Predicting youth access to tobacco: the role of youth versus store-clerk behavior and issues of ecological validity.

Twenty-one 15- to 17-year-olds attempted to purchase cigarettes in 232 stores in the manner that confederates typically do in access studies, as well as in the manipulative ways (e.g., lying about their ages) that youth smokers do, thereby modeling youth access to tobacco within versus outside of studies, respectively. Youth typical-research versus manipulative behavior was contrasted with clerk behavior (requests for youth ID cards) to examine the relative contributions of both to youth access to tobacco for the 1st time. Results revealed that clerk behavior was the strongest predictor of cigarette sales to youth and hence underscore the need for interventions with merchants. Sales nonetheless were higher under youth-manipulative conditions and thereby highlight the low ecological validity of access research.     

SEXIST DISCRIMINATION MAY ACCOUNT FOR WELL-KNOWN GENDER DIFFERENCES IN PSYCHIATRIC SYMPTOMS

It was hypothesized that women may have more depressive, anxious, and somatic symptoms than men because they experience a deleterious stressor that men do not: sexist treatment. A total of 255 students (180 females, 75 males) at a state university completed an anonymous questionnaire containing measures of these symptoms. Women were found to exhibit significantly greater symptoms than men on all of them. Further, women who experienced frequent sexism had significantly more symptoms than men on all symptom measures, whereas women who experienced little sexism did not differ from men on any symptom measure. These findings suggest that gender-specific stressors not only play a role in psychiatric symptoms among women but may account for well-known gender differences in those symptoms as well.     

PHYSICAL AND PSYCHIATRIC CORRELATES OF GENDER DISCRIMINATION

We tested the model that sexist discrimination, measured by the Schedule of Sexist Events (SSE), would account for additional variance in women's physical and psychiatric symptoms, above and beyond that accounted for by generic stressors. A series of hierarchical regression analyses, predicting symptoms on 10 different symptom outcome measures from generic stress and sexist stress (discrimination) were conducted, with the generic stressors entered on the first step and sexist discrimination on the second. Results revealed that sexist discrimination contributed significantly to the variance in women's symptoms, accounting for additional variance in those symptoms. Furthermore, sexist discrimination accounted for more of the variance than did generic stressors in premenstrual, depressive, obsessive-compulsive, somatic, and total psychiatric and physical symptoms. These findings varied with the age and ethnicity of the women and with the symptom measure used, but nonetheless suggest that sexist discrimination plays a significant role in women's most prevalent symptoms.     

Empirically derived groups in the assessment of recovery from aphasia.

This paper examines the pretreatment intercorrelation matrix of the subtests of the Porch Index of Communication Ability to derive factors reflecting components of language impairment. In addition to a general factor reflecting overall language dysfunction, five specific factors reflecting verbal competency (fluency), graphic-verbal expression, gestural-verbal expression, gestural-nonverbal comprehension, and graphic-geometric comprehension were found which accounted for 90.6% of the total variance. A cluster analysis of the five pretreatment factor scores yielded six groups which accounted for 79% of the variance for these factors. These groups were differentiated primarily in terms of impairment and showed a high rate of accuracy prediction for group membership (97.5%). These groups were extremely stable, as shown by the 75% accurate prediction rate derived from the post-treatment factor scores. The effectiveness of this model in generating homogeneous and highly discriminable groups based on objective measures of the patient's language functions indicates that classification of patients into empirical groups should be a major concern of any research design. Implications for assessing effectiveness of therapeutic intervention and the design of test battery were also discussed.     

The effects of trait label and order of presentation on observers' ratings of performance anxiety

In two experiments, the effects of different stimulus presentation orders and trait labels on observers' ratings of performance anxiety were examined. In Experiment 1, 60 college students viewed, in one session, ten 3-min videotapes of a man speaking while displaying a variety of the behavioral manifestations of anxiety. The tapes varied linearly in the percentage of time during which anxious behaviors were emitted. Anxiety ratings were made along either a “calm” or an “anxious” dimension. Subjects were randomly assigned to one of three orders of presentation conditions (with the frequencies of anxious behaviors ascending, descending, or randomized across tapes) and one of two trait-label conditions, calm or anxious. In Experiment 2, 60 additional subjects viewed these same tapes and a contrasting series designed to display a consistent rate of anxiety behaviors. These tapes were viewed in 10 sessions over a 2- to 5-week period. Results replicated prior studies showing that the order of presentation can significantly affect observers' ratings. Additionally, the results suggested that, under certain conditions, subjects may not perceive a conceptually dichotomous variable (e.g., calm vs. anxious) in the same way. These results are discussed in terms of the complexity of observer behavior and potential problems in comparing outcome studies that use dichotomous traits.     

CULTURAL DIVERSITY AND METHODOLOGY IN FEMINIST PSYCHOLOGY: Critique, Proposal, Empirical Example

This article calls for a revision in the methodology of feminist psychological research because cultural differences can neither be investigated nor integrated without methodological change. A methodology that combines etic (objective, behavioral) and emic (subjective, phenomenological) approaches was demonstrated in an empirical investigation. White women did not differ from women of color in self-ratings on several gender-role stereotypic terms (etic data). However, the two groups differed significantly in how they had defined and interpreted those terms while rating themselves (emic data), and these subjective, culturally constituted interpretations predicted the self-ratings.     

Culture and health-related schemas: a review and proposal for interdisciplinary integration.

We present a comprehensive review of anthropological, sociological, and psychological theory and data on the structure, content, and function of health-related schemas. Health psychology's need to integrate specific variables and principles from the other disciplines is highlighted. Suggestions for future research are offered, and the importance of cultural factors in health beliefs is emphasized.