Seeing that the culture and governance of competition determines relations among social actors, we turn to the concept of referentiality to investigate the institutional order of competition in higher education. Defining referentiality as the description of a model standard for comparison, this study explores how higher education organizations…

A look back at the first year of the Language and Cultures Network for Australian Universities (LCNAU) highlights how great the need for such a network has been within the sector and how important LCNAU's role will be in ensuring the future of languages teaching and research in universities and beyond. LCNAU was established in early 2011 as part…

Objective: Assessing and understanding the health needs and capacities of college students is paramount to creating healthy campus communities. The American College Health Association-National College Health Assessment (ACHA-NCHA) is a survey that ACHA developed in 1998 to assist institutions of higher education in achieving this goal. The…

This paper empirically evaluates Caplow and McGee's (The academic marketplace, 1958) model of academia as a prestige value system (PVS) by testing several hypotheses about the relationship between prestige of faculty appointment and job satisfaction. Using logistic regression models to predict satisfaction with several job domains in a sample of…

Towards the end of their secondary education, students face significant pressures in their decision about their career plan. These pressures are internal and external, personal and social, individual and from the reference group. This paper aims at understanding the reasons driving engineering students' choices, their perceived needs and…

Objective: Assessing and understanding the health needs and capacities of college students is paramount to creating healthy campus communities. The American College Health Association-National College Health Assessment (ACHA-NCHA) is a survey developed by the ACHA in 1998 to assist institutions of higher education in achieving this goal. The…

Objective: Assessing and understanding the health needs and capacities of college students is paramount to creating healthy campus communities. The American College Health Association-National College Health Assessment (ACHA-NCHA) is a survey that ACHA developed in 1998 to assist institutions of higher education in achieving this goal. The…

Describes complex patterns of social interaction in sexual harassment arena as cause for its difficult eradication on the Oklahoma State University campus despite 1982 establishment of sexual harassment policy; specifically citing convergence of primary drama (victim discomfort in aggressive action taking resulting from sex role definition) and…

Investigated how male reference group identity status related to psychosocial functioning in college males. The Reference Group Identity Status Scale was correlated with measures of students' personal, social, and collective aspects of identity; sense of belongingness; and appreciation of similarities and differences among people. Results…

Investigated the relationship between public and private self-consciousness and social and personal aspects of identity. Public self-consciousness correlated more strongly with social than with personal aspects of identity, and private self-consciousness correlated more strongly with personal than with social aspects. Discusses implications for…

A theoretical model is proposed for confidence in knowledge based on the assumption that people are good judges of the reliability of their knowledge, provided that the knowledge is representatively sampled from a specified reference class as defined by E. Brunswik (1943). Experiments with 177 college students support the theory. (SLD)

A Black U.S. sociologist views the issue of marginality in early socialization and career development. Analyzes his life experiences to provide data through which a dialectical model of marginalization and human development can be constructed. Concludes that emphasis upon either marginality or mainstreaming is a function of the complex interaction…

A preliminary classification of methods used during first-year law courses to develop a sense of professional identification among students is presented. Professors' images of lawyers conveyed to students are described based on faculty comments. In addition, informal student interviews were conducted to determine their awareness of this…

Develops a measure of male identity based on Wade's theory of Male Reference Group Identity Dependence. The Reference Group Identity Dependence Scale (RGIDS) assesses feelings of psychological relatedness to other males. Undergraduate males (N=344) completed the RGIDS. Discusses findings in terms of implications for the theory and future research…

In-depth interviews with Mexican-American and Euro-American bilingual teaching candidates examined differences in reference group orientation, affiliative identity, and rationale for becoming a bilingual teacher. Mexican Americans had a strong Mexican affiliative identity and seemed personally compelled to maintain the language and culture.…