Timely Completion of Class Requirements: Effects of Student and Faculty Gender

Male and female students have displayed different reactions to the gender of their faculty. This research was designed to explore whether biases exist early in the school term. Students unfavorable attitudes toward instructors were measured by the extent to which they delayed completing a course requirement: participation in a subject pool. Students scheduled a date upon which to participate in a research study. Discrepancies between their scheduled and their actual participation dates reveal that male students delayed their requirement (a) more when their instructors were female than when they were male, and (b) more than female students when the instructors were female. Supporting data suggest that the delayed completion time reflects lower evaluations of female faculty. Discussion focuses on implications in academic settings.     

Scientific information and uncertainty: Challenges for the use of science in policymaking

Science can reinforce the healthy aspects of the politics of the policy process, to identify and further the public interest by discrediting policy options serving only special interests and helping to select among “science-confident” and “hedging” options. To do so, scientists must learn how to manage and communicate the degree of uncertainty in scientific understanding and prediction, lest uncertainty be manipulated to discredit science or to justify inaction. For natural resource and environmental policy, the institutional interests of government agencies, as well as private interests, pose challenges of suppression, over-simplification, or distortion of scientific information. Scientists can combat these maneuvers, but must also look inward to ensure that their own special interests do not undermine the usefulness of science.     

Wolfhart Pannenberg's Engagement with the Natural Sciences

Wolfhart Pannenberg's engagement with the natural sciences is surveyed. A critique is given of his treatment of these themes: the concept of a field; contingency; the role of the future.     

The Emerging Gender Gap: Cultural and Economic Conservatism in the Netherlands 1970–1992

Research on gender differences in political alignments and cultural orientations in the past decades reveals a large value change in women relative to that in men, indicating that women might recently have become less conservative than men, whereas women used to be more conservative in many respects. In this article this possible reversal in the gender gap in recent decades is analyzed. Recent research has demonstrated that in the Netherlands women are presently less conservative than men. This lower level of conservatism in Dutch women is apparent with respect to both economic and cultural issues. It is investigated whether these gender differences are due to a reversal in the gender gap in the Netherlands and if so, how this emerging gender gap can be explained. Three explanations are hypothesized: one in terms of the characteristics of the youngest generations (the gender-cohort model), the second in terms of growing structural equality between women and men in general (the situational/structural model), and a specification of the second model, in which differential effects of structural factors for women and men are presumed to have their effect (the gender-interaction model). Neither of the three tested models was in itself able to fully explain the results. The gender gap can partly be explained by growing structural equality between women and men, partly by the fact that the gender gap is largest in the youngest generations (economic conservatism), and partly by the fact that the gender gap is largest between groups of "independent" women and their male counterparts. Possible additional determinants are also discussed.     

A study of antecedents of organizational commitment

Various theories of organizational behaviors suggest that there should be significant relationships between the work-related variables and commitment to an organization. This study shows that, for a sample of 203 Japanese industrial workers, four components (attachment, internalization, normative, and continuance) of organizational commitment are predicted by organizational climate, supervisory behavior, organizational tenure, and role clarity. Implications for future research are discussed.     

Role adjustment as the unit of analysis for researching child development during the transition to school

While child development is well-recognized as a complex process which could hardly be decomposed into separate lines or domains in contemporary psychological theories, the decomposition approach is widely used in empirical studies. Based on the cultural-historical theory, this study argues for adopting the unit of analysis as a way to bridge this gap, and finds “role adjustment” as a suitable unit to analyse child development during the transition to school. The case of a 5-year-old second-generation Chinese Australian child's transition to school (with a total of 34 h of observation and 5 h of interview) is presented to verify its feasibility and to illustrate how it could be achieved in a research practice. The case study demonstrates that a child's role adjustment is in essence a process of transforming his/her role system, during which his/her major roles, the relation of the major roles, as well as his/her role-taking patterns change as a whole, and by tracing a child's role adjustment trajectory, how the child is learning and developing, what difficulties he/she encounter, and why these difficulties appear become clear.     

医患风险沟通：角色与信息匹配的视角

医患沟通失真常引发高误诊率、医患冲突。现有风险具体观和抽象观各自提出风险沟通模型,但存在诸多矛盾或不一致。通过引入角色与信息匹配视角,从建构水平理论提出事件体验(事件吸引力)和概率体验(概率敏感性)解释,有助于调和矛盾并提出建议：为医生匹配抽象风险信息、患者匹配具体风险信息,能减少沟通失真,提高风险沟通质量。未来需进一步深究个体差异对匹配效应的影响、探索匹配效应的生态效度、开发科学有效的沟通模式。     

Maternal fatigue and burnout: From self-forgetfulness to environmental expectations

ObjectiveThe main objective of this study is to explore, through a qualitative approach, maternal and family expectations that could be related to maternal fatigue and exhaustion. The secondary objective is to identify aspects that could be specific to a specific age group.MethodA total of fourteen French mothers aged 28 to 42 (mean age 32 ± 4.3 years), with at least one child under 10 years of age, participated in a Focus Group. Mothers were grouped into two groups according to the age of their child(ren): 1) with children between 0 and 1 year of age; 2) with children between 1 and 10 years of age. Several themes were discussed: mothers’ sacrifices and efforts, maternal fatigue and exhaustion, maternal, family and social expectations, and means of prevention. A thematic analysis and a classification analysis were carried out.ResultsThe thematic analysis revealed that exhaustion is partly related to expectations and family and social remarks. The classification analyses showed that mothers’ discourse can be classified into three classes: the first class called “Self-forgetfulness and its consequences” (38.1%); the second class called “The mother as the main manager of the family's daily life” (39.2%) and the third “Social pressure” (22.7%).DiscussionThis exploratory study shows that maternal exhaustion has its origin in the tasks and responsibilities often associated with maternal role as well as in the pressure exerted by family and friends. Although differences exist between mothers in the two groups, several factors appear to be independent of the age of the children. Prevention strategies are discussed in this article.