In this article, the authors present essential aspects of the help-seeking behavior with regard to mental health problems of Ghanaian migrants in the Netherlands. Samples of citizens in the general population (n=97) and outpatients treated in mental health care facilities (n=36) were included. Data were acquired by administering a semi-structured…

This study explored a theory for motivation which included aspects of both attribution theory and goal theory. Motivational variables included beliefs about intelligence (entity or incremental), goal orientation (mastery/learning, performance-approach, performance-avoidance) and avoidant behaviours. Grades 4 and 5 students from a large,…

Education researchers, practitioners, and policymakers alike are committed to identifying interventions that teach students more effectively. Increased emphasis on evaluation and accountability has increased desire for sound evaluations of these interventions; and at the same time, school-level data have become increasingly available. This article…

Martin Seligman's psychology research on depression, published in 7 books and hundreds of articles, shows a correlation between attributional style and depression. "Explanatory style" is another term nearly synonymous with attributional style, a habitual way to explain, positively or negatively, external events. A "learned"…

This study explores the influence of cognitive development and health self-perception on Brazilian students' beliefs on the causes of health and illness. Ninety-six randomly selected elementary and junior high school students from two schools in the north area of Rio De Janeiro County were interviewed individually by an investigator. Subjects who…

Research on white college males has shown that people have a more complex schema regarding in-groups than out-groups. In an attempt to replicate the studies (Linville and Jones) on cognitive complexity and liking with a noncollege, racially and sexually mixed population, 60 randomly selected adult males and females read three vignettes describing…

The achievement locus of control of 64 Hispanic and 87 Anglo students enrolled in grades 9-12 in 2 high schools in a large school district in the Southwest was examined with the Multidimensional-Multiattributional Causality Scale (MMCS). Ethnic and sex differences in the attributions of academic success or failure to ability, effort, context, or…

Androgyny research has been hampered by a dependency upon traditional masculine and feminine sex roles for definition. Bakan's (1966) concept of agency and communion, which parallels masculinity and femininity, refers to behavioral competencies, involving a style or manner of interacting with the environment devoid of gender designations and…

Research suggests that observers of spouse abuse are likely to arrive at overly dispositional causal explanations for the abusive behavior, and reject both the abusing spouse and his victim. To examine observers' causal attributions and person perceptions under varying conditions, 160 college students read a vignette about an incident of spouse…

The construct of locus of control formulated by Rotter (1966) is being increasingly emphasized in personality functioning, since it appears to be related to several classes of behavior. It is also being considered as an important construct in cross-cultural research. Cross-cultural comparisons are particularly important, not just because they may…

This paper examines the ways in which children's beliefs about their abilities influence their academic achievement. These beliefs interact with the demands of different tasks or learning situations. Research is described which deals with children's causal attributions for their academic success or failure and with children's definitions of…

Perceptions of supervisor bias can profoundly affect employee morale, yet the perceiver usually infers bias from limited information. In this study, 95 male and female undergraduate students participated in groups of 2 to 5 for course credit, playing the role of middle-level managers working in the personnel department of a fictitious company…

Case study methodology was used to provide an in-depth examination of influences on distance learners' achievement attributions in order to gather data about educational orientation, study approaches, and beliefs about success and failure. The four subjects were drawn from 15 first-year distance learners pursuing degrees at Anadolu University's…

Current research on teacher decision making reveals that ability is viewed as an important attribute in determining students' achievement and that teachers behave differently toward students of different ability levels. This study focuses on a secondary English teacher's decision making in a class she perceived to be of low ability and in one she…

While the perception of rape has been studied intensely in recent years, most scales focus on rape myths as the content domain. The need exists for a more general instrument which would include items from a variety of sources, e.g., attitudes toward rape awareness, sexual history, age, virginity, community support, etc., in addition to the myth of…