Using a Behavior Change Model to Document the Impact of Visits to Disney's Animal Kingdom: A Study Investigating Intended Conservation Action

Abstract Over the last 10 to 15 years, zoos and aquariums have set out to influence visitors' conservation‐related knowledge, attitudes, affect, and behavior. In 2000, the Institute for Learning Innovation collaborated with Disney's Animal Kingdom (DAK) on a comprehensive baseline study conducted to assess the outcomes of a DAK experience on visitors in four areas: knowledge, attitudes, affect, and behavior. This article describes one aspect of the comprehensive study: an investigation of the long‐term (two‐to‐three‐month) impact of a visit to Conservation Station at Disney's Animal Kingdom on visitors' intended conservation action. The study used a behavior change model from the health arena: the Prochaska Model of Behavioral Change. The model proved helpful but had some drawbacks, suggesting the need to develop a more sensitive change model. The implications of this study could assist institutions in thinking about what audiences or messages to emphasize in order to influence behavior.     

Structure, features, and faculty content in ARL member repositories

Questions about the optimal way to present repository content to authors, submitters, and end-users, prompted this study. The authors examined, through an observation and a survey, the institutional repositories of peer institutions in the ARL for good practices related to the presentation and organization of faculty-authored institutional repository content.     

Children's and Adolescents' Accounts of Helping and Hurting Others: Lessons About the Development of Moral Agency

This study examined children's and adolescents' narrative accounts of everyday experiences when they harmed and helped a friend. The sample included 100 participants divided into three age groups (7‐, 11‐, and 16‐year‐olds). Help narratives focused on the helping acts themselves and reasons for helping, whereas harm narratives included more references to consequences of acts and psychological conflicts. With age, however, youth increasingly described the consequences of helping. Reasons for harming others focused especially on the narrator's perspective whereas reasons for helping others were centered on others' perspectives. With age, youth increasingly drew self‐related insights from their helpful, but not their harmful, actions. Results illuminate how reflections on prosocial and transgressive experiences may provide distinct opportunities for constructing moral agency.     

Preschool Children’s Prosocial Responsiveness to Their Siblings’ Needs in Naturalistic Interactions: A Longitudinal Study

Research Findings: Siblings’ interactions in early childhood may provide a unique context for understanding others’ needs and fostering prosociality. This 2-year longitudinal study examined children’s prosocial responsiveness to their siblings’ needs during naturalistic interactions. European-Canadian sibling dyads (N = 39) were observed in their homes for a total of 18 hours – when they were age 2 and 4 years and 2 years later. Prosocial opportunities were identified from children’s manifestations of need and coded for types of responses to such needs. Analyses indicated that younger siblings manifested more cues indicating a need. Siblings often expressed their needs explicitly through direct verbal or nonverbal requests. Alongside situational cues and parental intervention, direct verbal requests were particularly likely to elicit prosociality. Children engaged in helping more than sharing, followed by comforting and protecting. Opportunities to share were rejected more than other types of prosocial behaviors. With age, children were more likely to help, and less likely to refuse to share. With regards to birth order, 4-year-old firstborns engaged in helping, comforting, and protecting (but not sharing) more than 4-year-old secondborns. Practice or Policy: Findings have implications for parents by suggesting ways in which prosociality can be fostered within the sibling relationship in early childhood, and for researchers by extending recent theories of early prosociality from experimental settings to naturalistic interactions.     

How “Pathetic” is Your Hiring Process? An Application of the Lessig “Pathetic Dot” Model to Educational Hiring Practices

Now, more than ever, the baby-boomer administrators are retiring in massive waves. Some researchers have predicted as high as 75% turnover by 2011 for education alone. For many years, not much attention has been placed upon succession planning or developing new leaders in some colleges; others have tended to create stockpiles of leadership candidates with not enough internal leadership positions to go around. In turn, in many schools this has left the talent pool of qualified individuals to be very small, and it creates a problem, not only for educational administrators but also, especially, for those in the entrepreneurial departments of community colleges. There has been much research about “getting the right person on the bus” and “moving from good to great,” yet no one, to the knowledge of the researchers, has extended industrial-organizational psychology research on “person-fit” into community college administration research. The purpose of this study was to examine the theoretical constructs of the educational hiring process. In turn, the application of the Lessig “Pathetic Dot” model is used to create a framework to examine hiring practices and possibly show some deficiencies. This is important, now more than ever, with community college administrations having to turn to external independent sources for validation of their practices and procedures. Finally, a brief discussion of how to strengthen the hiring process, in a time of heavy turnover and attrition, concludes the discussion. The authors also present practical applications, suggestions for future research, and implications for practitioners.