Gender differences in Internet identification and Internet anxiety

This exploratory study investigated gender differences in Internet identification and Internet anxiety. A sample of 231 students (138 females and 93 males) from four different schools participated in the study. A structured interview schedule was used to collect data. Factor analysis was carried out to test for construct validity. This resulted in three factors namely, Internet identification, Internet anxiety and Internet use. A significant negative relationship was found between Internet identification and Internet anxiety and a significant positive relationship was found between Internet identification and Internet use. Significant gender differences were found only for Internet identification with male students showing stronger identification with the Internet. Gender and Behaviour. Vol. 4 (2) 2006: pp. 843-85

Young female offenders: a qualitative study of reasons for offending and experiences at rehabilitation

No Abstract.African Journal for the psychological studies of social issue Vol. 10 (1&2) 2007: pp. 17-2

Dimensions of Organisational Stress: A Study of Managers in Mauritius

This study examined the dimensions of organisational stress. Data were gathered from 161 managers through  a questionnaire. These managers represented five different organisations. Seven dimensions of stress were  extracted through varimax rotated factor analysis. Experience of inequity, role overload, and inadequacy of role authority emerged as strong dimensions, whereas job difficulty and lack of group cohesiveness were weak  dimensions of stress. Public sector employees experience inequity and job difficulty with higher intensity while middle and lower level employees experience more stress due to lack of supervisory support.Keywords: Organisational stress dimension

A cross-cultural study of the higher-order structures underlying personality disorders in French-speaking Africa and Switzerland

Most studies about the higher-order dimensions to be considered in order to parsimoniously describe Personality Disorders (PDs) have identified between two and four factors but there is still no consensus about their exact number. In this context, the cultural stability of these structures might be a criterion to be considered. The aim of this study was to identify stable higher-order structures of PD traits in a French-speaking African and Swiss sample (N = 2,711). All subject completed the IPDE screening questionnaire. Using Everett's criterion and conducting a series of principal component analyses, a cross-culturally stable two- and four-factor structure were identified, associated with a total congruence coefficient of respectively .98 and .94 after Procrustes rotation. Moreover, these two structures were also highly replicable across the four African regions considered, North Africa, West Africa, Central Africa, and Mauritius, with a mean total congruence coefficient of respectively .97 and .87. The four-factor structure presented the advantage of being similar to Livesely's four components and of describing the ten PDs more accurately

The Effect of Response Style on Self-Reported Conscientiousness Across 20 Countries

Rankings of countries on mean levels of self-reported Conscientiousness continue to puzzle researchers. Based on the hypothesis that cross-cultural differences in the tendency to prefer extreme response categories of ordinal rating scales over moderate categories can influence the comparability of self-reports, this study investigated possible effects of response style on the mean levels of self-reported Conscientiousness in 22 samples from 20 countries. Extreme and neutral responding were estimated based on respondents' ratings of 30 hypothetical people described in short vignettes. In the vignette ratings, clear cross-sample differences in extreme and neutral responding emerged. These responding style differences were correlated with mean self-reported Conscientiousness scores. Correcting self-reports for extreme and neutral responding changed sample rankings of Conscientiousness, as well as the predictive validities of these rankings for external criteria. The findings suggest that the puzzling country rankings of self-reported Conscientiousness may to some extent result from differences in response styles