Structure of interest in a Caribbean sample: Application of the Personal Globe Inventory

The structural validity of the Personal Globe Inventory (PGI, Tracey, 2002) as applied to a Caribbean sample of university students in Jamaica (N = 103) and Trinidad (N = 118) was examined. The fit of the data to Holland's six-type RIASEC, the PGI eight-type model, and the PGI spherical structure was examined using the randomized test of hypothesized order relations. The results demonstrated that the circular structure (i.e. RIASEC and the eight-type model), unlike the spherical structure, fits the Caribbean data well. No structural differences were found between gender and nationality. Further examination of the cultural perception of prestige in a Caribbean sample is warranted. Overall, the results support the structural validity of the PGI in Caribbean applications.     

Ecological issues of justice

In the first part of this article the author explores the implications for justice of the wider range of parties holding moral standing that environmental ethics has recently disclosed. These implications concern the equitable treatment of future generations and nonhuman creatures, and are relevant both to policies, such as approaches to global warming, and procedures, which may need to be revised to give an equitable voice to unrepresented interests. Later the author considers some radical implications of regarding humanity as stewards of the planetary environment, a view defended in his recent book Creation, Evolution and Meaning. If all adult humans have this role, but many are prevented from discharging it by poverty and related constraints, then those who are thus disempowered need to be empowered to exercise this role. This requirement of equity would arise not from their moral patienthood but from what is involved in respecting them as moral agents. Some approaches to tackling global warming are considered in this connection.     

Educational Aspirations: The Contribution of Personality, Self-Efficacy, and Interests

In a sample of 365 college students, the authors examined the incremental role of personality, self-efficacy, and interests in explaining level of educational aspirations. Measures were the Adjective Check List (ACL) (Gough & Heilbrun, 1983), the Skills Confidence Inventory (Betz, Borgen, & Harmon, 1996), and the six General Occupational Themes (GOTs) of the Strong Interest Inventory (Harmon, Hansen, Borgen, & Hammer, 1994). The Big Five personality dimensions were estimated from the ACL using John's (1990) method. The authors predicted that each of these domains would make independent contributions to explaining level of educational aspirations (1= bachelor's, 2= master's, and 3= doctorate). Sequentially, following Lent, Brown, and Hackett's (1994) social cognitive career theory, blocks of the Big Five, six General Conference Themes, and six GOTs were entered into a hierarchical regression predicting educational level. With the addition of each block, R² rose from .10, to .26, to .29 for the total sample; similar incremental predictions were obtained separately for women (.13, .29, and .32) and men (.13, .30, and .37).     

知情同意的临床实践存在的问题及对策

临床医疗实践中贯彻实施知情同意原则旨在保护病人的权益不受侵犯,然而知情同意原则实施起来并不简单,它常常会受到主客体两方面种种因素的制约,陷入意想不到的困境。分析了知情同意原则在实施过程中可能出现的一些难以回避的问题,并针对这些问题探讨了若干对策。     

Self-efficacy and interest: Experimental studies of optimal incompetence

How does self-efficacy affect interest? The interest-and-interests model assumes that factors that induce interest—novelty, complexity, conflict, and uncertainty—do so non-linearly. Self-efficacy should thus affect interest quadratically, because it reflects uncertainty about an activity’s outcome. When self-efficacy is low, interest is low because the activity’s outcome is certain. When self-efficacy is moderate, the person’s success on the task seems likely, but not inevitable. But as self-efficacy becomes very high, success seems completely certain, and the task is thus uninteresting. Two experiments tested these predictions. Experiment 1 asked people to rate the interestingness of differentially difficult activities; Experiment 2 manipulated self-efficacy regarding a fuzzy dart game. In both experiments, interest was a quadratic function of self-efficacy. Implications for theories of vocational interest development and change are considered.     

