individual children, but also on the wider social context of the class.     

Training public-speaking behavior: an experimental analysis and social validation

The effect of an instructional package on public-speaking behaviors was analyzed in two experiments. The instructional package was designed to teach public-speaking trainees to look at the audience, make gestures, and perform a number of speaking behaviors. The results of Experiment I, with a university student serving as the trainee, showed that the percentage of each category of public-speaking target behavior increased only after the instructional package was introduced for that category. The results of Experiment 2, with three low-income paraprofessional staff members of a neighborhood service center serving as trainees, showed that the percentage of target behaviors increased after the instructional package was introduced for the respective trainee. Audience ratings of public-speaking performance were correlated with direct observations of target responses. All trainees showed marked improvements in audience ratings from pretraining to posttraining. This study demonstrated an effective procedure for training public-speaking behaviors.     

The effects of confederate prompt delivery style in a standardized social simulation test

Role plays or social simulations are presently one of the most common methods for assessing social skills. Although social simulation techniques have become quite popular, little is known about the psychometric adequacy of many of the role-play instruments which have been developed. This investigation was an attempt to determine certain properties of one particular social skills assessment instrument: the Simulated Social Interaction Test. The effects of various confederate prompt delivery styles on the judged social competency level of subjects in the Simulated Social Interaction Test were examined. Two confederates, one male and one female, were trained to portray three confederate prompt delivery styles: (a) unreceptive, (b) neutral, and (c) receptive. In order to determine if judges would compensate for the different confederate prompt delivery styles, two sets of trained judges rated the levels of skill and anxiety generated by the 30 subjects tested. One set of judges was screened from the confererate delivery while observing the simulation; the other set of judges followed the more common rating procedure (i.e., they were not screened from the confederates' deliveries). Data analysis examined variation in subject performance under each condition and according to each set of judges for both overall social skills and anxiety ratings. Confederate prompt delivery style was found to affect subjects' rated performance. There was also suggestive evidence that judges were sometimes able to compensate for different confederate delivery styles. The practical and theoretical implications of the results are discussed.This study was funded in part by a research grant from the Veterans Administration.     

Peer identification and empirical validation of problematic interpersonal situations of male drug addicts

The present research was concerned with identifying and validating the problematic interpersonal situations of male veteran drug addicts. In Study I, 20 addicts self-monitored the situations with which they had difficulty coping and their associated characteristics throughout a 2-week period. Fifty situations were obtained and then rewritten into specific interpersonal scenarios. In Study II, a second group of 36 addicts and a comparison group of 20 disabled veterans rated the commonality and difficulty of each scenario along seven-point scales. Univariate ANOVAs found that five scenarios received ratings greater than four on both scales and were associated with significantly higher ratings by the addicts. These preliminary scenarios may serve as role-play situations during social-skills assessment and training and may provide further information regarding the interpersonal determinants of relapse occasioned in the natural environment. The need for controlled comparison studies using behavioral measures and an overall improvement in the methodological rigor of research in the area is discussed.The authors acknowledge the editorial comments of Ted D. Nirenberg, Ph.D., on an earlier draft of this paper. Portions of these data were presented at the Fifth World Congress on Behavior Therapy, Washington, DC.     

Organizational identification and “currencies of exchange”: integrating social identity and social exchange perspectives

We integrate social exchange and social identity perspectives to propose and test the prediction that depending on their level of organizational identification, people may reciprocate the received organizational support using different “currencies of exchange”—reducing turnover intentions or, instead, engaging in extra‐role behavior. Specifically, the relationship of perceived organizational support (POS) with turnover intentions is proposed to be stronger with lower identification, whereas POS is proposed to be more closely related to extra‐role behavior with higher organizational identification. These predictions were supported in a cross‐sectional survey of N = 1,000 employees of a financial services firm. These results speak to the added value of integrating the social exchange perspective with its roots in applied psychology and the social identity perspective with its roots in social psychology in understanding the employee‐organization relationship.     

基于服务场景的中国医务社工角色探讨

明确定义中国医务社工的角色内涵与工作职责十分必要。基于入院前、急诊、门诊、住院、出院与安宁疗护六个不同医疗服务场景,仔细梳理并描述医务社工的角色与职责,体现医务社工的角色价值,推动社会、患者及其家属、医生与护士,乃至医务社工自身对该职业的理解与认同。此外,对应不同场景下医务社工的角色与职责,提出该群体需具备的知识与技能,并就如何确保此类知识与技能被中国医务社工牢固掌握提出有关教育与培训的建议。     

新冠疫情下过度胜任教师会进行知识共享吗?角色宽度自我效能感和知识共享意愿的链式中介作用

新冠肺炎疫情之下教育部要求教师利用网络平台"停课不停学"。本文以人-环境匹配理论为基础,探讨疫情之下过度胜任教师的知识共享行为。采用126份一线教师问卷调查数据,应用bootstrap进行了中介效应的检验。结果表明,过度胜任感较高的教师会产生更多的知识共享行为;角色宽度自我效能感和知识共享意愿在过度胜任感影响知识共享行为过程中起中介作用,且角色自我效能感和知识共享意愿还存在链式中介作用。研究成果深化了过度胜任感影响教师知识共享行为作用机制的认识,在重大社会事件下探索过度胜任带来的积极影响,并提出相应的政策建议,为学校教师提升教学水平以更好地完成教育教学目标提供理论和实践依据。     

基于社会角色视角的村卫生室发展探讨

村卫生室是三级卫生服务体系的网底,是农民健康的“保护伞”和农村社会的“稳定器”。村卫生室在发展过程中遭遇制度和资源瓶颈,运用社会角色理论分析各个利益主体与村卫生室之间的互动关系,研究村卫生室的角色距离和角色期望的表现形式,识别村卫生室的新角色期望内涵,并据此探讨村卫生室新角色实践途径。通过分析得出农村卫生服务系统的角色结构和村卫生室在其中扮演的角色丛,村卫生室要扮演好自己的社会角色,必须同时考虑“公共产品”和“私人产品”特征,以“公共产品”为自己的主要角色,“私人产品”为次要角色。     

Role playing to train elementary teachers to use a classroom management "skill package"

Two teachers who led regular third-grade classrooms in a suburban elementary school were trained via role-playing to use a broad range of social skills in dealing with group behavioral management in the classroom. Teacher training reduced disruptive student behavior during both seat work and group discussions in both classrooms. A measure of student productivity during arithmetic period in one classroom showed significant gains in arithmetic problems correct per day for the middle and bottom thirds of the class, with the bottom third increasing by 76%.