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Recent research demonstrated the potential of psychedelic drugs as treatment for depression and death-related anxiety and as an enhancement for well-being. While generally positive, responses to psychedelic drugs can vary according to traits, setting, and mental state (set) before and during ingestion. Most earlier models explain minimal response variation, primarily related to dosage and trust, but a recent study found that states of surrender and preoccupation at the time of ingestion explained substantial variance in mystical and adverse psilocybin experiences. The current study sought to replicate the previous model, extend the model with additional predictors, and examine the role of mystical experience on positive change. A hierarchical regression model was created with crowdsourced retrospective data from 183 individuals who had self-administered psilocybin in the past year. Scales explored mental states before, during, and after psilocybin ingestion, relying on open-ended memory prompts at each juncture to trigger recollections. Controlled drug administration was not employed. This study replicated the previous model, finding a state of surrender before ingestion a key predictor of optimal experience and preoccupation a key predictor of adverse experience. Additional predictors added to the explanatory power for optimal and adverse experience. The model supported the importance of mystical experiences to long-term change. Mental states of surrender or preoccupation at the time of ingestion explain variance in mystical or adverse psilocybin experiences, and mystical experiences relate to long-term positive change. The capacity to recognize this optimal preparatory mental state may benefit therapeutic use of psilocybin in clinical settings.

Although volunteer community engagement has been recognized as promoting positive academic outcomes among college students, such experiences can be impractical for underrepresented students who often need to work. Community-engaged employment offers paid opportunities for students to earn money while participating in meaningful community initiatives. In this study, we explored the impact of community-engaged employment on the academic outcomes of underrepresented students. We created a comparison group using propensity score matching, which reduced selection bias and group differences on background characteristics, thus strengthening causal arguments. Results showed that underrepresented students who were employed in a community-engaged work program had significantly higher second-year retention rates, graduation rates, grade point averages, and number of credits completed compared to similar students not employed in the program. These findings indicate that community-engaged employment can provide positive academic outcomes similar to volunteer community engagement experiences, while also addressing financial barriers that many underrepresented students encounter. ____ A pesar de que se reconoce que la participación comunitaria voluntaria promueve resultados académicos positivos entre los estudiantes universitarios, estas experiencias pueden resultar no muy prácticas para los estudiantes infrarrepresentados, quienes a menudo necesitan trabajar. Los empleos comprometidos con la comunidad ofrecen oportunidades pagadas para que los estudiantes ganen dinero al mismo tiempo que participan en iniciativas comunitarias significativas. En este estudio, exploramos el impacto que tienen los empleos comprometidos con la comunidad en los resultados académicos de estudiantes infrarrepresentados. Para ello, creamos un grupo de comparación utilizando el pareamiento por puntaje de propensión (‘propensity score matching’ o ‘PSM’ en inglés), lo que redujo el sesgo de selección y las diferencias de grupo basadas en el entorno social, fortaleciendo así los argumentos causales. Al comparar los resultados académicos de estudiantes infrarrepresentados empleados en programas de participación comunitaria con estudiantes similares no empleados en dichos programas, observamos que tanto la tasa de retención en el segundo año de estudios, como la tasa de graduación, los promedios de calificaciones y el número de créditos completados fueron significativamente más altos en los primeros. Estos hallazgos indican que el empleo comprometido con la comunidad puede proporcionar resultados académicos positivos similares a las experiencias de participación comunitaria voluntaria, al tiempo que ofrece una solución a las barreras financieras que enfrentan muchos estudiantes infrarrepresentados.

In this interpretive case study, we draw from sociocultural theory of learning and culturally relevant pedagogy to understand how urban students from nondominant groups leverage their sociocultural experiences. These experiences allow them to gain an empowering voice in influencing science content and activities and to work towards self-determining the sciences that are personally meaningful. Furthermore, tying sociocultural experiences with science learning helps generate sociopolitical awareness among students. We collected interview and observation data in an urban elementary classroom over one academic year to understand the value of urban students’ sociocultural experiences in learning science and choosing science activities.

