Reports on a study which sought to determine the effect of family tactile history on attitude toward touch in public, and the relationship between this tactile history and the frequency of public touching behavior. (Author/AM)

Discusses the effects of marathon group therapy on attitudes of former drug users in a residential drug treatment center. Experimental group members responded higher on the group counseling evaluative subscale and lower on the guilt evaluative subscale than control members. (Author)

Examines the semantic relationships in consumers' health-related questions, physician-provided answers, and between questions and answers with the purpose of supporting the design of health consumer question-answering systems. The information present in the text was expressed using a "pilot" ontology that was based on the semantic…

Conducted national survey of administrators, graduate faculty members, and graduate students (total N=320) to examine names used to describe field: student personnel, student affairs, student services, and student development. Results revealed significant and differential preferences: student development was term preferred overall, with student…

Examined characteristics defining the ideal teacher using the semantic differential (SD) scale, which can detect attributes of ideal teachers and find evaluative, emotional, or affective components linked to this concept. Spanish college students completed the SD Scale. Results found teacher profiles similar to those found using other assessments,…

Using an updated version of the Aging Semantic Differential, 534 younger, middle age, and older participants from a college community rated female and male targets categorized as ages 21-34 and 75-85. Participants also provided views about their own aging. Repeated measures of analysis of variance examined attitudinal differences by age and gender…

A semantic differential instrument of four scales was used to evaluate employees' and supervisors' attitudes toward a differentiated performance appraisal training process. The sample included 237 employees and 83 supervisors in the Health Resources Administration of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The study found the instrument…

The present study: (1) describes the development and make-up of a comprehensive semantic differential measure of school related attitudes for young children; (2) presents evidence for the reliability and the discriminant and convergent validities of the measure; and (3) discusses issues pertaining to the measurement of school-related attitudes in…

Semantic differential scales rating the concepts "Most women are . . ." and "Most men are . . ." were administered to black and white, male and female, university freshmen. White females were the only group to rate the opposite sex more positively than their own sex. Black females were the only group to rate men as significantly more unreliable…

This study investigated the sex group stereotypes of elementary and high school-age youths. A total of 60 males and 60 females evaluated "boys" and "girls" on a semantic differential-type scale. The results indicated that younger members of both sexes were more positive about their own sex and more negative about the opposite sex than were their…

The semantic differential ratings of ten typefaces given by a group of 24 subjects were factor analyzed to discover what connotative meanings laypeople applied to typefaces and how these meanings compared with those of professional typographers. The typefaces, five from general categories and five from novelty categories of display typefaces, were…

Recognizing the widespread use of journal keeping, divergent views of the process, and the dearth of formal attempts to study this process, this study determined the cumulative (post-28 days) and immediate (daily) effects of unstructured (journal) and structured (bipolar checklist) self-evaluative writing upon self-evaluation and…

The reactions of participants to the presentation sessions of a staff development training program were assessed using participant questionnaires and non-verbal metabehavior estimates of participant attitudes. Fifty reading specialists and administrators participated in a two-session workshop dealing with reading material and methods. Each session…

The purpose of this study was to determine educational goals and values held by students and their teachers, incongruencies that exist between these perceptions, and differences between teachers' stated value priorities and their students' observations of actual behavior. The subjects of the study were selected twelfth-grade students and their…

Studied were a science oriented semantic differential instrument and its potential as a predictor of academic achievement in community college science courses. The sample consisted of 834 freshmen from two New York community colleges. A multiple correlation technique for assessing the instruments potential as a predictor was employed. Variables…