Dimensional structure and measurement invariance of the BRIEF-2 across gender in a socially vulnerable sample of primary school-aged children

The present study aims to analyze, on the one hand, the dimensional structure of the BRIEF-2 and, on the other, its measurement invariance across gender in a sample of primary school-aged children. Participants were 168 students (51.8% girls) in conditions of social risk and in foster homes, with ages ranging from 6 to 15 years old (M = 10.08; SD = 2.09). The children’s executive functioning level was obtained from their parents or caregivers. The analysis of the internal structure using confirmatory factor analysis reveals that the model with three indexes (Behavioral, Emotional and Cognitive) and nine scales (Inhibit, Shift, Self-Monitor, Emotional Control, Initiate, Working Memory, Plan/Organize, Organization of Materials and Task-Monitor) showed a good fit to the sample. Likewise, the results support the measurement invariance of the BRIEF-2 across genders. The coefficient alpha values for the index scores ranged from .71 to .91, with coefficients for the individual scales ranging from .66 to .88. The findings support the factorial validity of the BRIEF-2 scores, suggesting that it is an adequate instrument to evaluate executive functioning reported by parents and caregivers. Future studies must continue to examine the structure and invariance of the BRIEF-2 in different populations and cultures.     

Factors affecting compliance with reference check requests

Structured reference checks have been demonstrated to be a reliable and valid predictor of job performance. However, the reference check is a unique assessment method for personnel selection in that a third party, the reference provider, is the source of the critical information on the candidate. If a reference provider is unwilling to either partially or fully comply with a reference check request, the usefulness of the reference check is likely to be compromised. This study examined the factors affecting compliance of the potential reference provider with a reference check request. The sample consisted of 905 U.S. adults who were recruited through the Prolific online crowdsourcing platform ( https://prolific.ac ). We asked the participants a series of questions related to their actual experiences over the past year in responding to reference check requests. We also included a between‐subjects scenario that examined whether job candidate performance, relationship to job candidate, and method of providing the employment reference would affect hypothetical compliance. The results of the study can be used to more deeply understand the factors that are related to the compliance of the reference provider, and as a result, more fully understand the value of the reference check for selection.     

Diverse community contexts and community resources for sexual and gender minority youth: A mixed‐methods study

Sexual and gender minority (SGM) youth face marginalization and oppression on the basis of their SGM identity, and they often lack traditional support systems to deal with these minority stressors. SGM community resources may alleviate the impact of the stressors that SGM youth face, but these have not been studied in relation to the size and climate of SGM youth's communities. This mixed‐methods study examined the relationship between community size and the climate toward SGM individuals and the availability and utilization of SGM community resources. Survey findings indicate that nonmetropolitan communities were associated with less availability and utilization; hostile communities were associated with lower availability only. Interview findings reveal nuanced complexities on the relationship between community and resource provision. Implications for future research and community practice are discussed.     

Sex,gender, and intersex: anthropological,medical, and ethical critiques and proposals

ABSTRACT

The problems of intersex have received little attention from both Catholic Magisterium and theologians. Early in 2019, the Vatican Congregation for Catholic Education issued a document intended to be a pathway for a dialogue on the issue of gender in education. This essay responds to that document as a contribution to filling theological gaps in the consideration of intersex. It first explains and critiques the theological anthropology underlying the Vatican document and then analyzes and critiques Western cultural, medical approaches to intersex persons. It dialogues with the experience of intersex persons and the social sciences that document it and concludes by proposing ethical principles to guide intersex persons, their parents, and their physicians in the care and treatment of intersex.     

Formation of gender identity in the Islamic republic of Iran: does educational institution matter?

This article focuses on the process of gender identity construction through the educational system from a socio-cultural perspective. Socialisation operates as a strategy to protect social unity and group superiority. Although socialisation is an enduring process involving various institutions, childhood is a vital period of gender socialisation whereby schools and school textbooks play a substantial role as the first official sources of socialisation in children. Using content analysis method, this article focuses on Iran’s primary school textbooks. The results support the pattern of ‘gender bias’, rather than ‘gender fairness’. This is a more evident observation in the higher educational grades. The patterns highlighted here are evidently incompatible with socio-demographic progresses in women’s status over recent years, which call for revision in the school education resources in this context.     

