Personality profiles of factitious disorder imposed by mothers: A comparative analysis

Factitious Disorder Imposed by Another (FDIA) can be difficult to expeditiously identify. Understanding personality characteristics of FDIA perpetrators via psychological assessment may decrease the time between initial abuse and identification of FDIA. Personality characteristics of FDIA mother-perpetrators were examined through a comparative analysis of MMPI-2 profiles. It was predicted that mother-perpetrators would have significantly higher overall profile elevations on the MMPI-2 and elevations on specific clinical scales than a comparative control group. Results indicated that mother-perpetrators displayed significantly higher, elevations on the Psychasthenia (Pt) and Schizophrenia (Sc) scales and a trend toward significantly higher elevation on the Psychopathic Deviate (Pd) scale than the control group. These findings, along with the demographic information obtained, establish a preliminary foundation for understanding an overall profile of mother-perpetrators.     

Burnout,coping and suicidal ideation: An application and extension of the job demand-control-support model

Suicidal tendencies are typically considered related to individual traits or predispositions, but some occupations have significantly higher rates than other occupations and the general population. This article proposes that stressful work conditions may be important in understanding occupational variations in suicidal tendencies. It explores the links between work-related factors and burnout, and suicidal thoughts among veterinarians. Burnout appears to be an important mediator in understanding veterinarians’ suicidal tendencies; work conditions that are emotionally exhausting for veterinarians may foster suicidal thoughts. Individual coping strategies are also explored. Emotion-focused strategies of avoidance and alcohol consumption not only exacerbate burnout and suicidal thoughts but also amplify the harmful effects of some job demands. Active problem solving is not as beneficial as expected, but a supportive work environment is a valuable coping resource. Organizational interventions and coping resources effective in reducing burnout may also reduce the risk of suicide for those in service occupations.     

Does childhood family structure help create stratification in adult education and labor market attainment?: An argument for the selectivity perspective

Stratification in opportunities for and attainment of educational credentials, stable and well‐paying jobs, wealth, and socioeconomic status causes problems for both individuals and the societies they live in. It is unclear, however, the extent to which important childhood experiences, such as family structure and transitions, shapes opportunity paths and eventual attainment later in adulthood. The intergenerational transmission literature suggests little if any role of family structure in later attainment, while family scholars and demographers find more compelling evidence that childhood family structures and transitions are influential in adulthood. We argue that both perspectives may be identifying selectivity processes that help explain potential links between families of origin and differences in opportunities to attain education, careers, and status. We then provide suggestions for future work in each of these scholarly traditions to help untangle both the degree to which family structure does or does not affect adult attainment and whether selectivity is the key explanation for any such relationships.     

Palm Distributions for Log Gaussian Cox Processes

This paper establishes a remarkable result regarding Palm distributions for a log Gaussian Cox process: the reduced Palm distribution for a log Gaussian Cox process is itself a log Gaussian Cox process that only differs from the original log Gaussian Cox process in the intensity function. This new result is used to study functional summaries for log Gaussian Cox processes.     

Improved estimation methods for unrelated question randomized response techniques

The randomized response technique (RRT) is an important tool, commonly used to avoid biased answers in survey on sensitive issues by preserving the respondents’ privacy. In this paper, we introduce a data collection method for survey on sensitive issues combining both the unrelated-question RRT and the direct question design. The direct questioning method is utilized to obtain responses to a non sensitive question that is related to the innocuous question from the unrelated-question RRT. These responses serve as additional information that can be used to improve the estimation of the prevalence of the sensitive behavior. Furthermore, we propose two new methods for the estimation of the proportion of respondents possessing the sensitive attribute under a missing data setup. More specifically, we develop the weighted estimator and the weighted conditional likelihood estimator. The performances of our estimators are studied numerically and compared with that of an existing one. Both proposed estimators are more efficient than the Greenberg's estimator. We illustrate our methods using real data from a survey study on illegal use of cable TV service in Taiwan.     