Integrating personality and career adaptability into vocational interest space

The relations between interests, personality and career adaptability were explored in two separate studies. In the first study, the RIASEC measure Occupational Preference Scale was applied along with personality inventories HEXACO-PI-(R)-100 and IPIP-50 on a sample of 602 university students and young adults. In the second study, PGI-Short, HEXACO-60 and Career Adapt-Abilities Scale were applied on a sample of 981 high-school graduates. Results from both studies were discussed together, and general conclusions about overlapping of interests, personality and career adaptability domains were drawn on the basis of correlational analyses and property vector fitting. Both studies have shown weak to moderate relations between interests and personality. In the HEXACO framework, it was found that Openness to Experience was positively related to creative interests, Emotionality was positively related to social interests and negatively related to technical interests, Extraversion was positively related to social and managing interests, and Honesty–Humility was negatively related to interests for business and finance. In the Big Five framework, Agreeableness was related to Social and Artistic interests, and Intellect to Artistic interests. The HEXACO personality domains showed predictive advantage for explaining interests in comparison to Big Five dimensions. The relation between career adaptability and interests was weak, and almost negligible when personality was included in hierarchical regression analysis. Career adaptability was weakly related to highly prestigious interests. Adaptability facets Concern, Control and Confidence were oriented toward data pole of interest space. The general factor of interests was weakly correlated with Openness Extraversion, Career Adaptability, and adaptability facets Confidence and Curiosity. Observed findings are as expected and in line with previous research.     

Verbalization of Decision Strategies in Multiple‐Cue Probabilistic Inference

In multiple‐cue probabilistic inference, people choose between alternatives based on several cues, each of which is differentially associated with an alternative's overall value. Various strategies have been proposed for probabilistic inference (e.g., weighted additive, tally, and take‐the‐best). These strategies differ in how many cue values they require to enact and in how they weight each cue. Do decision makers actually use any of these strategies? Ways to investigate this question include analyzing people's choices and the cues that they reveal. However, different strategies often predict the same decisions, and search behavior says nothing about whether or how people use the information that they acquire. In this research, we attempt to elucidate which strategies participants use in a multiple‐cue probabilistic inference task by examining verbal protocols, a high‐density source of process data. The promise of verbal data is in their utility for testing detailed information processing models. To that end, we apply protocol analysis in conjunction with computational simulations. We find converging evidence across outcome measures, search measures, and verbal reports that most participants use simplifying heuristics, namely take‐the‐best. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The International Test Commission Guidelines on the Security of Tests,Examinations, and Other Assessments

The amount and severity of security threats have increased considerably over the past two decades, calling into question the validity of assessments administered around the world. These threats have increased for a number of reasons, including the popular use of computerized and online technologies for test administration and the use of almost undetectable technologies for capturing test content and illegally sharing it instantly across borders and cultures. No assessment program, large or small, is immune to this potential damage. The International Test Commission has recognized the critical need for every organization with an important assessment program to be aware of these and be prepared to counter them. It was for this purpose that these guidelines were developed. Knowing the threats and the guidelines will lead to effective measures to protect the program and its assets, maintaining the value of the tests and assessments to the international community. The guidelines listed in this article provide recommendations on planning for better security, maintaining security during the development of tests and while they are administered, and responding well when a security breach occurs. Following these guidelines will create a significant protective barrier between those who willingly commit test fraud and the valuable assets a program has spent time and money to build.     

Contrast effects in judgmental forecasting when assessing the implications of worst and best case scenarios

Two experiments investigated whether individuals' forecasts of the demand for products and a stock market index assuming a best or worst case scenario depend on whether they have seen a single scenario in isolation or whether they have also seen a second scenario presenting an opposing view of the future. Normatively, scenarios should be regarded as belonging to different plausible future worlds so that the judged implications of one scenario should not be affected when other scenarios are available. However, the results provided evidence of contrast effects in that the presentation of a second “opposite” scenario led to more extreme forecasts consistent with the polarity of the original scenario. In addition, people were more confident about their forecasts based on a given scenario when two opposing scenarios were available. We examine the implications of our findings for the elicitation of point forecasts and judgmental prediction intervals and the biases that are often associated with them.