Bias at the intersection of race and gender: Evidence from preschool‐aged children

There is ample evidence of racial and gender bias in young children, but thus far this evidence comes almost exclusively from children's responses to a single social category (either race or gender). Yet we are each simultaneously members of many social categories (including our race and gender). Among adults, racial and gender biases intersect: negative racial biases are expressed more strongly against males than females. Here, we consider the developmental origin of bias at the intersection of race and gender. Relying on both implicit and explicit measures, we assessed 4‐year‐old children's responses to target images of children who varied systematically in both race (Black and White) and gender (male and female). Children revealed a strong and consistent pro‐White bias. This racial bias was expressed more strongly for males than females: children's responses to Black boys were less positive than to Black girls, White boys or White girls. This outcome, which constitutes the earliest evidence of bias at the intersection of race and gender, underscores the importance of addressing bias in the first years of life.     

Whose voice counts? Gender,power, and epistemologies in the seminary classroom

This article wrestles with the question “whose voice counts?” as an entrée into a discussion of the challenges students encounter in learning to value different epistemologies and that professors encounter in attempting to teach for inclusion of voices. The essay reflects on an experience teaching a graduate seminar on gender and epistemology in which students encounter challenges reflecting on readings that present theology in the form of personal narratives, rather than in a more abstract or theoretical form. Course content and genres of writing are both gendered and subject to power dynamics associated with the uneven treatment of different types of knowledge. The paper focuses primarily on the lens of gender but notes as well the intersectional nature of gender – and the ways in which the course dynamics are complicated by the race, sexuality, and even the class of the authors, students, and teacher. The paper makes two substantial arguments. First, it names a pedagogical meta‐question at the intersection of gender and pedagogy: Even when women are on the syllabus, how are educators ensuring that the epistemologies at work in their classrooms allow for equal authorial authority in the classroom? Second, the paper challenges educators to make changes in their classrooms to allow students time to engage and employ epistemologies they discuss and to see the importance of these practices for wider systemic change in institutions and society.     

Three-channel convolutional neural networks for vegetable leaf disease recognition

The color information of diseased leaf is the main basis for leaf based plant disease recognition. To make use of color information, a novel three-channel convolutional neural networks (TCCNN) model is constructed by combining three color components for vegetable leaf disease recognition. In the model, each channel of TCCNN is fed by one of three color components of RGB diseased leaf image, the convolutional feature in each CNN is learned and transmitted to the next convolutional layer and pooling layer in turn, then the features are fused through a fully connected fusion layer to get a deep-level disease recognition feature vector. Finally, a softmax layer makes use of the feature vector to classify the input images into the predefined classes. The proposed method can automatically learn the representative features from the complex diseased leaf images, and effectively recognize vegetable diseases. The experimental results validate that the proposed method outperforms the state-of-the-art methods of the vegetable leaf disease recognition.     

The relation between low self-esteem and depressive mood in a non-clinical sample: The role of gender and negative life events

The suggestion that self-esteem is both a protective and a risk factor for depression is well documented. However, this association is not consistently observed by empirical research. The current study investigated the main and interactive effects of low self-esteem and stressful life events on depressive mood in a sample of university students (N = 862; female = 72%; black = 67%; mean age = 21.70, SD = 13.51). The students completed the Hopkins Symptom Checklist, the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale, and the Perceived Stress Scale. Data were analysed using structural equation modelling (SEM); with stressful life events scores as a mediator, and gender as a moderator, of the relation between low self-esteem and depression. Results indicate that low self-esteem significantly predicted depression, and that stressful life events partially mediated that relationship. Support emerged for the vulnerability effects of low self-esteem on depression and they held across gender groups. Low self-esteem may be a significant indicator of individuals who are at risk for developing depressive mood.