What Bronx Community College Students Can Do!

The dominant discourse in faculty spaces with respect to student performance too often focuses on what community college students, in need of developmental courses, can’t do. Deeply inspired by the work of Robert Glaser, Lev Vygotsky, bell hooks, and Bagele Chilisa we (Monique Guishard, and four intermediate psychology students) have collaborated using student podcasts to theorize back to deficit, damaged centered theories of student underperformance.

Chapter excerpts from Handbook of student skills 2e

Excerpts from 'Handbook of Student Skills 2e' by Neil Burdess. 

Surviving and thriving in postgraduate research

Surviving and Thriving in Postgraduate Research focuses on the effective planning and management of a postgraduate research project, from the inception and commencement of a relationship with supervisors through to the submission and examination of the thesis... This book has been designed specifically for Australian and New Zealand students as well as international students studying in those countries

Body image and self-esteem among Asian, Pacific Islander, and white college students in Hawaii and Australia

Body image and its relationship to self-esteem was examined among Asian, Pacific Islander, and White women and men from Hawaii and Australia (n = 172). Although Pacific Islander and White participants had higher body mass indices than Asians, Pacific Islanders were more satisfied than Asians with their health and more satisfied than Asians and Whites with their appearance. Thus, higher body weight and greater body satisfaction may co-occur among Pacific Islanders, whereas lower weight and lower body satisfaction may co-occur among Asians. The findings suggest different levels of risk for body image dissatisfaction, and its associated psychological consequences, across ethnic groups.

Perceptions of engineering from female secondary college students in regional Victoria

Survey and focus group interviews with female students in regional Victoria resulted in identification of four perceived barriers that influence them to exclude engineering as a career choice. These barriers were identified as a lack of interest in the perceived image, a lack of knowledge, a traditionally maledominated industry, and limited recognisable role models. This paper reports on what Year 10 females are saying about the barriers and, consequently, how engineering can be promoted to overcome these barriers.

An update of Murrayan needs: A pilot study among American college students

Much research work on motives has been based on the taxonomy of psychogenic needs originally proposed by Murray and his colleagues in 1938. However, many of these needs have received little attention, and some of them may be less relevant now than they were 70 years ago. Two studies were conducted to investigate current motives. In Study 1, we used the Striving Assessment to elicit the personal strivings of 255 undergraduate university students. Murray’s taxonomy was unable to account for 50% of the 2,937 strivings. These strivings were thematically groups into 11 new categories and combined with 7 Murrayan needs to form the Comprehensive Motivation Coding System (CMCS). In Study 2, Thematic Apperception Test (TAT) stories produced by 143 undergraduate student participants were coded by these two systems. Murray’s system was unable to fully account for 42% of motives identified in the TAT stories, but the CMCS was able to account for 89%. These findings suggest that Murrayan needs may not adequately describe contemporary motivations and that the CMCS has the potential to do so. However, due to the limited demographics of our sample, further investigations are needed.

The influence of study schedules and work on the sleep-wake cycle of college students

College students usually exhibit an irregular sleep-wake cycle characterized by great phase delays on weekends and short sleep length on weekdays. As the temporal organization of social activities is an important synchronizer of human biological rhythms, we investigated the role played by study's schedules and work on the sleep-wake cycle. Three groups of female college students were investigated: (1) no-job morning group, (2) no-job evening group, (3) job evening group. The volunteers answered a sleep questionnaire in the classroom. The effects of day of the week and group on the sleep schedules and sleep length were analyzed by a two way ANOVA for repeated measures. The three groups showed delays in the wake up time on weekends. No-job evening and morning groups also delayed bedtime, but the job evening group slept at the same time on weekdays as on weekends. Sleep length increased on weekends for morning group and job evening group, whereas the no-job evening group maintained the amount of sleep from weekdays to weekends. This survey showed that the tendency of phase delay on weekends was differently expressed according to study's schedules and work.

Reliability and validity of self-reported burnout in college students: A cross randomized comparison of paper-and-pencil vs. online administration

Internet data collection is becoming increasingly popular in all research fields dealing with human perceptions, behaviors and opinions. Advantages of internet data collection, when compared to the traditional paper-and-pencil format, include reduced costs, automatic database creation, and the absence of researcher-related bias effects, such as availability and complete anonymity. However, the validity and reliability of internet gathered data must be established, in comparison to the usual paper-and-pencil accepted formats, before an inferential analysis can be done. In this study, we compared questionnaire data gathered from the internet with that from the traditional paper-and-pencil in a sample of college students. The questionnaires used were the Maslach Burnout Inventory - Student Survey (MBI-SS), the Oldenburg Burnout Inventory (OBI-SS) and the Copenhagen Burnout Inventory (CBI-SS). Data was gathered through a within-subject cross randomized and counterbalanced design, on both internet and paper-and-pencil formats. The results showed no interference in the application order, and a good reliability for both formats. However, concordance between answers was generally higher in the paper-and-pencil format than on the internet. The factorial structure was invariant in the three burnout inventories. Data gathered in this study supports the Internet as a convenient, user-friendly, comfortable and secure data gathering method which does not affect the accepted factorial structures existent in the paper format of the three burnout inventories used. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Weight concerns scale applied to college students: comparison between pencil-and-paper and online formats

Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP)

Seroepidemiological analysis of toxoplasmosis in college students

Background Toxoplasmosis is a zoonosis caused by an obligate intracellular parasite, Toxoplasma gondii, which affects warm-blooded animals including humans. Its prevalence rates usually vary in different regions of the planet. Methods In this study, an analysis of the seroprevalence of toxoplasmosis among Brazilian students was proposed by means of IgG specific antibodies detection. The presence of anti-Toxoplasma gondiiantibodies by indirect fluorescent antibody test (IFAT) was also evaluated in order to compare it with enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) and to assess the use of 2,2′-azinobis(3-ethylbenzothiazoline-6-sulfonic acid) and o-phenylenediamine dihydrochloride chromogens. Results The IFAT method showed a seroprevalence of 22.3%. These results were similar to those obtained by ELISA (24.1%). The seroprevalence was directly estimated from the IgG avidity, which showed that in a sample of 112 students, three of them had acute infection, an incidence of 1.6% in the studied population. Conclusion In this study, the use of different chromogenic substrates in immunoenzymatic ELISA assays did not display different sensitivity in the detection of T. gondii-reagent serum. The extrapolation of results to this population must be carefully considered, since the investigation was conducted on a reduced sample. However, it allows us to emphasize the importance of careful and well prepared studies to identify risk factors for toxoplasmosis, to adopt preventive measures and to offer guidance to at-risk populations about the disease.