Suchergebnisse

College students' perceptions of campus norms about alcohol use and the impact of these perceptions on personal alcohol abuse are examined with data (N = 17,592) from a nationwide survey of students at 140 colleges and universities. The student's particular collegiate environment accounted for only a small portion of the overall variation in perceptions of campus drinking norms. Within each campus context perceptions varied widely. More permissive perceptions of the norm were significantly associated with greater personal alcohol abuse even after controlling for personal attitudes, thus suggesting that perceiving a permissive environment encourages students to drink more heavily than they would otherwise based on their personal attitudes. The detrimental impact of perceiving more permissive drinking norms is greatest for students whose own attitudes about drinking are already permissive.

Mothers employed in full-time careers and full-time homemaker mothers were surveyed to examine relationships among their employment status, role behaviors as mothers, and perceptions of the mother role. Women in both groups were graduates of the same undergraduate liberal arts college, thus providing groups with similar sociodemographic characteristics. Although homemaker mothers devoted more hours to homemaking than did employed mothers, both groups reported the same range of household and child care activities within a 48-hour period. Both groups also perceived equally little choice in performing household tasks they had done. With regard to their perceptions of whether mothers in general typically performed the child care activities, full-time employed mothers perceived 5 of the 12 behaviors as less typical than did homemakers. Results suggest the importance of examining mothers' perceptions of the role along with their objective behaviors in studying employment effects.

This study examines gender differences in the extent and type of household activity and sense of domestic obligation across familial stages within a sample of young college-educated adults (N = 1,151). When children are present, substantial gender differences appear in housework and perceived home obligations. Implications of the results are discussed in terms of gender socialization and preparation for parenting.

This study explores misperceptions about peer norms in support of telling authorities about weapons at school and whether perceptions predict personal support for telling authorities. Anonymous surveys were conducted among youth in 30 schools (Grades 5-12) in six states ( n = 12,903) between 2006 and 2014. Personal support for telling principals, teachers/counselors, police/security, and parents, separately, about weapons at school was measured as well as perception of peers' support for telling authorities. Most students in most schools personally thought that students should tell authorities about weapons. However, depending on the authority, 37% to 52% of students mistakenly believed that most students did not support students telling authorities. Regression analysis revealed that perceiving support for telling authorities as normative among peers was highly predictive of personal support—much more so than other predictors. Thus, misperceptions of the peer norm as a code of silence may contribute to the problem of weapons at school.

Bullying attitudes and behaviors and perceptions of peers were assessed in a case study experiment employing a social norms intervention in five diverse public middle schools in the State of New Jersey (Grades 6 to 8). Data were collected using an anonymous online survey (baseline n = 2,589; postintervention n = 3,024). In the baseline survey, students substantially misperceived peer norms regarding bullying perpetration and support for probullying attitudes. As predicted by social norms theory, they thought bullying perpetration, victimization, and probullying attitudes were far more frequent than was the case. Also as predicted, variation in perceptions of the peer norm for bullying was significantly associated with personal bullying perpetration and attitudes. Using print media posters as the primary communication strategy, an intervention displaying accurate norms from survey results was conducted at each of the five school sites. A pre-/postintervention comparison of results revealed significant reductions overall in perceptions of peer bullying and probullying attitudes while personal bullying of others and victimization were also reduced and support for reporting bullying to adults at school and in one's family increased. The extent of reductions across school sites was associated with the prevalence and extent of recall of seeing poster messages reporting actual peer norms drawn from the initial survey data. Rates of change in bullying measures were highest (from around 17% to 35%) for the school with the highest message recall by students after a one-and-a-half-year intervention. Results suggest that a social norms intervention may be a promising strategy to help reduce bullying in secondary school populations.