Stacey M. Conchie

Fieldwork is good: the student perception and the affective domain

This paper reports on research that investigates the effectiveness of residential field courses in geography, earth science and environmental science courses at UK institutions of higher education. The research focuses on the effects of fieldwork in the affective domain, which is thought to be linked to the adoption of effective approaches to learning. Approximately 300 students were surveyed immediately before and after a field class, enabling analysis of changes in responses brought about as a result of the field experience. Potential differences were looked for between groups of students determined by gender, age, previous experience of fieldwork and place of residence. The research finds that fieldwork leads to significant effects in the affective domain. In general, student responses were very positive prior to fieldwork and became more positive as a result of the field experience. Some groups exhibited higher levels of anxiety about this learning method prior to the field class; however, such differences were mitigated by the field experience. This study concludes that fieldwork is good.

Culture moderates changes in linguistic self-presentation and detail provision when deceiving others

Change in our language when deceiving is attributable to differences in the affective and cognitive experience of lying compared to truth telling, yet these experiences are also subject to substantial individual differences. On the basis of previous evidence of cultural differences in self-construal and remembering, we predicted and found evidence for cultural differences in the extent to which truths and lies contained self (versus other) references and perceptual (versus social) details. Participants (N = 320) of Black African, South Asian, White European and White British ethnicity completed a catch-the-liar task in which they provided genuine and fabricated statements about either their past experiences or an opinion and counter-opinion. Across the four groups we observed a trend for using more/fewer first-person pronouns and fewer/more third-person pronouns when lying, and a trend for including more/fewer perceptual details and fewer/more social details when lying. Contrary to predicted cultural differences in emotion expression, all participants showed more positive affect and less negative affect when lying. Our findings show that liars deceive in ways that are congruent with their cultural values and norms, and that this may result in opposing changes in behaviour.

Jaccard’s heel: Are radex models of criminal behaviour falsifiable when derived using Jaccard coefficient?

Purpose. This article considers whether the modular facet of popular ‘radex’ models of offender behaviour is falsifiable or a statistical inevitability when using Jaccard coefficient, as evidence from other domains suggests. Method. Data equivalent to that examined in previous papers, and artificial data varying on four parameters, were examined using the conventional procedure of deriving Jaccard coefficients and submitting these to a smallest space analyses (SSA-I). The parameters were number of variables, number of cases, highest frequency of variable occurrence, and distribution of occurrences. Evidence of a modular pattern in each SSA-I solution was assessed using one qualitative and two quantitative measures. Results. When variables were free to occur in more than 50% of cases, none of the Jaccard-based SSA-I solutions supported the null hypothesis of no modular facet. This contrasts equivalent analyses using Yules Q, where 95.7% of the solutions supported the null hypothesis. When variables were restricted to occur in less than 50% of cases, the number of solutions supporting the null hypothesis changes to .003 and 78%, respectively. Analyses of the artificial data found that reducing the number of variables in a Jaccard-based solution increased the likelihood of supporting the null hypothesis, which suggests that these solutions are structured by variable occurrence (i.e., frequency) rather than variable co-occurrence. Implications. Research using Jaccard coefficient to measure co-occurrences among behaviours should not claim that the modular facet of their radex model is an empirical finding. Unfortunately, this is many of the existing publications.

Risk information source preferences in construction workers

Purpose – Many researchers have investigated the determinants of workers’ risk-taking/unsafe behaviours as a way to improve safety management and reduce accidents but there has been a general lack of research about workers’ risk information seeking behaviours or their source preferences for risk information. The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether occupational risk information source preference was risk independent (i.e. whether workers prefer to receive occupational risk information from proximal sources like supervisors and workmates regardless of the nature of the risk or the sources expertise regarding that risk, or if they discriminated between information sources based on the type of risk being considered). Design/methodology/approach – Data were collected from 106 frontline construction workers who were recruited from a single building site within the UK with the help of the safety officer on site. The source from which workers preferred to receive information about a range of risks wa...

The Triple-Interact as a Building Block of Negotiation

This article examines the triple-interact, a cue-response-cue-response sequence that plays an important role in organizing negotiators’ behavior. Drawing on theories of interpersonal orientation and framing, we propose four types of triple-interact and make predictions about the relative occurrence and behavioral content of each type. We test these predictions by analyzing the conditional probabilities among behaviors in 29 conflict negotiations. Results show consistent use of the four types of triple-interact irrespective of time period and negotiation outcome. In order of decreasing frequency, negotiators used triple-interacts that reciprocated the current position, reoriented between cooperative and competitive positions, reframed perceptions of the current position, and restructured the interaction onto a new issue. However, the content of triple-interacts differed over time and outcome. In comparison to unsuccessful negotiations, successful negotiations involved triple-interacts that were more likely to end with integrative behavior and, during the second half of interaction, more likely to focus on substantive rather than relational issues.