Using the contradiction paradigm to assess ageism

Ageism is an important topic in our society, considering the burgeoning older adult population. Ageism is often measured using explicit questionnaires; however, given the impact of social desirability, implicit measures of ageism have been developed. In this study, the contradiction paradigm, an implicit measure of stereotypes (Lassonde, under review) was used to measure age-related stereotypes in passages describing older adults. Participants read passages with target sentences more slowly when these sentences described behaviors that were inconsistent rather than consistent with age-related stereotypes. Participants also completed a series of self-report questionnaires measuring ageism. Results demonstrated that reading times using the contradiction paradigm were not related to outcomes on the self-report questionnaires. A comparison of the contradiction paradigm to a social desirability scale revealed that it was not vulnerable to social desirability. This confirms the contradiction paradigm's use as an implicit measure of age-related stereotypes. Although there is no clear relation between the contradiction paradigm and popular explicit measures, a next important step would be to determine the point in which implicit knowledge and intentional behavioral responses interact.     

The breakdown and influence properties of outlier rejection-plus-mean procedures

In a recent paper, Hampel (1985) studied the properties of rejection-plus-mean procedures as estimators of a location parameter. He reported that these procedures have low breakdown and high variance. In this article it is pointed out that these results are due to the outliers being rejected in a forwards-stepping manner, and when a more appropriate backwards-stepping approach is used, rejection-plus-mean procedures lead to estimators with high breakdown and high variance. In this article it is pointed out that these results are due to the outliers being rejected in a forwards-stepping manner, and when a more appropriate backwards-stepping approach is used, rejection-plus-mean procedures lead to estimator with high breakdown and redescending theoretical influence function.     

Inequality and the Self: Exploring Connections from an Interactionist Perspective

Symbolic interactionism provides a major contribution to understanding inequality by illuminating the various manifestations and contexts of inequality at the micro, everyday level of social life. Drawing on a spectrum of symbolic interactionist theory and research, we examine the range of symbolic and interactional manifestations of social inequality, the consequences of being the object of patterned interactional affronts, and the strategies people use to negotiate interactional stigmatization in everyday life. We argue that symbolic interaction's unique contribution to understanding inequality results from two of the perspective's central features. First, symbolic interactionism emphasizes the necessity of investigating social life in situated social interaction. Second, it highlights social actors' capacities to interpret and construct lines of action rather than respond directly to the stimuli they encounter. Symbolic interactionist research and theory thus contribute to a more complex understanding of social stratification than that provided by perspectives focused exclusively on macroscopic structural factors.     

A Telephone Intervention for Substance-Using Adult Male Perpetrators of Intimate Partner Violence

OBJECTIVE: To preliminarily evaluate telephone-delivered motivational enhancement therapy (MET) in motivating unadjudicated and nontreatment seeking intimate partner violence (IPV) perpetrators, who also use substances, to self-refer into treatment. METHOD: 124 adult men were recruited via a multimedia marketing campaign and were randomly assigned to the intervention (MET) or comparison group following a baseline assessment. Participants in the MET condition received a personalized feedback report on their IPV and substance-use behaviors, consequences, and social norms beliefs. RESULTS: Results supported the likely effectiveness of MET in short-term reduction of IPV behavior, increasing motivation for treatment seeking, and changing perceived norms for IPV and substance abuse (SA). CONCLUSIONS: Applications for brief MET interventions to facilitate voluntary treatment entry among substance-using IPV perpetrators are discussed.     

Summer learning programs and student success in the global economy

In the United States and around the rest of the world, there is a renewed focus on ensuring that schools are providing students with the skills necessary to compete in the global economy. High-quality summer learning programs are an ideal vehicle to help students gain content knowledge and develop innovative skills: they provide time for individual exploration and hands-on, experiential opportunities that can instill a lifelong love of learning that carries into the classroom and the workforce.     

The demography of disability and the effects of immigrant history: Older Asians in the United States

Using data from the 2000 U.S. census, we compare the older Asian population with U.S.-born, non-Hispanic whites with respect to three indicators of disability. Insofar as any Asian "advantage" in health vis-a-vis whites exists among the population aged 65 and over, our evidence suggests that it occurs primarily among the U.S.-born segments of this population. We also investigate how differences in disability levels among Asian immigrant groups are influenced by country of birth and by the combined effects of duration of residence in the United States and life cycle stage at entry. These results highlight the diversity of the older Asian population with respect to the ways in which immigration and origin history are linked to disability outcomes. We conclude that in later life, immigrant status confers few disability advantages among the Asian population in the United States.     

Developing a Rubric for Supervision of Students Counseling LGBTQ Clients

More than 100 pieces of anti-lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender (LGBT) legislation are active in 2018. In this current political climate of “conscience clause” legislation, counselor educators and supervisors are poised to adopt more holistic practices in assessing and evaluating student and supervisee readiness to work with LGBT queer (Q) clients. The purpose of this article is to present a dispositional framework for assessment and evaluation and introduce the flexibility, integrity, awareness, stability, compassion, and openness (FIASCO) rubric of professional counseling dispositions. Two court cases, Keeton v. Anderson-Wiley and Ward v. Wilbanks, are used as case examples for applying the FIASCO rubric to situations involving LGBTQ clients.     

Three layers of history in recurrent social movements: the case of food reform

Using the understudied genre of food reform movements for illustration, we advocate greater attention to recurrent social movements. Analysis of these movements calls for combining three levels of historical analysis. One links the incidence and character of mobilization to long-term, large-scale historical changes; the second shows how periods of activism are also animated and shaped by specific historical contexts; and the third tracks legacies from earlier to later periods, thus both tracing additional causal influences and connecting separate cases into coherent sequences. The social movements literature includes excellent examples of each type of historical account. Combining types is much less common. Doing so, we contend, offers methodological advantages for scholars comparing and sequencing mobilization around similar problems in different historical periods. We develop the argument from three eras of food protest: Grahamites in the 1830s and early 1840s, dietary reformers and food safety campaigners of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and organic advocates who gained popular support beginning in the late 1960s.