Gender-related traits and helping behaviors.

Explored the relation between gender-related instrumental and expressive traits and bystander intervention. 91 male and 83 female undergraduates participated in either a 2- or a 4-person group discussion, carried on via an intercom, during which one of the purported participants (18 undergraduate confederates served) supposedly fainted and fell to the floor. Relationships were determined between helping behavior and scores on the M (instrumentality) and F (expressiveness) scales of the Personal Attributes Questionnaire. In both experimental conditions, men high in instrumentality were less likely to respond than low-scoring men, thus replicating findings obtained by D. M. Tice and R. F. Baumeister (see record 1986-01161-001) with a group of men and women. A high degree of expressiveness in men was also associated with lesser responding. These results were contrary to those reported by P. Senneker and C. Hendrick (see record 1984-12171-001), who found with a group of women that instrumentality facilitated helping behaviors. Nonsignificant results were found in females, but the trends were in the same direction as those reported by Senneker and Hendrick. A theoretical analysis integrating these disparate findings is presented. (11 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The paradox of statistical power and publication bias.

Comments on the article by J. E. Maddock and J. S. Rossi (see record 2000-14051-009) which provided an analysis of statistical power in health psychology-related journals. Contrary to Maddock and Rossi's (2001) opening sentence, statistical power is only of concern if we are interested in statistical significance; it provides no insight on effect. A more informative power analysis could be gained from encouraging meta-analysts to include a relative power analysis in their review. Thus, once an average effect size is calculated across the literature on a specific topic, then an estimate of power can be made. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Source-monitoring training facilitates preschoolers' eyewitness memory performance.

Preschool children are more susceptible to misleading postevent information than are older children and adults. One reason for young children's suggestibility is their failure to monitor the source of their memories, as in, for example, discriminating whether an event was seen live versus on television. The authors investigated whether source-monitoring training would decrease preschoolers' suggestibility. Thirty-six 3-4-year-olds observed target live and video events and were then given source-monitoring or recognition (control) training on nontarget events. Following training, all children answered 24 misleading and nonmisleading target-event questions. Children given source-monitoring training were more accurate than control group children in response to misleading and nonmisleading yes-no questions and in response to nonmisleading, open-ended questions. Implications for strategy development, dual representation, and child witness interviewing are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The impact of civility interventions on employee social behavior, distress, and attitudes.

Although incivility has been identified as an important issue in workplaces, little research has focused on reducing incivility and improving employee outcomes. Health care workers (N = 1,173, Time 1; N = 907, Time 2) working in 41 units completed a survey of social relationships, burnout, turnover intention, attitudes, and management trust before and after a 6-month intervention, CREW (Civility, Respect, and Engagement at Work). Most measures significantly improved for the 8 intervention units, and these improvements were significantly greater than changes in the 33 contrast units. Specifically, significant interactions indicating greater improvements in the intervention groups than in the contrast groups were found for coworker civility, supervisor incivility, respect, cynicism, job satisfaction, management trust, and absences. Improvements in civility mediated improvements in attitudes. The results suggest that this employee-based civility intervention can improve collegiality and enhance health care provider outcomes. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Coping with body image changes following a disfiguring burn injury.

The influence of emotion-focused coping on distress following disfiguring injury was examined. Two types of emotion-focused coping (i.e., venting emotions vs. mental disengagement) were assessed in 78 patients with burn injury at baseline during acute hospitalization. Body image dissatisfaction (BID) was assessed 1 week and 2 months following discharge. Use at baseline of both venting emotions and mental disengagement, compared with use of only one or neither of these coping methods, was associated at the 2-month postdischarge follow-up with significantly higher BID related to nonfacial aspects of appearance and with a greater negative social impact of disfigurement. D. M. Wegner's (1994) theoretical model of mental control and a proposed motivational analysis are used to interpret these findings. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The List_Tree — An Innovative Solution to Customer Portfolio Representation

The scale of BT's operations necessitates the use of very large scale computing systems, and the storage and management of large volumes of data. Customer product portfolios are an important form of data which can be difficult to store in a space-efficient way. The difficulties arise from the inherently structured form of product portfolios, and the fact that they change over time as customers add or remove products. This paper introduces a new data-modelling abstraction called the List_Tree. It has been designed specifically to support the efficient storage and manipulation of customer product portfolios, but may also prove useful in other applications with similar general requirements.     

Development and validation of the Satisfaction With Appearance Scale: Assessing body image among burn-injured patients.

The Satisfaction With Appearance Scale (SWAP) is a 14-item questionnaire, assessing both the subjective appraisal and social-behavioral components of body image among burn survivors. Burn survivors requiring hospitalization (n?=?165) completed a packet of psychometric instruments, including the SWAP at 1-week postdischarge. The SWAP demonstrated a high level of internal consistency (Cronbach's alpha, ra ?=?.87; the mean interitem correlation, rii ?=?.32, the mean item-total correlation, rit ?=?.53). Eighty-four participants were retested approximately 2 months after the initial assessment to evaluate test-retest reliability ( rtt ?=?.59). A principal-components analysis with a varimax rotation yielded 4 easily interpretable factors accounting for 66% of the total variance. The correlations of the SWAP total score with other selected psychometric measures provided evidence for both convergent and discriminant validity. This initial evaluation of the SWAP suggests that it is both a reliable and valid measure of body image for a burn-injured population. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Faecal-Indicator Budgets for Recreational Coastal Waters: A Catchment Approach

This paper explores the application of a catchment faecal-indicator budget approach to the examination of faecal-indicator sources impacting on coastal recreational water quality. This involves (i) the characterization of water quality in sewage effluent and riverine inputs, and (ii) measurement and estimation of input flows; the product of these components yields the input flux of indicator organisms from each source. The impact of sewage-treatment scenarios on budgets is also investigated.     

Risk and regulation: can improved government action reduce the impacts of natural disasters?

From an examination of national policies for risk mitigation, the paper asks what types of laws are successful and should be more widely adopted, and what does not work. Three types of regulations are considered: (1) regulations for constructing new buildings and code enforcement; (2) regulations for intervening in/upgrading the existing building stock; and (3) regulation of the insurance industry. When applied, improved codes can substantially reduce the impacts of natural disasters. However, unnecessary complexity is shown to compromise implementation and enforcement. The widespread destruction of buildings in the earthquakes of Kocaeli, Turkey, in 1999 and Gujarat, India, in 2001 was not due to inadequate codes. Destruction occurred because codes were not generally adopted. Improving the application and enforcement of codes in developing countries are necessary key measures. For the strengthening of existing substandard buildings, some regulations exist and some successful programmes of evaluation and strengthening are in progress. However, lessons from the US experience indicate legislation is needed to back such programmes, and further incentives for action are needed. Several national insurance schemes for natural catastrophe losses (US programmes for flood, New Zealand programmes for earthquake, and French programmes for all catastrophic natural hazards) have considerable potential to stimulate mitigation activity. Ultimately, coercion by government is only part of the answer. The success of any government action depends equally on the development in society of a 'safety culture' in which citizens both understand the risks they face and are prepared to participate in the management of them.