Consistent occupational preferences and academic adjustment

This study explored the differences in academic adjustment variables between students who made congruent, incongruent, and undecided college major choices. The academic adjustment variables were operationally defined by the College Inventory of Academic Adjustment. Congruent, incongruent, and undecided college major choice groups were defined operationally using the Vocational Preference Inventory. The analysis of variance revealed the main effect of groups (congruent, incongruent, and undecided) to be significant for two academic adjustment variables. The test for the main effect of sex was found to be significant for one adjustment variable. The test for interaction was found to be significant for one variable. The findings suggest that students in the congruent female and male groups tend to be more academically adjusted than students in the undecided male group.     

Profiles in Change: An Alternative Look at the Marshall Hypotheses∗

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall once argued that informed opinion would oppose the death penalty for all but those who support it for retributive reasons. We examine the validity of these claims with data from a series of one‐group pre‐test–post‐test designs which stem from a formalized learning outcomes assessment for several courses on the death penalty. Results show solid, but imperfect, support for these claims. The analysis then proceeds by profiling those who changed their opinions consistent with these claims, those who did not change their opinions, and those whose opinions changed in a manner opposite to these claims.     

Cross-Racial Interaction Among Undergraduates: Some Consequences, Causes, and Patterns

This study utilized a national longitudinal data set of college students to examine the educational relevance of cross-racial interaction and how campuses can best structure such opportunities. The general pattern of findings suggests that cross-racial interaction has positive effects on students' intellectual, social, and civic development. The results show that institutions could enhance such experiences by enrolling larger proportions of students of color and by offering students more opportunities to live and work part-time on campus. While these findings apply uniformly to white students, the frequency of cross-racial interaction does not always follow an expected path of steady gains for students of color as the student body becomes increasingly more diverse. Implications of the findings are discussed.     

Visualizing the politics of innocence in the age of AIDS

We are concerned with the ways in which social constructions of age can contribute to reducing or exacerbating the vulnerability of young people, and for this reason we refer to the issue as one of ‘the politics of innocence’. The focus of this paper is on gender, youth and HIV prevention/AIDS awareness in the context of South Africa and investigates the uses (and abuses) of images of ‘childhood’, ‘youth’ and ‘adolescence’ in the age of AIDS. Notwithstanding the particular case of South Africa where the incidence of new cases of HIV infection amongst young people is at crisis proportions, the impetus for our work on the visual representations of youth, gender and AIDS comes out of a recognition of the increasing risk of youth to sexually transmitted infections, HIV and AIDS, and within that the particular vulnerability, worldwide, of young women.