Although emotions and patterns of emotion regulation are central to models linking personality and health, the generalizability of these models to diverse populations of older adults remains untested. In this study, 1,364 community-dwelling women (aged 50-70 years) from six ethnic groups completed self-report measures of trait anger, inhibition, defensiveness, and health. As expected, reports of trait anger and emotion inhibition predicted poorer health (and defensiveness better health), even when demographics and health behaviors were controlled. However, these characteristics related to outcome differently across ethnic groups; greater anger was related to better health in all groups other than U.S-born European Americans, and increased emotion inhibition was associated with better health among immigrant Eastern European women. Results are discussed within a contextualistic model of emotions and health, and directions for future research are given.

Emotional and cognitive characteristics have been studied in the context of women's cancer screening but have received scant attention in the study of men's screening behavior. Researchers know little about how such factors interact to predict screening or whether digital rectal examination (DRE) and prostate specific antigen (PSA) screens are predicted by the same characteristics. This study examines the relevance of emotional and cognitive characteristics to DRE and PSA screening among 180 U.S.-born African American, U.S.- born European American, and immigrant Jamaican men. The study identifies the expected effects in which fear is negatively related and efficacy beliefs positively related to DRE and PSA screening. Greater efficacy and (marginally) knowledge appear to "offset" the negative impact of fear on screening, and fear appears particularly relevant to DRE frequency. Results are discussed in terms of their implications for the development of health belief and self-regulatory models in the context of prostate cancer screening among minority men.

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Framed messaging has emerged as an important means of promoting a number of health behaviors, including breast cancer screening. However, studies of message framing have infrequently considered race and income as possible moderators of framing effects, despite their importance to screening behavior. The current study examined whether demographic characteristics moderated participant responses to message framing. In the study, 102 Black and 42 White low-income, low-screening women were randomized to a loss, gain, or empowerment frame telephone intervention and re-contacted at 6 and 12 months. Contrary to expectation, there was no main effect for framing condition, although both loss and empowerment conditions elicited superior screening than the gain condition at 12 months. Income proved an important moderator of framing effects, interacting with both condition and race to influence screening. Message frames may differ in the amount of time they require to manifest in behavioral outcomes and may lead to changes in different screening outcomes. Understanding how framing effects vary as a function of key demographic characteristics such as race and income is likely to prove important as such variables facilitate targeting of frames.

This chapter examines the impact of athletic participation on community college students through reflective commentaries provided by current and former community college student athletes.

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Despite generally more challenging developmental, environmental, economic, health, and social contexts, minority populations in the United States often report a lower frequency of many negative affects. In some views, such findings reflect a reporting or response bias among minority groups. However, an alternate view suggests that reports of negative emotion differ because minorities do not consciously experience certain discrete emotions as frequently. A study of 1,364 women from six ethnic subpopulations tested this thesis using trait anger as an exemplar. As expected, linear regressions demonstrated that while social desirability explained some ethnic variance in anger reports, a measure of repressive coping explained additional variance in trait anger and eliminated ethnic effects; social desirability no longer predicted trait anger once repressive coping was controlled. Results are discussed in terms how of how developmentally oriented, emotion regulation theories may supplement reporting bias conceptualizations of affective differences across ethnic groups. Implications and directions for future research are given.A diverse range of studies show numerous similarities and differences in emotions across ethnic and cultural groups (Bond

This study explored the impact of financial-aid on student-athletes' academic progression from freshmen to sophomore year in associates' degree programs in Oklahoma. Differences were found according to socioeconomic status (SES), gender, and race=ethnicity and between athlete and nonathlete students.Community colleges are a major provider of postsecondary education and job-related training received by students enrolled in institutions of higher education (Bragg, 2001;Cohen & Brawer, 2008). The more than 1,100 public community colleges in the U.S. currently enroll nearly 50% of all first-time students who enter higher education each year (Bragg, 2001). As a result of the growing enrollment experienced at community colleges, the scope and depth of scholarly-based and practitioner-based research on these institutions and their students has greatly expanded (Dougherty & Kienzl, 2006). Increased research has brought greater visibility to the work being done at community colleges, and has led to best practices and new policies toward increasing student success. However, despite the surge in research, there are still a number of areas and issues that have yet to be fully explored. For example, there presently exists a major gap in knowledge on the effectiveness of financial-aid programs and athletic participation on the retention of students enrolled at the community college.To further advance the theoretically-and empirically-based research on these topics, this study explored the impact of athletic participation and state and federal financial-aid programs on students' academic progression from freshmen to sophomore year. This longitudinal study used data from the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) to examine the singular and collective effect of individual characteristics and financial aid programs-Stafford loans, Pell Grants, and the Oklahoma Higher Education Access Program (OHLAP)-on the retention of student-athletes in the state of Oklahoma.