This study investigates the nature of concerns and attitudes held by pre-service teachers regarding inclusive education and their degree of comfort on interaction with people with disabilities. Pre-service training may be the optimal time to address educators' concerns and alter any negative attitudes about inclusive education. This paper reports…

Reports on results of Community Attitudes Toward Mentally Ill questionnaire given to undergraduates. Significant differences emerged on subscales based ranking of primary source of information about mental illness. Results do not imply causality but rather that electronic media is powerful mechanism for spreading the stigma of mental illness.…

This paper examines university social science and education students' views of research methodology, especially asking whether a negative research orientation towards quantitative methods exists. Finnish (n = 196) and US (n = 122) students answered a questionnaire concerning their views on quantitative, qualitative, empirical, and theoretical…

Background: Depressed adults may show impairment in switching attention from one task to another. Rumination on negative thoughts is associated with the onset and persistence of depressive episodes. It is unclear if such mood-related ruminations are specifically associated with slowed ability in switching attention from one task to another.…

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…

Studied whether smokers and nonsmokers hold systematically different attitudes on tobacco smoking. Smoking-related Likert type attitude items were selected for analysis from a longer questionnaire. Results indicated both smoking and nonsmoking college students expressed highly similar unfavorable attitudes toward smoking but nonsmokers expressed…

Examines the effects of self-focus on mood in which 60 Japanese university students were assigned to self-, other- and social-focus conditions. Reveals that under self-focus conditions, the depressed participants reported more negative feelings than did their nondepressed counterparts. Implies that when depressed persons focus on the external…

Working with students who manifest learning difficulties there are many questions which have to be asked. One of these question is--how they explain their failure and success. Answers to these questions can help in understanding the cause of their problems as well as finding the method to improve effectiveness, success and personal satisfaction.…

This exploratory study looked at the rate of staff satisfaction as compared to client satisfaction in a residential treatment facility. Research has shown that staff who have negative attitudes, and are not satisfied with their positions, transport those negative feelings onto the clients they are serving (Balfour & Neff, 1993). While some…

There is a general belief that Lebanese-background students in Australia do not usually perform well at school. This study examines the school achievement of Lebanese-background students and the major motivational factors related to their achievement. A total of 271 Year Nine students (117 Lebanese-background and 154 non-Lebanese background) in…

This study is part of a larger investigation into Japanese students' use of English and friendship buildup inside and outside Canadian English as a second language (ESL) institutes. Both qualitative and quantitative data were garnered primarily from formal in-depth interviews with nine Japanese students and questionnaire surveys with 216 students.…

Explores developmental students' attitudes toward writing as a reflection of their writing performance. Finds that the skills of students with positive attitudes toward writing improved significantly more than did those of students with neutral or negative attitudes. Includes a student writing attitude questionnaire and a questionnaire analysis…

Respondents' experiences most frequently reported in open-ended descriptions of their forming perceptions of persons with intellectual disability were "passive" experiences, such as coming across them as a stranger in one's town. These were generally not associated with positive attitudes. Formation of positive attitudes mainly derived…

Assessed contributions of internal resources, supportive family and peer relations, peer negative influences, and behavioral adjustment to positive expectations for the future for inner-city school children. Found that higher levels of positive expectation related to lower levels of problem behavior and to higher levels of school involvement,…

This article examines the relationship between gender, hostile sexism, benevolent sexism and reactions to a seemingly innocuous genre of sexist humor, the dumb blonde joke. After hearing an audiotaped conversation in which two students swapped dumb blonde jokes, participants high in hostile sexism rated the jokes as more amusing and less offensive…