The present demand for quantitative proficiency makes low mathematics achievement not only a formidable obstacle in occupational aspirations but also in the academic arena. To modify the current understanding of the problem of mathematics anxiety and to develop an effective treatment program, college students (12 subjects per group; 8 females, 4…

Evidence is accumulating that experiences of children within the violent family are fundamental causes of the continuing problem of family and societal violence. To examine attitudes and values as a function of experience with family violence, 114 male undergraduate students completed a questionnaire assessing general demographics, and several…

This paper describes the results and implications of an investigation, based on dissonance theory, into attitude formation in introductory college science courses. The results of the study show that students who learned in ways they preferred registered a more positive attitude toward the course than did those who learned in ways they did not…

A formative goal-free evaluation was conducted to assess products (documents) developed after the first year of a federally funded project. Fifteen packets of sixty-six documents were rated by an external panel of five judges, using a checklist developed for the evaluation. An intermediary between the panel and the goal-free evaluator interviewed…

Lax grading standards, declining test scores, opposition to collective bargaining legislation, the trend toward job-related majors, the end of the open admissions policy at the City University of New York--these and other issues recently appearing in the news media reflect a loss of public confidence in the value of higher education. This loss of…

The questionnaire in a study of perceived mass media effects included nine statements about the possible negative effects of the mass media, to which respondents could agree, disagree, or indicate "no opinion," and an open-ended question that asked the subjects what effects the mass media had on them personally. Most of the 340…

This paper reviews the author's research on the role of certain aspects of alienation in education. The first part of the paper discusses similarities between anomie and locus of reinforcement control, as they assess the normlessness and powerlessness aspects of alienation. The second part reports results from studies attempting to modify one's…

This paper offers a theoretically grounded template for analyzing the root causes of individual performance problems in school, work, or personal pursuits. There are four basic reasons why individuals fail to perform as desired: they don't know what to do (communication problem); they don't know how to do it (knowledge problem); they don't want to…

Seven common myths about rural America are debunked, and three characteristics of the rural environment (diversity, sparse population, and interdependency with broader social and economic forces) are examined in relation to health care delivery and medical education. Health care contributions to rural economic needs are discussed. (Author/MSE)

A series of 4 studies involving 547 college students and community adults report the development of the Pain Catastrophizing Scale, its validity with clinical and nonclinical samples, and its correlation with measures of related constructs. The scale provides information about heightened responses to aversive procedures or events. (SLD)

Building on prior literature on adults' and children's appraisals of stressors, this study investigated relations among negative and positive appraisal biases, negative divorce events, and children's post-divorce adjustment. Subjects were 79 custodial nonremarried mothers and their children ages 9 to 13 who had experienced parental divorce within…

As the position of bibliographic instruction within academic libraries continues to be more and more important, the question still remains as to why so many good bibliographic instruction librarians suffer from emotional "blahs" and eventual burnout. The answer does not lie in character flaws of the librarians, nor simply in an ever-increasing…

Previous research has found that sympathetic arousal will cue information stored in memory with a similar level of arousal. To investigate the effect of arousal on the interpretation of other people's emotions, three studies were conducted. In the first study, 37 adult tennis players, who were either about to play tennis or who had just played,…

Previous research investigating the relationship between body build and personality stereotypes found that the mesomorphic build was attributed positive qualities while the endomorph and ectomorph were assigned negative qualities by both males and females. More recent research has revealed a potential shift in body build preferences as standards…

Homosexual cognitive victimization is a term which emphasizes social evaluation of sexual behaviors judged in terms of sexual preference. Individual differences in cognitive victimization of homosexuals were examined in two studies. In the first study, undergraduate students (N=78) completed Likert-type rating scales measuring homosexual cognitive…