Religious beliefs of Catholic college students and their attitudes toward minorities.

"There was a very significant tendency… for those scoring high on the religion scale to be less favorable toward Jews and Negroes and to favor segregation of Negroes in their own parishes, while those who scored low on the religion scale were significantly less prejudiced and were opposed to segregation." (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Faculty attitudes toward Congressional investigations.

Responses to seven open-ended questions concerning Congressional investigations of faculty members or colleges given by 57 (63%) of the liberal arts faculty at the U. of Maine are tabulated. In general, the respondents gave negative responses to question of the need for, or effects of, such investigations. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Attitudes towards people with disabilities between Chinese rehabilitation and business students: An implication for practice.

Objective: To study the effects of curriculum on changing the attitudes of students toward people with disabilities. Participants: Seventy-three rehabilitation students and 107 business students in either their 1st or 3rd year at a Chinese university. Main Outcome Measures: The Attitude Towards Disabled Persons (ATDP) Scale and a questionnaire on course work and personal experience. Results: At the end of the 1st year, rehabilitation students had significantly more positive attitudes, whereas the business students were more negative. In the 3rd year, these attitudes were also found among both groups of students. Conclusion: Rehabilitation psychologists should expand their practice to foster positive attitudinal changes in students in nonrehabilitation programs, which helps create a positive environment for people with disabilities. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

University environment as a mediator of Latino ethnic identity and persistence attitudes.

The authors examined whether the perception of the university environment mediated the relationship between ethnic identity and persistence attitudes of Latino college students. Participants were 175 Latino college students who attended a primarily White university. The results supported the hypothesized mediating role of the university environment. Higher Latino ethnic identity was associated with perceiving a more negative university environment and feeling less committed to finishing college. In turn, perception of a negative college environment was associated with feeling less committed to finishing college. When perception of the university environment was removed, no significant relationship was found between ethnic identity and persistence attitudes, indicating that it is the perceived context that influences Latino college students' persistence attitudes. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The attitudes of West Texas College students toward school integration.

Attitudes were assessed by means of the California F Scale and Integration Attitude scale in an attempt to determine the relation of school integration attitudes, authoritarianism, and school classification. "… it may be concluded that there is a generally positive attitude toward integration… thus easing the widely expressed fear… when integration comes." Discrepancy was obtained between student and parental attitudes. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Published student ratings of instruction: Revealing and reconciling the views of students and faculty.

The authors surveyed students (N?=?396) and faculty (N?=?156) at a 2-year college to determine their views toward publishing student ratings of instruction. Students favored published ratings of instruction, whereas faculty did not. Students cited many advantages of published ratings and rated the likelihood of potential benefits as high relative to faculty. In contrast, faculty cited numerous disadvantages of published ratings and rated the likelihood of potential costs as high relative to students. The authors discuss reasons for the contrasting views of students and faculty and offer suggestions for reconciling them. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The effect of experience in telecourses on attitudes toward instruction by television and impact of a controversial television program.

4social psychological measurement devices were used to compare certain attitudes of an experimental (N = 24) and a control group (N = 33) of college students. "The contention proposed here is that, if all related variables (e.g., attitude toward the instructor, the subject matter itself, general motivation arousal characteristics of the course) could be held constant, television as a teaching medium would take its place along side other educational media; this is, they are all equally well received in proportion to the extent that effective learning principles are implemented in their use." From Psyc Abstracts 36:02:2KC11E. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Mentoring students and professionals with disabilities.

Mentoring can have a significant positive impact on the lives of individuals. People with disabilities seeking to locate mentors face a variety of potential challenges and benefits. This article addresses mentoring-related issues faced by professionals with disabilities. The article presents a model of mentoring and discusses the difficulties faced by individuals with disabilities in locating mentors. It describes the negative impact of the lack of available mentors upon the educational and vocational development of people with disabilities. It offers effective strategies aimed at enhancing mentoring relationships with people with disabilities, including macrofocused strategies capable of enhancing the effectiveness of disability-related mentoring programs and microfocused strategies useful in developing quality mentoring relationships. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

An examination of students' attitudes toward television as a medium of instruction in a psychology course.

74 students enrolled in an elementary psychology course taught through 2 weekly television sessions and 2 weekly discussion-group sessions were asked (1) whether they would take another course using television and (2) whether the on-campus discussion added anything. 70% of the Ss answered YES to the first question, and 42% answered YES to the second. Open-ended responses revealed reasons for the answers given. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Mental illness stigma as a mediator of differences in Caucasian and South Asian college students' attitudes toward psychological counseling.

