For decades, scholars have worked to understand the precise manner in which messages affect attitudes and ultimately behaviors. The dominant paradigm suggests that there are two methods or routes to attitude change, one based on careful consideration of the messages and the other based on simple decision rules, often referred to as heuristics…

Acknowledging the pain and loss senior citizens experience due to fraud, the Denver District Attorney's Office launched a campaign--"Clergy Against Senior Exploitation (CASE)"--to reduce fraud perpetrated on older persons. The thrust of this project was preventing fraud by educating older adults through their religious affiliations in…

Treatment for pathological gambling is in its infancy. Several cognitive and behavioral interventions have shown promise, but high attrition and relapse rates suggest that gamblers requesting treatment are not uniformly committed to change. This article describes an exploratory study with 9 severe pathological gamblers--in their majority horse…

In schools throughout the country, education personnel express concern over the aggressive and antisocial behavior of children and youth. The frequency and severity of these acts compel us to find more effective strategies for decreasing and eliminating these behaviors. In this article, we argue for a broader explanation of the nature and…

This review summarizes end-of-program quit rates from 6 controlled and 10 field-based Not on Tobacco (NOT) evaluations. Approximately 6,130 youth from 5 states and 489 schools participated. Intent-to-treat and compliant quit rates were calculated at 3 months postbaseline (end-of-program). Results from controlled evaluations revealed an aggregate…

The Oregon Practice Improvement Collaborative (OPIC) facilitated the implementation of motivational interviewing (MI) in two community-based substance abuse treatment agencies. "The Change Book: A Blueprint for Technology Transfer" was used to structure and support the implementation of motivational interviewing. As part of the…

Although fathers play a key role in helping their children develop ideas about gender relations and close relationships, they have been largely overlooked as a resource to help prevent violence against women. This paper explores some of the reasons why fathers have not been successfully engaged in violence prevention. Engaging fathers to promote…

Many work-site physical activity interventions use theoretical variables in the design of their programs. Yet, these interventions do not document the degree of change in theoretical variables produced by the intervention. This study examined the construct validity of an intervention designed to affect social cognitive theory variables linked to…

Empirical evaluations suggest that problem orientation, the initial reaction to problems, differentiates suicidal youth from nonclinical controls and nonideating psychiatric controls. One promising area for intervention with suicidal youth relates to enhancing this specific coping skill. Nonclinical participants (N = 110) with active suicidal…

Adolescent physical inactivity has risen to an alarming rate. Several theoretical frameworks (models) have been proposed and tested in school-based interventions. The results are mixed, indicating a similar weakness as that observed in community-based physical activity interventions (Baranowski, Lin, Wetter, Resnicow, & Hearn, 1997). The…

This study explored the effectiveness of selected statistical measures at motivating or maintaining regular exercise among college students. The study also considered whether ease in understanding these statistical measures was associated with perceived effectiveness at motivating or maintaining regular exercise. Analyses were based on a…

How might one account for the organization in behavior without attributing it to an internal control structure? The present article develops a theoretical framework called behavioral dynamics that integrates an information-based approach to perception with a dynamical systems approach to action. For a given task, the agent and its environment are…

Retirement savings decisions can be influenced by the fund composition of the retirement savings plan. In 2 experiments, strong composition effects were observed, with a larger percentage of resources being invested in stock funds when more stock than bond funds were offered. Although participants changed their allocations repeatedly, the…

This article presents the author's comments on the article written by Voeltz and Evans (1983) entitled, "Educational Validity: Procedures to Evaluate Outcomes in Programs for Severely Handicapped Learners." In the article, what Voeltz and Evans had done was to identify succinctly several basic and critical elements that were often missing when…

The authors have developed a theory of simulation game design (Multiple Identification Theory; MIT) based on earlier research and several of their own studies. They utilize this theory to create a simulation game designed to change attitudes from a stance of competition to one of cooperation. Three questionnaires are constructed that measure…