"星"闻

Wedded bliss (福佑) was not meant to be for Nicolas Cage and Lisa Marie Presley- as ET has just learned that Nic filed for divorce yesterday, stating irrecon-cilable(不能协调的) differences as the reason for the split(分离).     

Hurtful Episodes in Parent–Adolescent Relationships: How Accounts and Attributions Contribute to the Difficulty of Talking about Hurt

This research examines sense-making about hurtful episodes between parents and adolescents and how sense-making processes relate to subsequent communication. Results highlight differences in the events parents and adolescents find hurtful and the complex forces that influence accounts for hurtful episodes. Children were less affected overall by hurtful episodes and provided more benevolent accounts of parents' hurtful actions and words. Parents demonstrated typical victim–perpetrator biases, particularly when relationship quality was low. Furthermore, findings provided evidence that sense-making about hurtful events may affect follow-up conversations. Intentionality attributions and the similarity of pre-interaction accounts predicted the difficulty and negativity of subsequent conversations, based on both perceived and observed ratings. Account similarity also predicted observed aspects of joint storytelling in the conversations.     

Case Study Research: A Valuable Learning Tool for Performance Improvement Professionals

Although it is sometimes recommended that performance improvement (PI) professionals include experimental research designs in their repertoire of PI tools and methods, it has been long understood that experimental designs can be difficult to implement due to impediments resulting from the complex nature of the organizational settings. However, the utilization of case study research has proven to be an effective alternative to aid in the identification of strengths and opportunities for the improvement of organizational procedures, policies, processes, or programs. Case study research helps managers and practitioners make sense of real world problems. This article presents a summary of steps in the design of case study research and provides examples of how these methods have been used within organizational settings. Implications for PI practitioners are provided.     

‘It's all scientific to me’: focus group insights into why young people do not apply safe-sex knowledge

Despite rising levels of safe-sex knowledge in Australia, sexually transmitted infection notifications continue to increase. A culture-centred approach suggests it is useful in attempting to reach a target population first to understand their perspective on the issues. Twenty focus groups were conducted with 89 young people between the ages of 14 and 16 years. Key findings suggest that scientific information does not articulate closely with everyday practice, that young people get the message that sex is bad and they should not be preparing for it and that it is not appropriate to talk about sex. Understanding how young people think about these issues is particularly important because the focus groups also found that young people disengage from sources of information that do not match their own experiences.     

An examination of the relationships among United States college students' media use habits,need for cognition,and grade point average

The current study uses survey methods to understand how US college students' use of various types of social media, such as social networking websites and text messaging on smart phones, as well as consumption of traditional media, such as watching television and reading books for pleasure, is (or is not) related to intellectual cognitive processing and performance in school. The current results, which were based on a number of multiple regression analyses, revealed college students’ use of traditional media appears to be a significant and viable predictor of both college students’ grade point averages (GPAs) and their levels of need for cognition (NFC). On the other hand, college students’ use of socially interactive technologies appears to be wholly unrelated to college students’ GPAs and their levels of NFC. Implications of these findings, both in terms of the relationships among social and traditional media use and success at school as well as relationships among shifts in young people's media use habits and possible related shifts in their levels of cognitive processing, are explored.     

Family,child and location factors and parents’ reasons for multiple concurrent childcare arrangements in the years before school in Australia

Research suggests that multiple non-parental care arrangements may have adverse effects on young children, yet little is known about their prevalence, factors associated with their use, or parents’ reasons for making these care arrangements. This longitudinal study reports on 677 children and their families recruited from government-regulated child care centers and family child care services in urban and rural New South Wales, Australia. Multiple concurrent care arrangements were relatively common, with one third of children attending at least two child care arrangements per week. Multiple child care was found to be more likely for children who were older, with better health, or with employed mothers, and who were living in rural rather than urban areas. Results suggest that parents’ reasons for using multiple care arrangements were based largely based on preferences that were made in the best interests of the child and on convenience. The deliberate choice by parents to use multiple child care arrangements to benefit their child challenges the assumption in previous literature that mixed care is not the parents’ first choice.     

Mass Communication

Pearl Aldrich's The Impact of Mass Media (Rochelle Park, N.J.: Hayden Book Co., 1975—$7.99/4.75)

Alan Wells' Mass Media and Society (Palo Alto, Calif: Mayfield Publishing, 1975—price not given, paper)

Harry M. Clor (ed.) The Mass Media and Modern Democracy (Chicago: Rand McNally College Publishing Co., 1974—price not given, paper)

Joan Valdes and Jeanne Crow (eds.) The Media Reader (Dayton, Ohio: Pflaum, 1975—$11.95/7.95 with lower net costs to schools–and a teacher's guide available for $2.95, paper).

James F. Evans and Rodolfo N. Salcedo's Communications in Agriculture: The American Farm Press (Ames: Iowa State University Press 1974—price not given, paper)

Suzanne rallies' Science Fiction Primer for Teachers (Dayton, Ohio: Pflaum, 1974– $5.95, paper).

Francesco M Nicosia's Advertising, Management and Society: A Business Point of View (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1974— $10.95 with paperback available as well)     

Print Media and PR

Sidney L. Jackson's Libraries and Librarianship in the West: A Brief History (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1974---price not given, hardback)

Barbara Nykoruk (ed.) Authors in the News (Detroit, Mich.: Gale Research Co., 1976---$24.00)

Doug Newsom and Alan Scott's This is PRI The Realities of Public Relations (Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth, 1976---$12.95 1 with an instructor's manual available as well)

Richard Weiner's Professional's Guide to Publicity (Richard Weinter, Inc., 888 Seventh Ave., New York 10019---$6.95, paper)

Richard Weiner's Syndicated Columnists (hardbound, 154 pages, $20.00)