This chapter investigates whether there are differences in the determinants of job satisfaction depending on the age and sex of the worker. Age and gender are two of the most central bases of social structural differentiation. The prior experiences of men and women and persons of different age, as well as their situations, could foster distinctive outlooks, values, and needs, which could generate variant reactions to the very same work experiences. It also considers whether age and gender interact with work experiences in influencing job satisfaction. The data were obtained from the 1972-73 and 1977 Quality of Employment Surveys, through the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research. The 1972-73 survey included a national sample of 1455 persons, chosen according to a multistage area probability design so as to be representative of the US working population. Gender and age inequalities in the labor force were initially investigated by assessment of mean differences in the work variables and job satisfaction.

This study applies an integrated moral obligation model to examine the role of environmental and cultural values, and beliefs in the activation of landowner conservation norms. Data for this study were collected through a self-administered survey of riparian landowners in two Minnesota watersheds: Sand Creek and Vermillion River watersheds. Study findings suggest that collectivistic and biospheric–altruistic values form the bases for the activation of personal norms. Further, beliefs about local responsibility and ability to act influence personal norms to protect water resources. Findings suggest that landowners’ personal norms of water conservation are more likely to be activated by conservation strategies that appeal to biospheric–altruistic and collectivistic values, emphasize adverse consequences of water pollution, highlight water resource protection as a local responsibility, and provide the resources needed to protect water resources.

The authors explore the relationship between participation in service-learning courses and students’ perceptions of sense of belonging and campus climate. Curricular activities such as service-learning, which engage students in community service through a structured course setting, may promote diversity outcomes such as perspective taking and critical reflection about diversity, which could lead students to become more aware of racial/ethnic, gender, and socioeconomic disparities. Using SERU data, the authors analyzed the relationship between these service-learning; campus climate and sense of belonging within different ethnic and racial groups. The results suggest that students in service-learning courses tend to perceive more negative campus-climate within their institution across different ethnic groups.

In this chapter, the authors investigate the relationships between students’ participation in a multifaceted community-engaged learning program (the Community Engagement Scholars Program—CESP) and their educational success. Using propensity score matching techniques, the authors compared undergraduate students participating in CESP with comparable peers who did not participate. The students who participate in the program progressed more rapidly toward graduation, completing more credits, and were more likely to persist/graduate (93% vs. 83%) after four years. Students from groups underrepresented in postsecondary education completed more credits and, although not significant, had higher persistence/completion (89% vs. 81%) compared with other underrepresented students.

This naturalistic study examined differences in students' motivations for elective versus required service-learning (SL) classes. Students in two successive academic years' cohorts were surveyed by the SL center at a large Midwestern university. Analyses compared classes differing in requirements for community-based service. Students required to participate in community service as part of a class within a program required for admission to a university were less likely to: want to be involved in future community work; enroll in another SL class; and recommend their class, compared to other groups of students, including others from classes in which SL was required as part of the program in which students were enrolled. These findings suggest that students' motivations to participate in community-engaged activities are not shaped simply by whether or not community engagement is required in SL classes, but also by other factors including how the engagement opportunity is contextualized.

This article examines the logic underlying different models for assessing the college readiness of high school students. It focuses on benchmark scores that purportedly identify students who are college ready and presents the challenges of using threshold scores from a single assessment instrument to represent readiness. As well as providing logical and methodological reasons to be wary of threshold scores, analyses of Minnesota and national data illustrate their shortcomings. The article argues that assessments of college readiness should (a) use benchmarks with meaning and consequences for students, (b) employ multiple measures to provide readiness information more precise than from a threshold score derived from any single assessment, and (c) present readiness in terms of probabilities or likelihoods rather than as ready or not.

