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The clinical literature commonly asserts that males are less likely than females to disclose child sexual abuse at the time it occurs and take longer to discuss their experiences. These hypotheses were tested in this study. This study included 145 men and 151 women. Participants were asked about disclosure at the time of the abuse and the length of time it took for them to discuss the experience. Comparison across these two studies found that boys were significantly less likely than girls to disclose the abuse at the time it occurred and also took significantly longer to discuss their childhood experiences later in life.

The placement movements of 235 children entering foster care over a 12-month period were followed up 4 months after referral into care. Baseline and follow-up measures of the 170 children who were still in care at follow-up were also compared. Results indicated that adolescents with mental health or behavioural problems were the least likely to achieve placement stability or to display improved psychological adjustment in care. In fact, unsatisfactory transition to foster care was found to be so prevalent among these children that conventional foster family care should be considered unsuitable for them. The paper concludes that there is an urgent need for a wider range of alternative care options for the adolescent population.

Two experiments tested central assumptions of the self-worth theory of achievement motivation. This theory states that certain students, known as self-worth protective students, will voluntarily withdraw effort in achievement situations in which poor performance is likely to be attributed to low ability. Thereby, a sense of self-worth is protected. Self-worth theory also states that these students will perform well in situations in which a mitigating excuse allows poor performance to be attributed to a factor that is unrelated to ability. Experiment 1 confirmed that self-worth protective students perform well following failure that allows a face-saving opportunity but perform poorly following failure that does not allow face-saving. The results of Experiment 2 confirmed that the poor performance of self-worth protective students following failure is associated with a lesser tendency to assume personal responsibility for failure. These findings are discussed in terms of strategies for modifying the achievement-limiting behaviors of self-worth protective students.This study investigated the tendency on the part of certain students to sometimes underachieve and at other times perform well when working on academic tasks that do not vary in terms of their level of objective difficulty. The purpose in doing so was to identify personality and situational variables that mediate these inconsistent performances and thereby test major assumptions of the selfworth theory of achievement motivation (e.g.

This article reports on a controlled field experiment into the effectiveness of a brief unilateral intervention for the partners of heavy drinkers. Forty-five women and 3 men whose partners were both dependent on alcohol and highly resistant to change were randomly allocated to 4 experimental conditions: (a) unilateral intervention on an individual basis, (b) unilateral intervention within a group, (c) a no-treatment waiting list, and (d) traditional Al-Anon groups. Results revealed that both forms of the umlateral intervention, which is referred to as Pressures to Change, were successful in promoting change in the drinker, whereas neither of the alternatives was. However, only when Pressures to Change was offered on an individual basis did the client her- or himself report reductions in personal problems. Similar reductions were also reported by Al-Anon participants. Individual Pressures to Change was also the only intervention to produce improvements in marital consensus. The need for longitudinal research into partner interventions is identified.

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This article assesses one of the key assumptions underlying the philosophy of permanency planning—that placement instability adversely affects the psychosocial development of children in foster care. Method: The placement movements and psychosocial well-being of foster care were assessed over an 8-month period. Results: Most of the children who remained in care throughout the period could be assigned to one of three groups: 1 (stable throughout), 2 (unstable throughout), 3 (initially unstable, then stable) Results for these 120 children were generally consistent with a linear trend toward improvement in Groups 1 and 2, whereas Group 3 children displayed improvement only while their placements were unstable. Conclusions: Although results for Group 3 permit more than one interpretation, results for Group 2 suggest that placement instability up to at least the 8-month point is not necessarily damaging to the child.