J. Conrad Schwarz

Assessing child-rearing behaviors: a comparison of ratings made by mother, father, child, and sibling on the CRPBI.

This study of the reliability and validity of scales from the Childs Report of Parental Behavior (CRPBI) presents data on the utility of aggregating the ratings of multiple observers. Subjects were 680 individuals from 170 families. The participants in each family were a college freshman student, the mother, the father, and 1 sibling. The results revealed moderate internal consistency (M = .71) for all rater types on the 18 subscales of the CRPBI, but low interrater agreement (M = .30). The same factor structure was observed across the 4 rater types; however, aggregation within raters across salient scales to form estimated factor scores did not improve rater convergence appreciably (M = .36). Aggregation of factor scores across 2 raters yields much higher convergence (M = .51), and the 4-rater aggregates yielded impressive generalizability coefficients (M = .69). These and other analyses suggested that the responses of each family member contained a small proportion of true variance and a substantial proportion of factor-specific systematic error. The latter can be greatly reduced by aggregating scores across multiple raters.

Date Rape Its Relationship to Trauma Symptoms and Sexual Self-Esteem

This study extends previous research on date rape by assessing trauma symptoms and sexual self-esteem in a college population of 41 women who had been date raped and 125 women who had not been raped. Measures used included the Trauma Symptom Inventory (Bierce, 1995) and the Sexual Self-Esteem Inventory—Women (Zeanah and Schwartz, 1996). College women who had been date raped indicated significantly more trauma symptoms and lower sexual self-esteem in several areas than did college women who had not been raped. The results suggest that date rape has significant consequences for women, with implications for clinical treatment of women who have been date raped.

Affect and delay of gratification

Three experiments investigated the influence of positive and negative affect manipulations on childrens preferences for small immediate versus large delayed rewards. Positive and negative affect were induced via verbal instructions to imagine happy and sad experiences. Elementary school children were randomly assigned to a control condition or to one of several treatment conditions consisting of two affect manipulations: a positive followed by a negative, the reverse, and (in the third experiment) two positives or two negatives. In some conditions (in the second and third experiments) measurement of delayed reward preference followed the first and second affect inductions whereas in other conditions (in the second and third experiments) measurement followed only the second affect manipulation. As predicted, negative affect subjects chose fewer large delayed rewards than did positive affect subjects during the first assessment (p < .02). At the second assessment, comparison among treatment and control conditions revealed the influence of a prior commitment effect which negated the potential influence of a second affect manipulation on preference for delayed rewards.

Reliability and Validity of the Sexual Self-Esteem Inventory for Women:

The Sexual Self-Esteem Inventory for Women (SSEI-W) was developed to assess affective reactions to self-appraisals of sexuality. The 81-item measure contains five subscales, each of which reflects a domain of sexual self-esteem: Skill/Experience, Attractiveness, Control, Moral Judgement, and Adaptiveness. Using a college student sample, reliability analyses indicated that the subscales have high internal consistency. Construct validity was assessed by testing hypotheses regarding the effects of sexual experience, relationship commitment, sex guilt, and global self-esteem on sexual self-esteem. In most cases, as predicted, specific SSEI-W subscales were most strongly associated with specific constellations of predictor variables. These findings suggest that different domains of sexual self-esteem are affected by different situations and provide evidence for the multi-dimensionality of sexual self-esteem.

POST‐DIVORCE CONTACT, RELATIONSHIP WITH FATHER, AND HETEROSEXUAL TRUST IN FEMALE COLLEGE STUDENTS

Attitudes of 104 female college students from divorced and intact families were compared. Parental divorce was found to have long-term effects on young womens expectations about their futures in relation to men, work, and marriage. However, these effects were not found to be closely related to the nature of the relationships they had with their fathers following the divorce.

Assessing parental childrearing behaviors: A comparison of parent, child, and aggregate ratings from two instruments

Abstract This report examined the relative validity of scores of childrearing behavior based upon ratings by four rater types (mother, father, college-age child, and a sibling) from 186 families. Using the Worell and Worell Parent Behavior Form (PBF; Worell & Worell, 1974 ), subscale scores based on each rater type were of roughly equal internal consistency, had parallel factor structures, and yielded modest agreement with the three other rater types. These results are parallel to earlier findings for Schaefers Childs Report of Parent Behavior Inventory (CRPBI; Schaefer, 1965 ; Schwarz, Barton-Henry, & Pruzinsky, 1985 ) with a similar sample. There was little or no evidence that ratings by the child subject were superior to those of any other family member. Aggregating ratings of multiple family members greatly increased the generalizability of factor scores: The correlations between the three congruent factors of the PBF and the CRPBI averaged. 79 when 4-rater aggregate scores from each istrument were employed. Sources of validity and error in assessing childrearing behavior were discussed.

Masculinity and Femininity: The Role of Desirability in the Relationships among Measures Based on Self-Concept and Personality Traits.

With data gathered from 96 female college students, intercorrelations were examined among self-concept ratings of masculinity and femininity, and scales from two personality-trait measures of masculinity and femininity—the Adjective Check List (ACL) and the Extended Personal Attributes Questionnaire (EPAQ). The sign and magnitude of the correlations between pairs of measures were successfully predicted on the basis of the congruence between measures of both the gender relevance and the desirability of the self-rated traits comprising each measure. The desirability of the trait items employed in self-report personality-trait scales of masculinity and femininity evidently introduces methods variance that can either inhibit or potentiate the relationship with other scales composed predominantly of either desirable or undesirable traits. When balanced for the desirability of trait items, personality-trait scores of masculinity and femininity were substantially inversely correlated with each other, and only marginally correlated with self-concept ratings of masculinity and femininity, but these correlations remained in the anticipated directions. This result is consistent with the findings of Pedhazur and Tetenbaum (“Bem Sex Role Inventory: A Theoretical and Methodological Critique,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1979, 37, 996–1016), and supports Spences (Masculinity, Femininity, and Gender-Related Traits: A Conceptual Analysis and Critique of Current Research,” In B. A. Maher and W. B. Maher (Eds.), Progress in Experimental Research, Vol. XIII, Normal Personality Processes, New York: Academic Press, 1984) position that personality traits should be viewed as only one of many possible referents for gender/sex role identity.