Comparative studies of authoritarian-personality characteristics across culture, language and methods

This research was to determine whether the large differences in scores on the F scale found in previous studies (Bradburn, 1963; Kagitcibasi, 1970; Kinnis, 1977) were due to cultural differences in personality characteristics or due to differences in language and/or structure of measuring instruments.The subjects were three groups of university students from the United States and Turkey. The Turkish/English (T/E) sample attended a Turkish University where all classes were in English. The Turkish/Turkish (T/T) sample attended a Turkish University where all classes were in Turkish. The American/English (A/E) sample attended a Midwestern University.Each of the samples were administered three Scales measuring authoritarian personality characteristics. They were: Rokeach's (1960) Dogmatism scale (D scale) the standard F scale (Adorno et al., 1950) and a multiple choice format of the F scale called A scale (Neel, 1977). For the T/E and A/E subjects these scales were in English and for the T/T subjects in Turkish.For each cultural group the composite scores on each scale were obtained and used for inter-group comparisons through one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA). Within-group correlations across the three measures, the means and standard deviations of individual items and T tests were also computed. Interculture and language comparisons resulted in two significant differences on both the Dogmatism and F scales. Analysis of group, composite scales shows that these differences are due to disparities between the A/E and T/T culture/language groups. Differences across language and culture groups for the A scale were not significant. The A measure behaves differently from D and F for the two Turkish culture groups. For the A/E group, D, F, and A measures are almost undifferentiable. The results suggest the effect of measurement instruments on inter-cultural differences in inter-measure comparisons. This indicates a response format effect (agreer bias or acquiescence set).     

The efficacy of hospitalization of nonorganic failure-to-thrive children: a meta-analysis

This study ascertained the efficacy of hospitalization of children with nonorganic failure to thrive (NOFTT). A meta-analysis was performed on previously published research findings which met certain criteria for inclusion in the analysis. Two categories of outcome measures, physical growth pattern and psychosocial development, were quantitatively synthesized separately using standard meta-analytic techniques. Hospitalization was found to significantly enhance the probability of sustained catch-up physical growth among NOFTT children, but only a comparatively small effect size for hospitalization on their psychosocial development was documented. There remains need for prospective longitudinal study of effectiveness in treating NOFTT children. But meta-analysis is a powerful technique which introduces scientific rigor to the review of study results, none of which is singularly conclusive.     

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