Kostas Mylonas

Functional relationships in the nuclear and extended family: A 16-culture study

This study investigated the relationship between culture, structural aspects of the nuclear and extended family, and functional aspects of the family, that is, emotional distance, social interaction, and communication, as well as geographical proximity. The focus was on the functional aspects of family, defined as members of the nuclear family (mother, father, and their children) and the extended family (grandmother/grandfather, aunt/uncle, cousins). Sixteen cultures participated in this study, with a total number of 2587 participants. The first hypothesis, that the pattern of scores on the psychological measures and the behavioral outcomes are similar across cultures, an indication of cultural universality, was supported. The second hypothesis, that functional relations between members of the nuclear family and their kin are maintained in high-affluent and low-affluent cultures, and that differences in functional relationships in high- and low-affluent cultures are a matter of degree, was also supported ...

Motor Creativity and Self-Concept

Creative children often have difficulty in forming their self-concept because parents may suppress their creative ideas. The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between motor creativity and self-concept. Wyricks Motor Creativity Test and the Pictorial Scale of Perceived Competence and Social Acceptance for Young Children were administered to a sample of 414 children aged from 6 ± 0.3 years to 7 ± 0.3 years. Factor analysis for the self-concept measures revealed a 4-factor solution. The amount of variance explained by all 4 factors was 30.28% with the first factor explaining most of the variance (18.2%). Correlation analysis related motor creativity with the self-concept factors, and specifically with the first factor. It seems that perceived maternal acceptance has a significant role in explaining childrens motor creativity.

Political and religious group membership, value priorities and educational values

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 students acting as the ‘control’ group, since they were not members of such religious or political groups. Group membership—religious or political—was found to be associated with the systems of value priorities and educational values, with specific value combinations differentiating between religious group membership and political group membership.

Cultures Are Like All Other Cultures, Like Some Other Cultures, Like No Other Culture

The theme of this chapter is the relationship between cross-cultural psychology and indigenous psychology1 and a methodological approach that can potentially satisfy the goals of both. Indigenous psychology is an integral part of cross-cultural psychology. Whereas cultural psychology has taken the extreme stance that the essence of culture is unique in its symbols and significance so as to preclude meaningful comparisons between different cultures (Shweder, 1990), the accepted definition of cross-cultural psychology includes two basic dimensions: universal psychological phenomena across cultures and psychological phenomena specific to cultures.

Results: Cross-cultural analyses of the family

This Chapter provides an overview of the cross-cultural data analyses. The Chapter is presented in seven parts. The first two involve the analyses of the psychometric properties of the instruments. “Equivalence and pooled factor Solutions” discusses the equivalence analyses, addressing the question of to what extent the instruments measure the same underlying constructs in each of the 27 countries. Having determined the equivalence (in a few cases leading to the elimination of a few items), we proceed with an analysis of the internal consistencies of the scales in each country in the section on “Internal consistency”. The next two sections address the issue of sample differences in the various groups, namely gender (see p. 142) and educational level of the parents (see p. 145). The question is whether any country differences in education and gender need to be controlled prior to the cross-cultural data analyses. The next two sections of the Chapter involve these cross-cultural data analyses. On pp. 147–58 we present an analysis of the size of cross-cultural differences in the various instruments employed. The exploratory nature of the data analyzes changes for a hypothesis-testing perspective on pp. 158–72. The hypotheses of Chapter 5 are tested here. A final section (pp. 172–85) presents an integration of results that are relevant to the hypotheses. EQUIVALENCE AND POOLED FACTOR SOLUTIONS A first necessary step in cross-cultural data analyses involves the question of to what extent the same construct(s) has been measured by an instrument in all cultural groups involved.