Previous research has established that Asian Americans use mental health services less frequently and hold poorer attitudes toward psychological counseling than Caucasians. The authors directly tested whether stigmatizing beliefs regarding mental illness might explain such differential attitudes toward counseling in a South Asian and Caucasian student sample. Using mediation analyses, the authors examined 2 aspects of stigma posited to affect help-seeking attitudes: personal stigmatizing views and perceptions of the public's stigmatizing views directed toward persons with mental illness. First, the authors found that Caucasian (n = 74) college students revealed more positive attitudes toward counseling than did South Asian (n = 54) students. Second, in terms of mediation, increased personal stigma, but not perceived stigma, expressed by South Asians partially mediated and accounted for 32% of the observed difference in attitudes toward counseling services. These findings support a long-standing conjecture in the literature regarding the increased significance of stigma processes on disparities in majority-minority help-seeking attitudes. They also suggest that efforts to reduce disparities in attitudes toward counseling for South Asian students specifically should incorporate interventions to reduce the increased stigma expressed by this community, particularly related to a desire for social distance from persons with a mental illness. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Does individualism help explain differences in employers' stigmatizing attitudes toward disability across Chinese and American cities?

Purpose: Stigmatizing attitudes toward people with disabilities can jeopardize such individuals' well-being and recovery through denial of employment and community isolation. By shaping social norms that define group membership, the construct of individualism may partially explain differences in stigmatizing attitudes across cultures. Further, widespread globalization has brought intensely individualistic social practices to certain segments of non-Western cultures. This paper examines whether the construct of individualism can help to explain cross-cultural differences in stigmatizing attitudes observed between American and Chinese employers. Design: Employers (N = 879) from Beijing, Hong Kong, and Chicago provided information on their attitudes toward hiring people with disabilities, and path analyses were conducted to examine potential mediating relationships. Results: Path analyses indicated that vertical individualism, along with perceived responsibility for acquiring a condition, partially mediated the relationship between culture and employers' negative attitudes about job candidates with disabilities. Conclusion: These results suggested that greater espousal of competitive and individualist values may drive stigmatizing attitudes across cultures. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Constructing qualitative knowledge in psychology: Students and faculty negotiate the social context of inquiry.

On the basis of interviews with 13 graduate students and 21 faculty from diverse areas of Canadian departments of psychology, I report researchers' views on qualitative methods in terms of social historical, systemic influences on constructing psychological knowledge. These ideological and structural systems include the historical place of qualitative research in scientific psychology, education in alternative research methods, the socioeconomic reward system for faculty, and the potential for changes in the discipline that could facilitate the legitimation of qualitative methods. The major finding was the desire for methodological pluralism, even among mainstream faculty. In light of the researchers' textured commentaries, I discuss the fate of attempts by some psychologists to expand traditional investigative boundaries, the potential for a shift in the discipline to methodological pluralism, and the implications for the education of undergraduate and graduate students in psychological research. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Attitudes toward persons with disabilities.

Reviews the book, Attitudes toward persons with disabilities by Harold E. Yuker (see record 1988-97173-000). In summer, 1986, Harold E. Yuker, one of the well known pioneers of the study of attitudes toward persons with disabilities, convened some of the best scholars and experts in this field to a conference at Hofstra University. The main purpose of this book, a product of the Hofstra conference, is to provide readers with various perspectives on the different aspects of the study of attitudes toward persons with disabilities. The book includes 19 chapters organized into five parts. In Part One, Beatrice Wright presents the concept of the fundamental negative bias toward persons with physical disabilities and provides an extended analysis of the different aspects of this phenomenon in both research and clinical practice. Part Two contains six expertly written papers on the sources of attitudes. The third part of the book focuses on measurement problems. The fourth part of the book is concerned with attitudes of specific groups. Part five shifts to issues related to attitude change. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Attitudes of white and Negro high school students in a west Texas town toward school integration.

"1. Authoritarian attitudes… were not indicative of negative attitudes toward integration. 2. Negro students… show highly authoritarian attitudes as well as strong positive attitudes toward all areas of school integration. 3. White students in the segregated school systems studied show high authoritarianism though less than Negro students. 4. White students show a number of positive attitude responses toward many aspects of school integration, thus easing the expressed fear of widespread interracial conflicts in integrated schools in this area, though problems may arise in situations necessitating close personal-social contact." (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Self-construals and social anxiety among Asian American college students: Testing emotion suppression as a mediator.

Although past studies have revealed ethnic and cultural variations in social anxiety, little research addresses why these variations might arise. The present study addressed this gap by examining emotion regulation as an explanatory mechanism that may account for such differences. Drawing from a culture-specific (Kitayama, Karasawa, & Mesquita, 2004), as well as process-based (Gross, 1998) model of emotion regulation, we hypothesized that emotion suppression would mediate associations between self-construals (interdependent and independent) and social anxiety symptoms. The data analytic sample consisted of 784 self-identified Asian American college students from 20 colleges/universities in the United States. Participants completed the study measures via a confidential, online questionnaire. Structural equation modeling (SEM) analyses indicated a significant indirect effect of both types of self-construal on social anxiety through emotion suppression. Specifically, an interdependent self-construal was associated with more (whereas an independent self-construal was associated with less) emotion suppression, which in turn, was associated with higher levels of social anxiety. Clinically, these findings suggest that an individual's emotion regulation strategy could serve as a proximal target of intervention among Asian American young adults. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

An investigation of the criterion problem for a medical school faculty.

