Resource use and academic performance among first year psychology students

Multiple questionnaires completed over the semester by 514 students enrolled in a first year psychology course reveal that no single pattern of reliance on print, online, or in-person resources guarantees a high mark. Analyses of the reported and measured frequency of use of various resources correlated against students’, performance on both individual assessments and their final marks suggests that students employ a range of strategies in their use of class resources. They tend to rely on their textbooks, Web-based lecture notes, and online quizzes, but their final marks are more strongly determined by their university entrance scores than by their resource use strategy, their sex, or whether or not English is their first language. The data suggest that students adapt their learning strategies to the resources available, with an apparent emphasis on learning what will be assessed rather than exploring for understanding. Importantly, the results argue that investment in development of educational technologies – and students’, use of educational technologies – must be informed by empirical data concerning its impact on the efficiency and quality of learning.     

A field-based rhetorical critique of ethical accountability

This essay suggests that the concept of interdependence provides a rhetorical telos for research ethics. Current field-based rhetoric work advocates for a postcolonial research ethic. However, this is often articulated with a discourse of ethical accountability. Although it has advantages, accountability limits us by excluding ethical pursuit and reifying people as autonomous individuals. In contrast, interdependence helps complete the liberatory trajectory of postcolonial research ethics. Drawing on work in a recent field site, I argue that interdependence encourages scholars to see dilemmas as an opportunity for rhetorical response and ethical lament, helps scholars take creative action to be shaped by participants directly, and helps scholars explain to others why they pursue ethical actions beyond what is socially required.     

The association of objectively determined physical activity behavior among adolescent female friends

The purpose of this study was to examine the extent to which physical activity among adolescent female friends is interdependent. The participants were 318 adolescent girls with a mean age of 16.0 years (range: 15-18 years). Pedometry was used to assess physical activity over 4 days. The relationship between an individual girl and her first-nominated reciprocal friend's physical activity level was moderate (r = 0.45, 90% confidence interval = 0.31, 0.56), when the friendship was nonreciprocal it was trivial (r = -.06, 90% confidence interval = -.36 .25). Friends'physical activity levels explained between 27% and 32% of an individual's pedometer-determined physical activity level. Reciprocity of friendship is an important variable to consider when understanding the relationship between adolescent female friends' physical activity. When friendships are reciprocal, there is a stronger relationship between friends' physical activity.