A total of 750 teachers from 16 government and non-government schools from areas of contrasted socio-economic status (SES) responded to a questionnaire designed to investigate associations between selected aspects of burnout among teachers working in secondary schools in Victoria, Australia. By comparing high and low burnout groups on biographic, psychological and work pattern variables, differences between teachers experiencing high and low levels of burnout were identified. Multiple regression analyses assessed the relative importance of these variables in accounting for the variance in each of the three burnout subscales. School type was related to perceptions of stress and burnout. Higher levels of burnout were associated with poorer physical health, higher rates of absenteeism, lower self-confidence and more frequent use of regressive coping strategies. Teachers classified as experiencing high levels of burnout attributed most of the stress in their lives to teaching and reported low levels of career commitment and satisfaction. Further, teachers who recorded high levels of burnout were characterised by lower levels of the personality disposition of hardiness, lower levels of social support, higher levels of role stress and more custodial pupil control ideologies than their low-burnout counterparts. Psychological variables were found to be more significant predictors of burnout than biographical variables.

The Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS) was designed to measure two independent or orthogonal dimensions of mood. The present study concerned selected psychometric characteristics of the schedule in a convenience sample of 237 Australian adolescents aged 12 to 18 years. The results were generally supportive of the schedule's reported psychometric properties and for its use across age and nationality.

The patterns of cognitive abilities of Grade 1 and Grade 4 children were studied. A battery of tasks including those indicative of simultaneous and successive processing was administered to 60 boys in each grade; their IQs were in the dull normal range. Test scores of each grade were submitted to a principal component analysis that yielded three common factors: Simultaneous, Successive, and Speed. Some disparities between the two grades were noted. A battery of 10 tests was obtained for measuring the three abilities. Reading achievement was orthogonal to other factors. The results indicate that simultaneous and successive processing and the speed of processing are viable individual difference variables. Their implications in terms of Aptitude X Treatment interaction are considered.

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