Laying the foundation for a global body of knowledge in public relations and communications management

An internationally recognised body of knowledge is both possible and necessary for the future success and professionalisation of public relations. Through extensive content analysis of 31 credential schemes, education frameworks, and scholarly articles produced across six continents, the Global Alliance for Public Relations and Communications Management has developed a foundational list of knowledge, skills, abilities and behaviours (KSABs), which entry and mid/senior-level practitioners across the world should possess. This study and list of KSABs is laying the foundation for development of an internationally accepted framework which professional associations and academic institutions across the world will be able to use to benchmark professional credentials and curriculum outcomes.     

Personality at Face Value: Facial Appearance Predicts Self and Other Personality Judgments among Strangers and Spouses

Character judgments, based on facial appearance, impact both perceivers’ and targets’ interpersonal decisions and behaviors. Nonetheless, the resilience of such effects in the face of longer acquaintanceship duration is yet to be determined. To address this question, we had 51 elderly long-term married couples complete self and informant versions of a Big Five Inventory. Participants were also photographed, while they were requested to maintain an emotionally neutral expression. A subset of the initial sample completed a shortened version of the Big Five Inventory in response to the pictures of other opposite sex participants (with whom they were unacquainted). Oosterhof and Todorov’s (in Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 105:11087–11092, 2008) computer-based model of face evaluation was used to generate facial trait scores on trustworthiness, dominance, and attractiveness, based on participants’ photographs. Results revealed that structural facial characteristics, suggestive of greater trustworthiness, predicted positively biased, global informant evaluations of a target’s personality, among both spouses and strangers. Among spouses, this effect was impervious to marriage length. There was also evidence suggestive of a Dorian Gray effect on personality, since facial trustworthiness predicted not only spousal and stranger, but also self-ratings of extraversion. Unexpectedly, though, follow-up analyses revealed that (low) facial dominance, rather than (high) trustworthiness, was the strongest predictor of self-rated extraversion. Our present findings suggest that subtle emotional cues, embedded in the structure of emotionally neutral faces, exert long-lasting effects on personality judgments even among very well-acquainted targets and perceivers.     

The Global Alliance for Public Relations and Communication Management: Origins,influences, issues and prospects

This paper chronicles the formation and development of the Global Alliance for Public Relations and Communication Management (GA) up to 2002. It sets the GA's genesis within the context of other internationalisation initiatives undertaken by the wider public relations practitioner community and draws links between the formation of the GA and the emerging phenomenon of globalisation. The paper's intent is to describe the formation of the GA from a historical perspective, to understand the forces that led to its creation and to appreciate the different drivers and motivation of founding members. These factors provide a springboard to consider some of the issues that currently challenge GA, some of which were inherent in the governance model it chose at its inception.     

Career Engagement: Investigating Intraindividual Predictors of Weekly Fluctuations in Proactive Career Behaviors

This study applied a microlevel perspective on how within‐individual differences in motivational and social‐cognitive factors affected the weekly fluctuations of engagement in proactive career behaviors among a group of 67 German university students. Career self‐efficacy beliefs, perceived career barriers, experienced social career support, positive and negative emotions, and career engagement were assessed weekly for 13 consecutive weeks. Hierarchical linear regression analyses showed that above average levels of career engagement within individuals were predicted by higher than average perceived social support and positive emotions during a given week. Conversely, within‐individual differences in self‐efficacy, barriers, and negative emotions had no effect. The results suggest that career interventions should provide boosts in social support and positive emotions.     

Gender and Supportive Co‐Worker Relations in the Medical Profession

Women's growing numerical representation in the professions has not necessarily translated into women being truly integrated in these occupations. Questionnaire data are used to examine whether female physicians are socially integrated in the male‐dominated profession of medicine in terms of the support they receive from their medical colleagues compared to male physicians. The literature on tokenism and homophily suggests that women in male‐dominated professions receive less support than their male colleagues, whereas the social support literature predicts that women typically receive more emotional support than men but less informational and instrumental support. The results of this study shed light on the complex and multi‐layered ways in which gender is relevant to our understanding of the extent to which co‐workers provide empathy, information and assistance to one another.