Procrastination,conscientiousness, anxiety,and goals: Exploring the measurement and correlates of procrastination among school‐aged children

We explore the reliability and validity of a self‐report measure of procrastination and conscientiousness designed for use with third‐ to fifth‐grade students. The responses of 120 students are compared with teacher and parent ratings of the student. Confirmatory and exploratory factor analyses were also used to examine the structure of the scale. Procrastination and conscientiousness are highly correlated (inversely); evidence suggests that procrastination and conscientiousness are aspects of the same construct. Procrastination and conscientiousness are correlated with the Physiological Anxiety subscale of the Revised Children's Manifest Anxiety Scale, and with the Task (Mastery) and Avoidance (Task Aversiveness) subscales of Skaalvik's (1997) Goal Orientation Scales. Both theoretical implications and implications for interventions are discussed. © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Ice hockey shoulder pad design and the effect on head response during shoulder-to-head impacts

Ice hockey body checks involving direct shoulder-to-head contact frequently result in head injury. In the current study, we examined the effect of shoulder pad style on the likelihood of head injury from a shoulder-to-head check. Shoulder-to-head body checks were simulated by swinging a modified Hybrid-III anthropomorphic test device (ATD) with and without shoulder pads into a stationary Hybrid-III ATD at 21 km/h. Tests were conducted with three different styles of shoulder pads (traditional, integrated and tethered) and without shoulder pads for the purpose of control. Head response kinematics for the stationary ATD were measured. Compared to the case of no shoulder pads, the three different pad styles significantly (p < 0.05) reduced peak resultant linear head accelerations of the stationary ATD by 35–56%. The integrated shoulder pads reduced linear head accelerations by an additional 18–21% beyond the other two styles of shoulder pads. The data presented here suggest that shoulder pads can be designed to help protect the head of the struck player in a shoulder-to-head check.     

Making the Traditional Relevant

An unique omnidisciplinary seminar served as the independent variable in a study in which the main dependent variable was the students’ (n = 17) self-evaluated ability to discuss contemporary “relevant” topics from the standpoint of traditional academic disciplines (e.g., discuss population control in the context of anthropology; education; history, economics, political science; literature; music, art, theater; natural and physical science; philosophy; sociology; theology) . Analysis of pre and post treatment scores of seventeen behavioral science majors showed a significant increase in this ability (Wilcoxon T = 15, p<.01). Pre treatment difficulty based on mental set and functional fixedness was held to be counteracted by the effect of the omnidisciplinary seminar on learning to learn and transfer processes.