Search

Recently, management scholars have applied the transactional theory of stress to distinguish between challenging and hindering stressors, and established their differential relationships with an assortment of key outcomes. Additionally, needs-based motivational theories (e.g., self-determination theory) have been increasingly applied to studies of work and school motivation. This study integrates the challenge-hindrance distinction with need satisfaction and self-efficacy in a model predicting important academic outcomes in a representative sample of college students (N = 383). The hypothesized model demonstrated excellent fit with the data, and although not all structural relationships were statistically significant, meaningful effect sizes were estimated in the expected direction for nearly all relationships. Collectively, predictors accounted for substantial portions of variance in end-of-semester GPA (19%), school satisfaction (65%), hours withdrawn (6%), and transfer intentions (11%). Further, need satisfaction predicted students' intention to persist beyond the effects of academic self-efficacy and stress perceptions. Taken together, these results support the relevance of self-regulatory theories to academic functioning, and argue for their inclusion in educational policy and work/school design research., Author(s): Justin Travis [sup.1] , James Bunde [sup.1] Author Affiliations: (1) grid.267167.3, 0000 0000 8555 8003, University of South Carolina Upstate, , 800 University Way, 29303, Spartanburg, SC, USA Introduction [...]

Historically, most investigations involving stress have assumed its undesirability, and deleterious effects have been identified across a variety of domains. Recently, however, researchers in management and health have differentiated between types of stress, and revealed a more complicated picture as a result. Specifically, stressors perceived as goal-relevant and manageable (i.e., challenging) are thought to increase motivation, performance, and well-being, while stressors viewed as goal-relevant but unmanageable (i.e., hindering) are believed to hamper performance and occasion maladaptive behaviors. Empirical support for this theoretical framework has accumulated in employment settings, but the model has yet to be adequately extended to higher education. The current study used a longitudinal design and multiple academic outcomes to explore the challenge-hindrance distinction in a large, diverse student sample. Students from 2 Southeastern institutions (N = 853) were assessed for challenge stress (e.g., class difficulty, high expectations), hindrance stress (e.g., ambiguous expectations, favoritism), academic self-efficacy (ASE), grade point average (GPA), hours withdrawn, and transfer intentions. Results were generally theory-consistent, as ratings of challenge and hindrance stress were associated with positive and negative academic outcomes, respectively. ASE did not moderate the challenge--GPA relationship, but emerged as an independent predictor of academic functioning. Implications for stress researchers, educators, and academic decision-makers are discussed.

Ensuring connectivity is crucial to protect landscapes but it requires knowledge about how animals use ecosystems throughout the year. However, animal movements remain largely unknown in biodiversity hotspots, even for species that fulfill key ecological roles, as is the case of hummingbirds in the Andes. In the complex topography of mountain slopes, movement of these avian pollinators may occur either between habitat patches with asynchronous plant blooms or across ecosystems that are located within the same elevation bands or along altitudinal gradients. Here, we used two decades (2000–2020) of records from citizen science data and boosted regression trees to predict monthly distributions for 55 hummingbird species in the Andes. We identified shifts in altitudinal distribution between contiguous months and calculated changes in the proportion of predicted distributions occupied by ecosystem types. Our findings reveal substantial altitudinal movement and differences in the proportion of ecosystem types utilized throughout the year that had not been previously reported for several species. Yet the magnitude of altitudinal and ecosystem shifts varies between hummingbird clades, and in some cases changes in the proportion of ecosystem types within estimated distributions occurs with little variation in altitude. All ecosystems across the Andes show temporal changes in hummingbird occurrence, but these are higher in natural landscapes compared to croplands or urban areas. Finally, we used phylogenetic logistic regression to test whether altitudinal and ecosystem shifts affect population trends. We found that higher ecosystem seasonality is more strongly associated with decreasing populations in comparison to altitudinal shifts. Altogether, our study reveals complex patterns of movement in hummingbirds and highlights the importance of ecological connectivity across different ecosystem types. More generally, it demonstrates the opportunity of using citizen science data to increase understanding about species' seasonal occurrences, so that landscapes can be better managed to protect animal movement. Keywords: boosted regression trees, eBird, ecological connectivity, species distribution models [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Technology is increasingly integrated into everyday life and consequently, traditional social exchanges between human agents have evolved to include human-computer interaction, providing scientists new directions for understanding and predicting consumer behavior. Despite progress, there are conceptual and empirical limitations in current measures applied to consumer/user preferences. This paper documents the development and validation of the 10-item preference for computer versus human interaction (PCHI) scale across three distinct samples and incorporating items that (a) include direct comparisons between computers and humans, (b) are independent of specific contexts or technologies, and (c) capture major theoretical domains of social, consumer, and human factors psychology. Results support the hypothesized three-factor structure (efficiency, ease of use, and trust) and demonstrate the utility of this measure to predict everyday consumer decisions beyond extant measures. Additionally, the PCHI offers marketing, user experience, and other practitioners a brief instrument for developing interventions, training protocols, and modeling attitudes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]