This article introduces the 16 articles appearing in the 2009 and 2010 volumes of Analyses of Social Issues and Public Policy that were submitted in response to a call for papers on “The Social Psychology of the 2008 United States Presidential Election.” The papers touch a wide array of election topics, comparing the backgrounds and values of voters and nonvoters, those voting for different candidates, and those who choose which candidates they support early vs. late during the campaign. These papers, together with several others on media representations of candidates, highlight the continuing presence of race in shaping political attitudes and preferences, and also emphasize the evolution of American prejudices in the election process, from overt rejection of individuals who are racially different, to qualified political support under certain circumstances. Other papers in the collection focus on the role of gender as well as race, and also on some of the many ways in which presidential elections reflect and shape the self-concepts of American voters.

Preparing underrepresented students for college success though pre-collegiate partnership programs is one alternative to affirmative action programs. This article describes the Multicultural Excellence Program (MEP), a partnership program between an urban school district and 22 four-year higher education institutions. MEP, begun in 1987, targets 7th–12th-grade students from groups historically underrepresented in higher education. It helps them plan how to prepare themselves for continuing on to a four-year college. Analyses evaluating program effectiveness examined outcomes of over 4,000 secondary students and 243 college students. Despite substantial turnover, particularly at transition points, MEP has been very successful in enrolling its high school graduates immediately in four-year colleges. Although many MEP students have thrived in college, a smaller proportion has struggled.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled on the legality of race-based affirmative action at universities in 2003. Although the decisions affirmed the legality of considering race in college admissions decisions, their long-term effects are not entirely clear. They neither resolved conflicts nor solved problems affirmative action was intended to address, namely, disparities in educational outcomes between Whites and ethnic/racial minorities. Although disparities have diminished since 1965, policies and practices to sustain and further increase diversity in higher education without affirmative action are needed. This article provides historical and conceptual grounding for this JSI issue, which examines approaches for attaining campus diversity. Collectively, the issue provides approaches for increasing diversity as well as strategies for managing and benefiting from diversity in post-secondary environments.

This article examines disparities based upon poverty and race/ethnicity. After framing the issues by looking at national, state, and local data, it illustrates ways that social scientists can be involved in shaping educational practices and policies, focusing on the types of skills that are useful and on ways of thinking about the types of collaboration that are needed. Skills discussed are methodological as well as substantive; both types draw from existing knowledge bases. For collaboration, the model described is that of action research. Approaches are illustrated through personal examples drawn from collaborations with urban public schools. They include defining expected growth for students at different achievement levels, school accountability issues, and setting up long-term collaboration.

The purpose of this study was to clarify parents' role in the initiation of alcohol use of young adolescents. Subjects included 413 adolescent-parent dyads in which the youth had not begun drinking at the end of 6th grade. All dyads were participants in Project Northland (PN), an adolescent alcohol use prevention trial. A proposed etiologic model including parent norms related to underage drinking, household alcohol-related problems, family problems, and potential mediators of parent influence was tested using structural equation modeling techniques. To explore model differences between intervention conditions, separate models were estimated for intervention and reference samples. Among the parent constructs modeled, parent norms around underage drinking exhibited the strongest relationships with 7th- and 8th-grade alcohol use. Parent norms were directly related to adolescents' alcohol-related cognitions, and thereby had a significant indirect relationship with teenagers' alcohol use. No significant diffe...

Continuity of care is a critical component of quality patient care, yet the paucity of reliable and valid measures of continuity of care make it difficult to ascertain the extent to which continuity has been achieved. The purpose of this article is to describe the development of an instrument to measure continuity of care that incorporates the perspectives of elders hospitalized for a chronic illness and their family caregivers. The instrument was used, and its reliability and validity examined, in a series of studies related to elders’ posthospital transition. Elders in the studies ranged in age from 55 to 94 years. The findings supported content and construct validity, internal consistency reliability, and ability to detect changes in the same subjects at different points in time for the care management and services subscales. With further refinement, the continuity of provider and conflicting information subscales might also facilitate assessment of care continuity.

