David J. Chabassol

Fear of Success Consequence Scale: Measurement of Fear of Social Consequences of Academic Success:

An 18-item fear of consequences of success scale was developed and administered to 381 high school students. The scale has three subscales which measure (a) fear of negative peer reactions, (b) fear of compliments, and (c) fear of increased responsibility and expectations for continuous success as possible consequences of academic success. The scale evidenced an internal consistency reliability coefficient (Cronbach a) of .90 and significant item-total correlations (.50 ∼ .73), with a test-retest coefficient of .64 over 8 wk. Girls scored significantly higher on all the subscale and the total scores than did boys. The younger groups were more fearful about social consequences of success than were the older groups. Differences among the three grades were also significant. Possible research is mentioned.

Paternal Involvement in the Programs of Hearing-Impaired Children: An Exploratory Study

Twenty sets of parents of hearing-impaired children were interviewed. Mothers and fathers responded separately. Both structured and open-ended questions were used. The study attempted to explore the nature of the fathers involvement with his hearing-impaired child. Fathers saw themselves as actively involved, but the nature of their involvement differed from that of their wives. The latter argreed with both these perceptions. The role of breadwinner does not absolve the father from taking an active interest in his childs program. There was no marital conflict when husbands were informed by their wives of some aspect of the childs program. Both parents felt ignored by professionals during the diagnostic period.

Needs for structure, tolerance of ambiguity and dogmatism in adolescents.

Measures of structure needs, ambiguity tolerance, and dogmatism were given to a sample of urban adolescents in British Columbia. Structure need scores were significantly and negatively correlated with scores of ambiguity tolerance and significantly and positively correlated with scores of dogmatism (rs from .32 to –.45). Dogmatism and ambiguity tolerance scores were negatively correlated, as anticipated from MacDonalds work (1970). The findings are taken as evidence of construct validity for the structure inventory.

CORRELATIONS AMONG THREE MEASURES OF FEAR OF SUCCESS

Three instruments, scales by Pappo, Good and Good, and Zuckerman and Allison, which purport to measure fear of success, were administered to 89 university students. For the total sample, and for females alone, all correlations among scale scores were positive and significant. Small to moderate correlations among scores on the three scales were higher for females than for males, although mean scores for men and women did not differ significantly.

A SCALE FOR THE EVALUATION OF STRUCTURE NEEDS AND PERCEPTIONS IN ADOLESCENCE

An inventory was constructed which purports to measure the extent to which adolescents want structure and also perceive themselves as having such structure. “Structure”, as here defined, refers to guidance, advice, information, clarity, or direction offered to the adolescent by an adult authority figure. The scale was administered to approximately 1, 700 adolescents at junior and senior high school level on two separate testing occasions. Item analysis reduced the total number of items from 77 to 47 and improved the reliability considerably. Low correlations between the Wants Structure (WS) and Has Structure (HS) sub-scales suggest that the two are not measuring the same thing. Support given a number of hypotheses based on expected relationships between the structure inventory and other tests suggests that the former is measuring what it claims to measure, but further validation is desirable. The inventory seems to have some promise for research in an area which has been largely overlooked.

EVALUATION OF INSTRUCTORS AND SIMILARITY OF ATTITUDES OF STUDENT AND INSTRUCTOR

Only two correlations were significant (p < .01); when the students expected grade, students dogmatism score, students perception of the instructors dogmatism score, and instructors actual dogmatism score were correlated, with evaluation of the instructor as the criterion variable, values were low. For students expected score, r = .28, and for students perception of the instructors dogmatism score, r = .21. The former finding is in keeping with that of Kennedy (2), and the latter with that of Good and Good (1 ), although unlike the latter study, the present study utilized real rather than hypothetical instructors. When these data were submitted to step-wise multiple regression, with evaluation of the instructor as criterion variable, the four predictors yielded a significant (p < .001) R2 of .18, suggesting that the four predictors are significantly related to the criterion. However, the utility of this relationship, as reflected in the magnitude of R2, is minimal.

BIRTH ORDER AND FEAR OF SUCCESS AMONG MIDADOLESCENTS

While among 194 high school students 79 first-borns showed less fear of negative consequences of academic success than 78 last-borns and 37 middle-borns, no differences were observed on fear of increased positive attention or of increased responsibility.

Parents' perceptions of father's involvement with hearing-impaired children.

20 sets of parents of hearing-impaired children were asked to respond to 10 questions relating to the role, expectations, and beliefs of the father in his involvement in programs for such children. Two hypotheses were offered and negated. The respondents did not see the role of the father as inferior to that of the mother, and the mothers perceptions of the importance of the fathers role matched the latters perception of himself.

Fear of success in high school girls as related to family composition.

60 high school girls indicated their acceptance or rejection of four job situations involving young people. Two of the jobs were appropriate for the sex of the employee, two were not. Subjects showed as much fear of success for the male employed in a “feminine” vocation as they did for the female employee in a “masculine” one. Composition of the subjects family bore little relationship to either acceptance or rejection of the job models.

An Attempt to Validate a Measure of Structure in Adolescence.

AbstractEighty male adolescents were given a structure inventory (CASI) devised by the author, and also the Locus of Control (I-E) instrument, and the Adjective Check List (ACL), in an attempt to validate the first-named inventory. A number of hypotheses were offered as to the relationship which would be found between scores on the CASI and the I-E and ACL tests. Fourteen of the eighteen predicted correlations were found to be significant, and in the direction anticipated; Treatment of the scores by canonical correlation indicated a moderate underlying relationship between WS and HS subscale scores of the CASI and the other variables tested. Use of a multiple linear regression analysis indicated that these variables are more predictive of WS than of HS scores. Further validation studies, including those involving female Ss, are suggested.