Young people are open to traffic accidents because of their age, their attitude, their lack of experience, and their tendency for risk-taking. This study sought an answer to the question of what are the perceptions, attitudes, feelings, and self-reported behaviors of young people that lead to traffic safety problems and/or interfere with their…

Rating adjectives, 54 female and 53 male college students indicated their own preferences in dating partners or their perceptions of the other gender's preferences. The men rated good looks and physical health higher than the women did, while the women valued industriousness more than the men did. Both men and women valued intelligence more than…

Metaphoric analysis of family systems theory illustrates how metaphors and alternatives to those metaphors identify what a psychological theory has highlighted and obscured about the phenomena at its focus and how it has structured that phenomena. The most commonly used metaphors in family systems theory are the metaphors of system (system…

Nine former interns were hired to teach at six schools in the same system in which they had completed a year-long internship. Three student teachers were also hired to teach in three of those schools. Principals of the six schools were interviewed on their reasons for hiring these new teachers and their thoughts on the internship program. None of…

Research has indicated that numerous factors influence teaching performance, including nonacademic traits such as personality attributes, self-concept, commitment to teaching, and gender. This study compared the personality characteristics of elementary and secondary preservice teachers. Subjects were junior- and senior-level students (N=186) in…

Human beings are a delicate balance of mind, body, and spirit, so an imbalance in one domain affects all others. The purpose of this paper is to examine the effects that physical fitness may have on such human characteristics as personality and behavior. A review of the literature reveals that physical fitness is related to, and can affect,…

This paper offers a synopsis of the findings of a full-length ethnographic study which dealt with the phenomenon of the strong, veteran teacher who has succeeded in remaining enthusiastic over the course of a 30-year career. Subjects were five secondary school teachers of varied ethnic backgrounds representing a range of disciplines and teaching…

This study compared the personality profiles of 30 women who had been incestuously abused as children with a matched comparison group of 30 nonabused women. Women in the incest group self-reported sexual abuse before age 18 by a father or stepfather. Sexual abuse was broadly defined to encompass a range of sexual activities from exhibitionism to…

This paper is a clinical discussion of post-traumatic stress disorder and violence, particularly as it applies to the Vietnam Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome. In the first section, the syndrome is described as the sudden onset of explosive rage and unprovoked violence with little or no warning, accompanied by a drastic change in personality. It is…

Increasing emphasis is being given to the construct of course structure in educational research. The Course Structure Inventory (CSI) was designed to measure this construct as a unitary dimension made up of student attitudes toward varying degrees and kinds of structure (ACS). In addition to measuring ACS, the CSI has the added advantage of…

This booklet describes the characteristics of 19 Chicago area schools designated as winners in a 1984-85 recognition program entitled "For Character" sponsored by the University of Illinois at Chicago. These public and private elementary and secondary schools were outstanding in developing student character and academic learning.…

Described in this documentary report are the school lives of seven children and their approaches to learning over a period of 5 years. Chapter 1 presents short introductory vignettes. Each child illustrates a distinctive mode or approach to learning: formalist/traditionalist, reasoner/problem-solver, patterner/adapter, mapper/explorer,…

The paper examines the literature concerning drug and alcohol abuse among handicapped adolescents. An introductory section noting the relative lack of research on this problem is followed by a review of adolescent drug research identifying longitudinal studies involving more than 70,000 subjects, studies of associated personality variables, and…

This study sought to test the predictive power of the hypothesis that in formal organizations, groups of complementary (different) psychological types will perform two types of tasks more efficiently and effectively than groups consisting of compatible psychological types. The Myers/Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) of Jungian personality types was…

This paper examines the process of educational achievement for a birth cohort of Baltimore children who were followed prospectively during their first grade year. The analysis, which employed a social-psychological model of the early schooling process, identified some of the personal, interpersonal, and situational factors that influence cognitive…