This concluding article provides a framework for a social psychological analysis of intergroup conflict and conflict resolution. The framework highlights the individual and intergroup factors that shape the nature of perceptions of intergroup relations and group representations, and describes how these perceptions lead to cognitive, affective, and behavioral responses toward groups. Included in the framework are the metatheoretical, theoretical, and practical contributions of the articles in this issue toward understanding intergroup relations. The potential and responsibility of social psychologists to move beyond the laboratory to applied national and international issues is also discussed.

Violence against-children is multi-faceted and interrelated with family, school, community and culture. This study examines violence inflicted on students by teachers in schools. Few theoretical models of abusive behavior by teachers have been developed and examined empirically. This study provides a profile of violence displayed by teachers against children, and proposes a model suggesting that teachers' violent behavior toward students is influenced by school climate and by the ideology of student control. Both relationships are mediated by the teachers' attitudes concerning the use of verbal and physical violence as educational tools. The model was tested on a sample of teachers (n = 117) and their students (n = 1170) from the Bedouin community in Israel. Results demonstrate high incidence of maltreatment of students by their teachers and support the hypothesized model.

This paper examines research and theory in the area Kurt Lewin called action research. Action research is collaborative, driven by a partnership between theorist/researchers and practitioners. It focuses on both theoretical and practical implications of issues. When viewed in the context of other work by Lewin, action research is seen as focusing on the social context of behaviors and on the dynamics of situations in which behaviors occur. Action research provides a versatile, potentially powerful approach for use in applied research on groups and group settings. Principles of action research, a tracing of the development of action research, and variations of action research approaches that have emerged in education are presented. Finally, two ongoing studies that exemplify action research are described.

There is much to appreciate in the article of Renner and Moore (2004). They do an excellent job of describing the current state of post-secondary education in the United States with respect to issues of ethnic/racial diversity. They illuminate the differential opportunity that exists currently, with most selective institutions still predominantly white while students of color are overrepresented at two-year colleges. And they describe a number of mechanisms that help account for continued differences in college access. Finally, they are correct in asserting that from a social justice perspective, arguing for diversity is meaningless, while arguing for equity makes perfect sense. Despite the wealth of information, however, the approach proposed by Renner and Moore will not provide a path toward their goal of equity. Shifting from the benefits of diversity for all students and the “compelling interest” that goes with it to the unfairness of inequity that disadvantages students of color will be counterproductive for several reasons. The first is that the shift would give up the only legal precedent for affirmative action. The U.S. Supreme Court in its University of Michigan decisions Gratz et al. v. Bollinger et al. and Grutter v. Bollinger et al. has affirmed the “compelling state interest” argument of Justice Powell in accepting diversity, while they have refused to recognize historical bases of inequality as a rationale for ongoing preferences (e.g., Alger, 1998). That is, the courts have disallowed information about past systematic patterns of discrimination as not germane. Their perspective has been that discriminating against white applicants today to make up for past discrimination against students of color is discriminatory, and

Many instruments have been developed with college students and used primarily with students or younger adults. Thus, researchers face challenges in selecting measures of psychological state that are valid and reliable for use with elders. This article describes a measure of psychological state, the Symptom Questionnaire; provides information about its reliability and validity; and details the steps used to evaluate reliability and validity of its anxiety and depression scales for elders hospitalized for an acute episode of a chronic condition. The findings suggest that a short version of the Symptom Questionnaire, consisting of the depression and anxiety scales, is valid and reliable for elders. The findings also revealed small differences between the means of data collected using the short version and those obtained using the full instrument.

