Using data from the National Opinion Research Center's 1980 national survey, "High School and Beyond," relationships between an overall measure of ability and participation in performing arts activities were examined for 21,479 high school seniors from 1,015 public and private schools. A low positive relationship was found between…

A study was conducted to determine how children in preschool/kindergarten and third/fourth grades would predict whether a boy or a girl would succeed on cohort-defined masculine, feminine, or sex-neutral tasks. Older children predicted the winners along sex-typed dimensions. Boys and girls predicted a male more frequently when the task was…

Social comparison is an important influence on motivation, capability self-evaluations (self-efficacy), and skillful performance. In addition, social comparative information provides a standard against which students can judge their present performance level. Students may experience an initial sense of self-efficacy in attaining a given standard;…

A study of 6 low-achieving and 5 high-achieving minority-isolated elementary schools in San Diego, California, identified 28 factors that appeared to make a difference in achievement levels. Thirteen were associated with time-on-task, focus, and structure, i.e. variables within the schools' control. The remainder were miscellaneous background…

Based on material obtained and observations made in 1982, this Australian study focuses on the British Library's inter-library comparison (ILC) project for academic libraries. The report is presented in five sections, the first of which is a brief introduction. The second section deals with the general concept of inter-organization comparison as a…

In this study, 104 primarily indigent primiparous mothers from urban and rural areas and their healthy, full-term neonates were placed in one of four conditions during the normal postpartum lying-in period. Conditions were control, initial contact, rooming-in, and initial contact plus rooming-in. Dependent variables consisted of scores on the…

Information and articles on faculty advising are presented in this newsletter issue. The first article identifies specific consultation services on academic advising, as well as sources of information on academic advising. Next, in "Measuring Faculty Advisor Effectiveness," Stephen C. Brock describes the Cooperative Project on Advising,…

Adverse effects of material rewards on Wechsler subscale performance may be the result of a reward-produced developmental regression. To further explore that idea through replicating earlier findings with adults, and to extend the enquiry to children, selected Wechsler subscales were administered to 32 subjects at each of three ages (5, 10, and 18…

Studies of the personality traits of counselors, particularly in relation to their sexuality, assumes that such traits are relevant to counselor effectiveness. To investigate the relationship between counselor effectiveness and sex role attitude, 66 counselor education students, 15 male and 51 female, aged 22-58, participated in individual…

In order to study the effects of introducing an automated circulation system at Oberlin College, Ohio, data were collected from September 1978 until June 1982 on book availability, usage of library facilities, attitudes of library users toward the library, and the efficiency of circulation activities. Data collection methods included circulation…

Individual differences in fourth grade students' abilities to profit from experimenter-provided picture adjunct aids on prose recall tasks were examined. It was hypothesized that poor paired associate learners would benefit from picture adjunct aids to a greater extent than good paired associate learners. A secondary aim was to assess the effects…

A 10-year followup was conducted of a study that examined the effectiveness of expert consultation and student feedback provided to college faculty. A 1978 study (Aleamoni) found significant improvement in student ratings for a group of instructors receiving student feedback and expert consultation in comparison to a group of instructors receiving…

Age grading, the differentiation of social groups by members' age judgments, is widely regarded to be a universal aspect of social life. Most studies have examined age structurally (demographically), rather than normatively (modally). This study presents survey data measuring employees' age judgments of managerial careers collected from an…

Nursing curricula and licensing examinations have shifted toward the skills and processes of nursing. When these components are overhauled, their predictive relationship must be reexamined. This research tests the causal influence of several antecedent and achievement variables on licensure test performance. A path model is developed from a theory…

The purposes of the present study were to ascertain whether or not two particular formatting characteristics influenced seventh grade student performance on math tests. One research question focused on the effects of decimal positioning in multiple choice options for computational items. In a second question, labeling format was compared with…