Abusive interaction and role state stressors: Relative impact on student residence assistant stress and work attitudes

Despite the recognition that poor working relationships can contribute to strain (Chen and Spector 1991, Cooper and Marshall 1978, Kahn and Byosiere lY92, Spector 1987, Spector et al. 1988) and increasing concern over violence and aggression in the workplace (Northwestern National Life Insurance Co. 1993), little research attention has been paid to hostile interpersonal interaction as a work-related stressor. While recent work has focused on interpersonal conflict and sexual harassment as stressors, emotionally abusive interactions have remained largely unaddressed by the organizational stress literature. These interactions are characterized by hostile verbal and non-verbal, non-physical behaviours directed by one or more persons towards another that negatively affect the target's sense of him/herself as a competent person and worker (Keashly et al. 1994, Leymann 1990). The current study examined whether emotional abuse contributed uniquely to understanding work-related stress in student residence assistants (RAs). Seventy-six RAs employed by a Canadian university responded to a questionnaire on the quality of their work experience. The stressors examined were role conflict, role overload, role ambiguity, and number, frequency, and impact of abusive events with dormitory residents. Outcome variables included job-related tension, job satisfaction, job commitment, and intention to leave. Emotional abuse contributed similar amounts of unique variance as the role state stressors to the variables of tension, job satisfaction and intention to leave suggesting emotional abuse is an important and uniquc workplace stressor. Implications of these findings for future research are discussed.     

The Association Between Natural Amenities, Rural Population Growth, and Long-Term Residents' Economic Well-Being

Population growth in rural areas characterized by high levels of natural amenities has recently received substantial research attention. A noted concern with amenity-driven rural population growth is its potential to raise local costs-of-living while yielding only low-wage service sector employment for long-term residents. The work presented here empirically models long-term rural residents' economic well-being, making use of longitudinal data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics. In general, the results suggest that long-term rural families residing in high-growth amenity and recreation areas tend to have higher annual incomes than do their counterparts in non-growth amenity/recreation areas, regardless of the sex, race, or age of the family head. However, higher costs-of-living in these areas supplant any relative gains in income. As such, these analyses provide empirical evidence of patterns inferred by earlier anecdotal evidence and case studies.     

Participation of non-dominant students in argumentation in the mathematics classroom

This article focuses on argumentation in mathematics classrooms in two different geographic contexts, the US and New Zealand. Drawing on data from a case with immigrant students (Pāsifika) in NZ and a case with Mexican American students in the US, we argue for the need to study the concept of argumentation through a cultural and language lens. Our analysis across the two cases points to common features that supported students’ engagement in argumentation. Building relationships and encouraging and supporting students to be themselves are seen as resources for argumentation. The similarities across two very different contexts are striking. As we think of how to develop environments that support non-dominant students’ participation in mathematical argumentation, we may want to learn from and build on students’ cultural ways of being.     

Managing Children’s Friendships Through Interparental Relationships: Roles of Ethnicity and Friendship Context

Twenty African American and European American mothers of fourth‐grade students reflected on strategies for managing children’s friendships maintained across a variety of contexts. Ethnicity differentially located families within specific social contexts that yielded children’s friendships, then informed social processes as they unfolded within these contexts. Maternal knowledge concerning children’s friendships developed as a function of the types of relationships formed among parents encountered within different settings. Findings suggest that interparental relationships represent a key source of information about children’s friendships. Yet, maternal opportunities to establish such relationships differ on the basis of both ethnicity and the nature of contexts in which children’s friendships are maintained.     

Rural Migration,Rapid Growth,and Fear of Crime*

Abstract Although much research on rural “boomtowns” explores differences between rapid‐growth communities and more stable communities, it is logical to consider that residents within rural boomtowns experience community transitions in different ways. We examine a specific outcome, fear of crime, across three categories of community residents with different migration histories: lifetime residents, migrants who joined the boomtown community during its period of rapid growth, and post‐boom period migrants. This perspective is particularly interesting, given the likelihood that these three different categories of residents have had substantially different community experiences. Making use of survey data from two intermountain West communities that represent resource‐dependent transitions during the 1970s and 1980s (Evanston, Wyoming and Delta, Utah), we find that boom migrants express greater fear of crime than longer‐term residents or post‐boom migrants. The findings suggest that the longer‐term decline in fear of crime in “post‐boom” periods is not equal among residents.