“Not now,maybe later”: The influence of relationship type,request persistence,and alcohol consumption on women's refusal strategies

This study examines strategies employed by women when refusing an unwanted request for increased intimacy. Women (N = 76) orally produced refusal messages to unwanted requests from hypothetical dating partners and friends. The influence of relationship type, request persistence, and alcohol consumption on refusal strategies was examined. Approximately half of the participants (N = 37) drank alcohol before encoding the refusal messages. The results indicate that relationship type influenced women's refusal strategy selection and that request persistence had a more pronounced influence on the refusals to dates’ requests than to friends’ requests. Alcohol consumption did not significantly affect the encoding of refusal strategies. Results suggest that the influence of alcohol consumption on refusals should be examined within the context of the whole message production process.     

STAFF PERCEPTIONS OF BEHAVIORAL PROBLEMS IN NURSING HOME RESIDENTS WITH DEMENTIA: THE ROLE OF TRAINING

Residents of nursing homes with a dementing illness constitute a challenge for direct practitioners because of the presence of behavioral problems often accompanying the illness. A before‐after evaluation design was used to assess characteristics of patients and their staff caregivers at baseline and 1 year after the educational intervention. Overall, resident cognition and functioning declined at posttest, as would be expected due to the nature of the illness. Thirty‐six behaviors were assessed to identify staff perceptions of the frequency and difficulty of managing these behaviors. The most frequently reported behavioral symptoms at baseline were poor personal hygiene and bladder and bowel incontinence; however, after the intervention there were no reports of frequently occurring disruptive behavioral symptoms. Overall, staff perceptions of the frequency and difficulty in managing behavioral symptoms declined by 47% at the post‐test. Although managing difficult behaviors of dementia patients is a challenge for staff in long‐term care facilities, results of this study suggest that through training staff may perceive behavioral symptoms as less problematic and thus be enabled to respond more effectively to specific behavioral problems of the residents.     

Generating Dichotomous Item Scores with the Four-Parameter Beta Compound Binomial Model

A Monte Carlo simulation technique for generating dichotomous item scores is presented that implements (a) a psychometric model with different explicit assumptions than traditional parametric item response theory (IRT) models, and (b) item characteristic curves without restrictive assumptions concerning mathematical form. The four-parameter beta compound-binomial (4PBCB) strong true score model (with two-term approximation to the compound binomial) is used to estimate and generate the true score distribution. The nonparametric item-true score step functions are estimated by classical item difficulties conditional on proportion-correct total score. The technique performed very well in replicating inter-item correlations, item statistics (point-biserial correlation coefficients and item proportion-correct difficulties), first four moments of total score distribution, and coefficient alpha of three real data sets consisting of educational achievement test scores. The technique replicated real data (including subsamples of differing proficiency) as well as the three-parameter logistic (3PL) IRT model (and much better than the 1PL model) and is therefore a promising alternative simulation technique. This 4PBCB technique may be particularly useful as a more neutral simulation procedure for comparing methods that use different IRT models.     

Sexual Risk Among African American Women: Psychological Factors and the Mediating Role of Social Skills

Prior research demonstrates a positive association between mental health problems and sexual risk for African American women. Using the social skills deficit hypothesis, we proposed that social skills mediate this relationship. African American women (n = 557, M age = 20.58) completed measures of depression, stress, emotional dysregulation, sexual risk behaviors, and perceptions of their social skills with their primary sexual partner. Social skills mediated the link between the mental health assessments and a composite sexual risk index. Theoretical implications of extending the social skill deficit hypothesis are discussed as well as implications for interventions.     

Yes,Classroom Sales Training Can Enhance Performance

Organizations today face competitive conditions unlike those experienced in the past. Managers and team leaders must learn ways to get the highest level of performance from a team of people, work with a variety of individuals diverse projects, communicate with a wide audience clearly and effectively, and be able to provide performance feedback and elevate performance levels for people they hardly know. While few will argue that learning in organizations is critical to meeting these challenges, an increasing number of decision-makers are raising questions about the value of classroom training. The questions are especially difficult to address in sales training where results are observable (i.e., sales) but difficult to trace to performance events and interventions. The current study was conducted to address two questions: 1) Is it possible to link sales production to participation in classroom sales training? 2) If so, what are the elements of the training that seem to be most useful in enhancing employee performance and sales performance?     

Regulating belonging: surveillance,inequality, and the cultural production of abjection

ABSTRACT

Conditions of abjection are increasingly viewed as problems to be managed with surveillance. Across disparate domains, bodies that challenge normalized constructions of responsible neoliberal citizenship are categorized, monitored, policed, and excluded in dehumanizing and often violent ways. This paper explores the role of surveillance in such processes. The registers covered include everyday abjection (welfare systems, battered women’s shelters, and homelessness), criminalized poverty (police targeting of the poor and emerging ‘poverty capitalism’ arrangements), and the radically adrift (the identification, tracking, and containment of refugees). In each of these cases, surveillance is yoked to structural inequalities and systems of oppression, but it also possesses a cultural dimension that thrusts marginalized and dehumanized subjectivities upon the abject Other. Therefore, I argue that in order to critique the gendered, racialized, and classed dimensions of contemporary surveillance, it is necessary to take seriously the mythologies that give meaning to surveillance practices and the subjectivities that are engendered by them.     

Communicating About a Relational Problem While (Not) Intoxicated: Influences on Goal Judgments and Message Features

This project considered the influence of alcohol on goal pursuit and message production during difficult relational discussions. Forty-four heterosexual dating dyads discussed a hypothetical infidelity. Males were randomly assigned to drinking condition (sober vs. 0.08 g/dl) and females to a conversational resistance condition (resistance vs. no resistance). Participants provided accounts of goals, and conversations were coded for focal center and message embellishment. Drinking influenced the content of primary goals, reduced the importance of multiple goals and reduced judgments of goal difficulty. Under resistance, drinkers had significantly longer, more self-focused and less relationally focused messages than sober participants. We apply the results to an understanding of alcohol-influenced interaction in close relationships.     

The Right to Hide? Anti-Surveillance Camouflage and the Aestheticization of Resistance

There has been a recent surge in artistic designs to conceal oneself from ambient surveillance in public places. These center on the masking of identity to undermine technological efforts to fix someone as a unique entity apart from the crowd. Ranging from fractal face paint and hairstyles, to realistic resin masks, to reflective underwear, anti-surveillance camouflage ostensibly allows people to hide in plain sight. These designs, however, enact an aestheticization of resistance premised on individual avoidance rather than meaningful challenge to the violent and discriminatory logics of surveillance societies.