The disguise of self‐disclosure: The relationship ruse of a Soviet Spy

The verbal disclosures of a Soviet spy masquerading as a university student are compared to those of three other group members involved in a semester‐long project. Audio‐tapes of six group meetings provide a unique opportunity to assess the relationship deception of this proficient deceiver. His communication is characterized by strategic disclosures designed to create a false impression and, thereby, to divert attention from his secret role. His conversation reveals more frequent control disclosures, attitude disclosures, personal disclosures, and dramatic disclosures than other group members. The spy also verbalized significantly more knowledge disclosures than all but one other peer. The frequency and content of his disclosures identify, in part, the communicative strategy of his disguise, whereby he drew considerable attention to himself and, thus, appeared transparent. The results underscore the importance of looking beyond the appearance of disclosures when attempting to identify relationship deception.     

Towards an interactive agricultural science

Abstract

In all, a constructivist epistemology leads to a completely different approach that includes the conventional one, but ultimately leads to very different choices. I call this approach “interactive agricultural science”. Box 2 sums up its main features.

Interactive agricultural science is internally consistent. Just as the conventional paradigm, it embraces a whole range of mutually related elements at various levels of abstraction, from epistemology to the practical points of departure for rewarding desired scientific work and for training students.

The challenge to agricultural science is together to further construct and operationalise this paradigm. That, as I hope to have made clear, is a condition for achieving our new mission: to contribute to a change in direction which saves us from becoming Norsemen in Greenland.     

A House Divided: Community Politics and Education Reform in Detroit

This research investigates the inherent dilemma evident in attempts to promote decentralization initiatives in urban public schools. Detroit provides a natural experiment in decentralized education reform given both the collaborative and the competitive reform efforts that were advanced between 1988 and 1994. A collaborative partnership, the Detroit Compact, was created, and schools of empowerment and choice were partially implemented, conceptually designed to enlarge the community role in the operation of the schools. Results indicate that efforts at promoting decentralization, over time may produce counterpressures to recentralize decision making.     

Rehabilitation and Prevention of Coronary Heart Disease: An Overview of the Type A Behavior Pattern

In recent years, physical education has provided the impetus for an increasing number of subspecialties. Among one of the more prominent health-related developments has been the growth of cardiac rehabilitation programs. The complexity of cardiovascular disease necessitates that exercise specialists are cognizant of both the psychological and physiological dilemma of the paticnt. Therefore, this paper provides an integrative review of literature perianing to the coronary-prone behavior pattern (type A). It presents a discussion of the behavioral predispositions associated with this action-emotion complex together with the physiological consequences and concomitant eardiovaseular risk observed in individuals identified as type A. Finally, a social learning framework is offered as an aid to the practitioner in understanding and influencing the modification of such behavior.     

A New Approach to Comparing Several Equating Methods in the Context of the NEAT Design

The nonequivalent groups with anchor test (NEAT) design involves missing data that are missing by design. Three equating methods that can be used with a NEAT design are the frequency estimation equipercentile equating method, the chain equipercentile equating method, and the item-response-theory observed-score-equating method. We suggest an approach to perform a fair comparison of the three methods. The approach is then applied to compare the three equating methods using three data sets from operational tests. For each data set, we examine how the three equating methods perform when the missing data satisfy the assumptions made by only one of these equating methods. The chain equipercentile equating method is somewhat more satisfactory overall than the other methods.