The assumption of a study was that self rather than role forms the link between individuals and society. Data obtained through participant observation and 142 interviews with elderly women revealed that their identity is deeply embedded within their informal involvements and social network ties. (SK)

During fiscal year 1997-1998, National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) with the input and support of its constituents accomplished a series of record highs in meeting member needs. This report is for and about the members who benefit from and support NACE's mission in many significant ways. (Author/MKA)

Tests the egotism hypothesis for poor performance following insoluble problems, and investigates the contribution of egotistic mechanisms to performance in perceived group affiliation and helpless threat conditions. Reports that participants in the failure and group-affiliation conditions performed better than others. Observes that this supports…

This study examined the relationship between diagnostic group membership (lifetime depressed, n=367; lifetime mixed psychiatric, n=367; nonpsychiatric, n=367) and scores on the Depression-Subtle (D-S) and Depression-Obvious (D-O) scales of the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory. D-O scores were significantly related to group membership,…

The authors evaluated the roles of auditory-verbal short-term memory, visual short-term memory, and group membership in predicting language comprehension, as measured by an experimental sentence comprehension task (SCT) and the Test for Auditory Comprehension of Language--Third Edition (TACL-3; E. Carrow-Woolfolk, 1999) in 38 participants: 19 with…

Simulated data were used to demonstrate that groups formed by imposing cut-points based on either discrepancy or low-achievement definitions of learning disabilities (LD) are unstable over time. Similar problems were demonstrated in longitudinal data from the Connecticut Longitudinal Study, where 39% of the children designated as having LD in…

This study examined longitudinal patterns of affiliation with delinquent friends during late childhood and early adolescence, i.e., from ages 10 through 13, in a sample of 376 participants of both genders. Four groups with distinct affiliation profiles were found: an early affiliative group, a late affiliative group, a declining group (i.e., a…

Value priorities and educational value patterns are explored in respect to university students' active membership to religious and political groups. The sample was 117 students of the University of Athens, Greece, with 39 of them being active members of Christian Orthodox religious groups, 34 active members of political groups or unions, and 44…

The University of Minnesota's University Senate was established in 1912. At the time the proposal to expand it was developed in 2003, the senate had two subordinate bodies, the Faculty Senate and the Student Senate. Although the subordinate bodies could and did take action on their own, most of their actions were subject to final approval by the…

The purpose of the study was to determine the impact of professional group membership on the rate of adoption of e-learning. The sample consisted of Engineering, Finance, Human Resources, Legal, and Marketing professionals from a Fortune 500 manufacturing company. Professional groups were categorized based on Rogers (1995) five categories of…

The relationship between Black Greek-letter organization membership and African American student engagement in almost exclusively White college classrooms was explored in this study. Data were collected through interviews with 131 members from seven undergraduate chapters at a large, predominantly White university in the Midwest. This study…

This study compares organized political action motivated by pain and loss with the activities of conventional interest groups by examining the goals and strategies of parent and professional groups involved in special education. The study shows that parent groups and conventional groups differ in their motivations and define policy problems using…

How are racial-ethnic identity and acculturation processes linked, and when do they have positive consequences for academic achievement and assimilation trajectory? To address these issues this study integrates two frameworks--segmented assimilation (Portes and Rumbaut 2001) and racial-ethnic self-schema (Oyserman et al. 2003)--that focus on how…

Academic advisors help students with the process of decision making, of making sense of their world, of understanding how they go about learning, and of understanding how to appreciate diversity in their world. If advisors are to help students in these areas, academic advisors should be aware of the cognitive processes of how they make sense of…

The use of multivariate statistics in the social and behavioral sciences is becoming more and more widespread. One multivariate technique that is commonly used is discriminant function analysis. This paper compares and contrasts the two purposes of discriminant analysis, prediction and description. Using a heuristic data set, a conceptual…