Bias in Terms of Culture and a Method for Reducing It An Eight-Country “Explanations of Unemployment Scale” Study

Several sources of bias can plague research data and individual assessment. When cultural groups are considered, across or even within countries, it is essential that the constructs assessed and evaluated are as free as possible from any source of bias and specifically from bias caused due to culturally specific characteristics. Employing the Explanations of Unemployment Scale (revised form) for a sample of 1,894 employed and unemployed adults across eight countries (the United States, the United Kingdom, Turkey, Spain, Romania, Poland, Greece, and Brazil), we applied a method based on individual differences multidimensional scaling and principal component analysis to detect item bias in terms of culture and try to eliminate this bias variance from the overall item variance so as to (a) avoid jeopardizing validity levels and (b) arrive at clearer and more meaningful dimensions after adjusting the raw scores by removing the bias part. The results supported our statistical–psychometric intervention as the structure computed for the unadjusted data was enhanced and clarified when the data were adjusted for bias in terms of culture. Finally, implications for individual assessment procedures are discussed, and a method for evaluating the relative impact of bias in terms of culture on the raw assessment scores is also presented.

An examination of Alternative Multidimensional Scaling Techniques

The purpose of this study is to compare alternative multidimensional scaling (MDS) methods for constraining the stimuli on the circumference of a circle and on the surface of a sphere. Specifically, the existing MDS-T method for plotting the stimuli on the circumference of a circle is applied, and its extension is proposed for constraining the stimuli on the surface of a sphere. The data analyzed come from previous research and concerns Maslach and Jackson’s burnout syndrome and Holland’s vocational personality types. The configurations for the same data on the circle and the sphere shared similarities but also had differences, that is, the general item-groupings were the same but most of the differences across the two methods resulted in more meaningful interpretations for the three-dimensional configuration. Furthermore, in most cases, items and/or scales could be better discriminated from each other on the sphere.

Methodology of Combining the WISC-III Data Sets

Publisher Summary The Wechsler test is one of the most used, individually administered, standardized measures for assessing intelligence in children and adults. The primary purpose of intelligence testing is to classify individuals based on their overall level of cognitive functioning. This chapter presents an overview of the items adapted and closely translated per subtest in each of the countries. This chapter provides the background for the statistical analyses. The overview provides insight in the judgmental bias of the subtest, which refers to nonstatistical procedures to identify bias, based on a content analysis of the items. All local test development teams had to address two issues: which American items were expected to be transferable to a new linguistic and cultural context without major alterations, and which items were assumed to require adaptations. As a consequence, country comparisons of the number of adapted items of the 11 subtests provide information about the judgmental bias in these subtests.

An analysis of attitudes towards the gifted students with learning difficulties using two samples of Greek and Czech primary school teachers

The provision of gifted students with learning difficulties (GSLD) composes a complicated educational problem that deserves special care. This study explores teachers’ attitudes towards the GSLD in two samples of primary school teachers: 225 Greek teachers and 158 teachers in the Czech Republic, 40–59 years of age and with 14–28 years of teaching experience. A questionnaire of 26 questions, created for the purpose of this study, was administered referring to teachers’ attitudes towards opinions and information regarding the GSLD characteristics, along with three open-ended questions on the most preferable types of the GSLD educational provision. Through multidimensional scaling solutions in their trigonometric transformation (MDS-T) one large common and one minor separate system of items emerged for the two samples, which were meaningful in the direction of understanding teachers’ difficulties in accepting the contradictory core of the GSLD characteristics and educational needs. These systems of attitudes are discussed in respect to their relative importance to Czech and Greek teachers and the respective educational settings.

Evaluating voluntary aloneness in childhood: Initial validation of the Children’s Solitude Scale

This work intends to psychometrically evaluate the newly developed Children’s Solitude Scale (CSS), a measure of voluntary aloneness in childhood. The scale assesses individual differences on what children prefer to do when they want to be alone, a rather neglected, although important developmental issue. Participants were 833 fourth and sixth graders from Athens, Greece. Confirmatory factor analysis indicated four factors, although with a less-than-optimal fit: Self-Reflection, Autonomy/Privacy, Activities and Concentration. The scale showed adequate internal consistency and test-retest reliability as well as convergent and divergent validity (i.e., positive association with positive attitude towards aloneness and ability to be alone, no association with negative attitude towards aloneness, and low positive correlation with loneliness and social dissatisfaction). The results indicated the suitability of the CSS to assess reasons or motives for solitude during middle and late childhood and the necessity to further examine the structure of this type of solitude experiences in this age period.