There are implications of several ideas by Kurt Lewin for addressing the challenges facing today's schools and school children. A Lewinian orientation to educational problems provides a very different view of schools from those that currently prevail. It focuses on social bases of difficulties and takes multiple perspectives. It views classes as dynamic, it examines the social forces surrounding the children as well as the various environments that they experience, and it encourages active involvement of students in their learning. This orientation not only fits current “innovative” thinking in education such as models for making education multicultural, but it has also provided the bases of important applied work on cooperative learning techniques and constructive ways of structuring conflict within educational settings.

Meta-analytic methods are designed to bring order to diverse and complex literatures by summarizing and synthesizing the findings of empirical studies. This article examines how meta-analytic methods were applied to the literature relating cooperative, competitive, and individualistic goal structures to achievement. In this instance, meta-analytic techniques revealed clear patterns in the findings favoring cooperative goal structures. A more important question is "Did the meta-analysis findings affect the way researchers and practitioners think about the literature?" The present article summarizes the findings from a meta-analysis of that literature, reviews substantive and methodological issues surrounding that meta-analysis, and examines how the meta-analysis affected the literature relating goal structures and achievement.

Despite the perceived importance of time spent reading on reading growth, research supporting this notion is limited. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of time spent reading at school and at home on intermediate grade students’ reading achievement. One hundred and ninety-five students in Grades 5 and 6 kept daily reading logs from mid-January through mid-May. A stepwise multiple regression analysis, in which standardized reading comprehension scores prior to the study served as a covariate, revealed that amount of time spent on reading during the reading period contributed significantly to gains in students’ reading achievement. Time spent on reading at home was not significantly related to reading achievement gains. Findings provide needed research support for the idea that time engaged in silent reading at school is beneficial to intermediate grade students.

One aspect of the increased cross-cultural contacts found in our global society has been rapid growth in the number of foreign students studying in the United States. The attitudes of these students toward the United States is of major importance, for these students are often future leaders of their countries. This study used a contact theory perspective to examine the attitudes of 223 students from the State of Qatar as those students pursued higher education in the United States. Findings are consistent with contact theory hypotheses; students experiencing greater promotive contacts displayed more favorable attitudes towards the United States.

In early 2006, the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues (SPSSI), the society that produces Analyses of Social Issues and Public Policy (ASAP), charged a task force with examining the research on interrogations and drafting a statement for Council review. During the Council discussion of the proposed statement, President Shinn raised a fundamental general issue to consider, asking, “To what extent do we want to say that torture shouldn’t be done because there is research that says so, and to what extent will we say so based on an ethical point of view?” The task force report was shared with the Council at its June 2006 meeting. The report, focused on research on interrogation and confessions, was presented by task force chair Mark Costanzo, and its other members, Ellen Gerrity and M. Brinton Lykes. The report and its recommendations were endorsed by the SPSSI Council at that same meeting. The article that appears here, co-authored by Costanzo, Gerrity, and Lykes, is a revision of the task force report. Even though it is not exactly the document endorsed by the Council, it is substantively consistent with what was endorsed. Although the SPSSI Council seemed largely of one mind in support of this perspective, it has not been so for all psychologists. As a result, ASAP invited

The purpose of this study was to test a model of factors influencing family caregivers' responses and health outcomes during the 2-month period following an elder's discharge from the hospital for acute episodes of chronic illness. The elder's average age was 72.3 years. The average age of caregivers, 63% of whom were spouses of the elder, was 61 years. A longitudinal design was used for this study. Data were collected from 346 elder/caregiver dyads the day before discharge and at 2 weeks and 2 months postdischarge. Structural equation analysis was used to evaluate the conceptual model. The findings suggest that the model fits the data with an overall Goodness of Fit Index of .80.

Causal modeling techniques were used to examine the relationships among three constructs: (a) a curriculum-based measurement and evaluation system, (b) structure of instruction, and (c) achievement. Measures of the three constructs were collected for 117 elementary-level resource room students. All three constructs were stable over time. Teachers' accuracy in setting up student performance measurement and silent reading were found to be related directly to achievement. Implications for teacher training are discussed.