Influences on teacher education student attitudes toward youth who are HIV+

The expectations, attributions, and reactions toward children and youth who have contracted HIV/AIDS warrant close attention from parents, teachers, related service personnel, and others who will interact with these students in the schools. Those who are misinformed or unaware of their beliefs may inadvertently discriminate against children and youth with the disease. This study examined factors that influence judgments about children and youth with HIV/AIDS in a sample of teacher education students. Course of infection of HIV accounted for significant differences in the participants' judgments about responsibility and blame for contracting the disease and also fearfulness and attitudes reflecting isolation for these youth. Educational professionals should be aware of the many negative attributions placed on adolescents who are diagnosed as HIV⁺ and be prepared to act as facilitators when designing appropriate interventions to assist these students. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Psychol Schs 41: 211–219, 2004.     

Preparing for the Silver Tsunami: The Demand for Higher Education Among Older Adults

Over the next decade, Baby Boomers will be reaching retirement age in large numbers and the U.S. will be undergoing one of the most significant demographic shifts in its history. This demographic shift has important implications for the role of higher education as a provider of lifelong learning and for the changing composition of postsecondary institutions. Using data from the 2005 National Household Education Survey, the results of this study informs the higher education community about this emerging student market segment as a way to help us better respond to older adults?? demand for formal learning in postsecondary institutions.     

Factors affecting treatment acceptability for psychostimulant medication versus psychoeducational intervention

Future teachers' judgments of acceptability for two common treatments for children with the Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) label were examined. One hundred forty‐four pre‐service teachers were grouped according to their high school location at graduation (urban vs. rural) and were randomly assigned to read one of four vignettes. The content of the vignettes was held constant but label (ADHD vs no label) and treatments (special education placement vs. Ritalin) were varied. Results indicated a significant main effect on treatment acceptability for High School Location, a Label × Treatment interaction on the attention problems variable, a main effect for Label on the social problems variable, and a High School Location × Treatment interaction on the social problems variable. A number of implications can be made. Observer characteristics such as urban or rural high school experiences may influence judgments about a labeled child more than the characteristics of the child being observed. In this study, the ADHD label evoked greater expectations of attentional difficulties even when the pattern of functioning was similar to nonlabeled children. On the other hand, children with the ADHD label were judged as having better social functioning, which suggests that the ADHD label allows observers to attribute behavioral difficulties or the social problems displayed by these children to some factor that is outside the control of the child, or for which the child does not have personal responsibility. © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

The ADHD label,analogue methodology,and participants' geographic location on judgments of social and attentional skills

Two hundred fifty‐nine preservice teachers at a medium‐sized university in the Southwest participated in the current study. The participants were randomly assigned to a labeled condition, Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, or nonlabeled condition, and were presented a vignette in one of three forms: a written case study, a video clip, or a written case study with a video clip. The vignette described an elementary school aged child displaying disruptive behavior, while the video portrayed a similar aged child exhibiting disruptive behavior in the classroom. Following the presentation of the vignette, participants made judgments about the child's social skills and attentional skills by completing an examiner‐made rating scale. There was a significant main effect for the label condition on judgments of attention; participants in the labeled condition made significantly more negative judgment than did those in the nonlabeled condition. There were also significant main effects for the participants' high school location and vignette treatment. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Psychol Schs 41: 221–234, 2004.     

A Note on the Calculation and Interpretation of the Delta-p Statistic for Categorical Independent Variables

This methodological note illustrates how a commonly used calculation of the Delta-p statistic is inappropriate for categorical independent variables, and this note provides users of logistic regression with a revised calculation of the Delta-p statistic that is more meaningful when studying the differences in the predicted probability of an outcome between two or more groups. Although one cannot fully document the extent to which this error in the current calculation of the Delta-p statistic has spread across the field, the potential for error is far reaching as an increasing number of researchers use logistic regression to study categorical outcomes and as researchers look more closely at the Delta-p statistic as a means to communicate the results of logistic regression models to policy makers and administrators. It is recommended that higher education scholars and institutional researchers use caution when reporting the Delta-p statistic from prior studies and that they adopt the revised calculation of the Delta-p statistic presented in this methodological note when estimating logistic regression models with categorical independent variables.

The Impact of an Interest-Major Fit Signal on College Major Certainty

Research in Higher Education - Students’ choice of college major is related to their interests (Porter and Umbach in Res High Educ 47:429–449, 2006), and students whose major is...