The study was designed to determine if attractive clothing had a more positive effect than unattractive clothing on a perceiver's impressions of the personal characteristics of the writer of an essay and the qualities of the essay. Perceivers who assigned high interest/importance to clothing were expected to favorably rate both personal characteristics of an attractively dressed writer and the essay. A negative relationship was anticipated between high clothing interest/importance scores and ratings of an unattractively dressed writer and the essay. A total of 160 college coeds were divided equally among 8 experimental treatments: interest ing/uninteresting essay, two writers, and attractive/unattractive clothing. Significantly higher ratings were found with attractive clothing for the 5 personal traits and for 4 of the 5 essay qualities. Significant positive correlations occurred between high clothing interest/importance scores and ratings of personal traits and essay qualities. No significant negative correlations occurred between any evaluative ratings and high clothing interest/importance scores.

This study examined African American students’ perceived fear of having a seropositive human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) status, their general self‐efficacy, and screening efficacy. General self‐efficacy is believed to be a factor in facilitating change in one’s behavior. The sample (N = 398) consisted of graduate and undergraduate African American students enrolled at one Historically Black College and University. About one‐fifth of the sample reported they were afraid to be screened for HIV/AIDS (acquired immune deficiency syndrome). t‐tests were conducted to determine if there were differences between students who feared being screened for HIV/AIDS and those who did not fear being screened. Differences were found between the two groups on their perceived fear of being HIV positive, their general self‐efficacy, and their screening efficacy. Implications for Family and Consumer Sciences professionals and others include placing more emphasis on reducing fears and increasing efficacy as a means to facilitate a change in health behavior.

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The teacher's role in discourse is to initiate and orchestrate classroom interactions that contribute to students' understanding of mathematics (NCTM 1991). Establishing and maintaining this multifaceted role can be difficult. Individual differences in students, teachers. and classroom cultures make it impossible to create steadfast rules for guiding classroom practices. The shared experiences of other teachers—who are also struggling to establish an interactive classroom discourse—are becoming our most valuable resources.

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