Individuals who work in the helping professions (physicians, counselors, nurses, pastors, and social workers) often work with individuals in stressful crisis situations. In addition to working in high stress situations, helpers in rural areas also suffer from isolation from support networks and peers that are available to urban helpers. This…

This presentation describes research on families with mentally retarded children, focusing on trends since 1983, the year that family research issues were reconceptualized in a paper titled "A Model of Stress, Coping, and Family Ecology" by Keith Crnic and others. The trend analysis concentrates on four issues: (1) the magnitude of the impact of…

This study sought: (1) to develop and collect evidence of reliability and validity for self-report instruments to measure cognitions about the experience of having a child with a disability; and (2) to examine the relationship of these cognitions with measures of stress and well-being among parents of children with disabilities. Cognitions…

A survey questionnaire, designed to explore the extent of job dissatisfaction among female elementary school teachers, elicited responses from 255 subjects with varying demographic and socioeconomic backgrounds from different parts of the country. Questionnaire items focused upon: (1) personal background; (2) job expectations; (3) satisfaction;…

The cognitive model of depression postulates that the depressed individual's cognitions are not only negative, but erroneous and impervious to information from the environment. However, the valence of that information ultimately determines whether those cognitions are impervious or merely receptive. The actual life circumstances of the depressed…

To determine how college students would rate themselves on a 5-point continuum from homosexual to heterosexual and then to see how those classified individuals perceived themselves and their parents, 1,783 single college students (741 males, 1,032 females), between the ages of 18 and 23, completed two self-report questionnaires. The first assessed…

Low-income, single mothers and their children constitute a rapidly growing population at risk for adverse health outcomes. The mental health of these women is particularly at risk. This study investigated the prevalence of maternal depressive symptoms in low-income, single mothers of 1- to 4-year-old children; identified psychosocial predictors of…

As a society, we believe that persons affected by a public decision should be represented in the development of that policy. The Family Community Leadership program (FCL), recently launched in Alaska, Colorado, Hawaii, New Mexico, Oregon, and Washington, has been established to increase homemakers' understanding of social concerns that influence…

Anxiety and tension are two affective factors which seem to interfere with measurement of instructional effects. Test anxiety respresents a possibly confounding effect in the measurement of any given knowledge. A study was conducted to examine the effect that relaxation training administered immediately prior to testing would have on academic…

This monograph was written to enhance the college or university faculty member's understanding of stress as it impacts upon both students and faculty, and to help faculty members cope with the stressors in their own lives and intervene with students to reduce stress. Stress is defined and sources of distress are identified. Research is cited which…

In the High School and Beyond (HSB) study, data on over 58,000 American tenth and twelfth graders were collected. The current study performed secondary analyses on three special needs groups from the public school data set: 1200 hearing impaired students, 767 speech disabled students, and 1249 learning disabled students. Disabled students were…

Data from the areas of job satisfaction and job stress are used to illustrate the following points: (1) that measurements can be arranged conceptually along a continuum from the specific to the global (or general); (2) that scales can be constructed which represent different levels of generality, within the same content area; (3) that such scales…

Discussed are family and child characteristics related to mild adjustment problems following separation and divorce. Data were obtained in a longitudinal study of 120 families with children 6 through 12 years of age. While children in the sample were not very disturbed, data indicate that the "well-being" of children and mothers was better after…

Questionnaire data from 168 rural residents of Atacosa, Cass, Freestone, Scurry, and Upton counties, 153 health and human services providers and interviews with 125 residents of 25 rural communities identified and described stressors in the rural Texas environment. Rural Texans viewed economic problems (money, lack of jobs, poverty, working…

Increasingly, principals are being viewed as instructional leaders, professional educators active in initiating and planning teacher development programs. While most principals consider instructional leadership a high priority, they spend much of their time solving routine problems and confronting minor crises. Immediate, short-term responses take…