Through interviews, questionnaires, compendium listings, medical college files, and peer evaluations 80 criterion measures of on-the-job performance of 102 full-time college of medicine faculty members were developed and factor analyzed (a) to determine to what degree premedical and medical school grades predicted the criteria obtained, and (b) to explore other characteristics not currently emphasized in medical education. As indicated by the fact that 1 independent index of performance was obtained for approximately every 3 measures of performance included in the analysis, the most important finding was the complexity of the criterion area studied. School grades came out as a factor independent of the factors related to physician performance. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Predicting student attitudes about racial diversity and gender equity.

[Correction Notice: An erratum for this article was reported in Vol 4(3) of Journal of Diversity in Higher Education (see record 2011-16523-001). There are two errors in Table 2 under the RWA heading and the Cog-gender heading. The necessary changes are provided in the erratum.] [Correction Notice: An erratum for this article was reported in Journal of Diversity in Higher Education on August 1 2011 (see record 2011-16523-001). There are two errors in Table 2. Under the RWA heading, the SDO row should have indicated a positive correlation of .266**, not -.266**. Under the Cog-gender heading, the SDO row should have indicated a negative correlation of -.438**, not .438**.] Factors related to attitudes about racial diversity and gender equity were examined in an ethnically diverse sample of 432 college students (167 European Americans, 83 African Americans, 81 Asian Americans, and 82 Hispanic Americans). In addition to variables of self-interest (i.e., ethnicity, gender, and political views), social ideology (i.e., social dominance orientation, right-wing authoritarianism) and personality traits (openness to experience) were uniquely predictive of attitudes about racial diversity and gender equity. Hierarchical regressions revealed that social dominance orientation most strongly predicted racial attitudes, while right-wing authoritarianism most strongly predicted gender attitudes. Implications for diversity education efforts related to prejudice reduction are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Enhancing assignment perceptions in students with mathematics learning disabilities by including more work: An extension of interspersal research.

Active student responding is often required to remedy computation skill deficits in students with learning disabilities. However, these students may find computation assignments unrewarding and frustrating, and be less likely to choose to engage in assigned computation tasks. In the current study, middle school students with learning disabilities worked on control assignments containing 15 four-digit minus four-digit target computation problems and interspersal assignments containing 15 similar problems and five additional one-digit minus one-digit problems. Results showed that interspersing the brief problems did not reduce target problem accuracy levels or opportunities to respond to target problems. Students did complete more total problems (i.e., target and single-digit problems) on the interspersal assignment. Even though the interspersal assignment contained more work, significantly more students rated it as requiring less effort to complete and selected it for homework. Discussion focuses on applied implications, causal mechanisms, and future research related to the interspersal procedure and the discrete task completion hypothesis. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Development and validation of a scale for measuring cynical attitudes toward college.

The purpose of this research was to develop and validate a new measure of undergraduate student cynicism--the Cynical Attitudes Toward College Scale (CATCS). In Study 1, the authors split data collected from 1,049 students representing 3 diverse college populations into development and confirmation samples. Using confirmatory factor analysis, the authors (a) developed an 18-item measurement model reflecting 4 reliable dimensions of student cynicism-policy, academic, social, and institutional; (b) demonstrated cross-sample generalizability; and (c) established convergent and discriminant validity. In Study 2, the authors showed the CATCS's ability to discriminate among diverse groups of students predicted to differ on the 4 subscales as well as to predict future academic outcomes. Practical applications of the CATCS are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Acculturation, enculturation, and Asian American college students' mental health and attitudes toward seeking professional psychological help.

In the present study, we tested a theoretically and empirically derived partially indirect effects acculturation and enculturation model of Asian American college students' mental health and attitudes toward seeking professional psychological help. Latent variable path analysis with 296 self-identified Asian American college students supported the partially indirect effects model and demonstrated the ways in which behavioral acculturation, behavioral enculturation, values acculturation, values enculturation, and acculturation gap family conflict related to mental health and attitudes toward seeking professional psychological help directly and indirectly through acculturative stress. We also tested a generational status moderator hypothesis to determine whether differences in model-implied relationships emerged across U.S.- (n = 185) and foreign-born (n = 107) participants. Consistent with this hypothesis, statistically significant differences in structural coefficients emerged across generational status. Limitations, future directions for research, and counseling implications are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)