L. K. Waters

The Police Stress Survey: Reliability and Relation to Job Satisfaction and Organizational Commitment:

The 1981 Police Stress Survey of Spielberger, Westbury, Grier, and Greenfield was administered to 99 metropolitan and suburban police officers. Internal consistency reliabilities were in the .90s for both the total scale and two subscales which measure administrative/organizational and physical/psychological stressors. The administrative/organizational, but not the physical/psychological, subscale was significantly related to measures of job satisfaction and organizational commitment.

Factor Analysis of Masculine and Feminine Sex-Typed Items from the Bem Sex-Role Inventory

Based on the responses of 252 (126 male, 126 female) college undergraduates, a factor analysis of the 40 sex-typed items from the Bern Sex-role Inventory and sex of respondent yielded four factors. One of the factors essentially represented the biological sex of the respondent. A second factor, representing an expressive, affective orientation, contained loadings of 14 of the 20 feminine sex-typed items. The other two factors (dominant, aggressive and independent, self-sufficient) were defined primarily by masculine sex-typed items. Biological sex of the respondent did not load on any of the three latter factors. The obtained factor structure was very similar to that reported by Gaudreau (1975) for non-college respondents. Taken together, these two analyses (a) support the use of the Masculinity and Femininity scales as independent constructs and (b) suggest several items that could be deleted from both scales to increase both homogeneity and interpretability.

Protestant Ethic Attitudes Among College Students

The six scales of the Survey of Work Values (Wollack, Goodale, Wijting, and Smith, 1971), the Blood (1969) pro-Protestant Ethic scale, and the Protestant Ethic scale of Mirels and Garrett (1971) were intercorrelated, and each scale was correlated with Rotters I/E scale, SAT total score, and cumulative grade point average for 170 college students. A factor analysis of the Protestant Ethic scales yielded two factors which were interpreted, on the basis of the loadings of the Survey of Work Values scales, as representing intrinsic (work-related) and extrinsic (reward-related) aspect of Protestant Ethic. The Blood and the Mirels and Garrett scales loaded substantially on both factors. Generally, the Protestant Ethic scales were negatively related to external orientation on the I/E scale, and were unrelated to SAT scores and academic performance.

Involvement, Ability, Performance, and Satisfaction as Predictors of College Attrition.

Measures of academic job involvement, verbal ability, academic performance, and satisfaction with courses and with college in general, obtained for 155 students during the freshman year, were correlated with attrition on a two-year follow-up. The two significant predictors of attrition, grade point average during the fresh-man year and satisfaction with college in general, combined to yield a multiple correlation of .42 (P < .01).

Convergent Validity of Five Locus of Control Scales

Coefficient alpha reliability estimates and interscale correlations were obtained for five locus of control scales for a sample of 131 male and 136 female college students. Only four scales or sub-scales emphasizing all, or in part, fate or chance orientation and items reflecting control over political institutions showed evidence for convergent validity.

Correlates of Need for Cognition Total and Subscale Scores

In two samples, the total 34-item Need for Cognition scale (Cacioppo and Petty, 1982) and three subscales identified by Tanaka, Panter, and Winborne (1988) were intercorrelated and, in Study 1, correlated with gender, sex-role orientation, composite ACT, and cumulative grade point average. Coefficient alpha reliability estimates were consistent with previously reported values. The inter-correlations among the three subscales were generally in the .40 to .60 range and were consistent with the subscales being facets of a higher-order need for cognition construct. Osbergs (1987) finding that the 34-item Need for Cognition scale was related to masculine, but not feminine, sex-role orientation was replicated using a different measure of sex-role orientation. The subscales showed a similar pattern of relationships to sex-role orientation. The Need for Cognition total score had low, but significant, relationships to composite ACT and cumulative grade point average.

An empirical test of five versions of the two-factor theory of job satisfaction

Abstract Predictions from five versions of the two-factor theory of job satisfaction identified by King (1970) were tested using correlational data for a sample of female office workers. No support was found for any of the versions of the theory. Two effects reported previously by Hulin and Waters (in press), intrinsic variables are generally more potent than extrinsic variables and overall satisfaction is more predictable than overall dissatisfaction, seemed to account for the data more sufficiently.

Convergent Validity of Scales Measuring Computer-Related Attitudes

The present study examined the convergent validity of seven computer-related attitude scales published between 1982 and 1987. A total of 95 male and 119 female undergraduate students were given the computer attitude scales in randomized order. The correlations among five of these global measures of computer-related attitudes provided strong evidence for convergent validity. There was also support for a differentiation between cognitive and affective reactions toward computers, as assessed by these scales.

Stimulus-Seeking Motivation and Risk-Taking Behavior in a Gambling Situation:

THE Sensation Seeking Scale (SSS) was developed by Zuckerman, Kolin, Price, and Zoob (1964) in an attempt to quantify the construct of optimal stimulation. Their preliminary validation and a recent study (Farley and Farley, 1967) have related the SSS to other test and inventory measures of field independence, anxiety, and extroversion. Zuckerman et al. (1964) suggested the comparison of risk-takers with more security-minded persons as

Moderating Effect of Achievement Motivation and Locus of Control on the Relationship Between Academic Ability and Academic Performance

The relationship between ability and grade point average was examined for the moderating effects of achievement motivation and locus of control for 223 college students. When median splits in distributions of scores on measures of achievement motivation and internal-external locus of control were used, a significant difference was found between resulting high and low achievement motivation groups; no difference was present between high (internal) and low (external) locus of control groups. When the median splits were employed jointly, locus of control did not enhance the moderating effect of achievement motivation.