The Impact Of Implicit Attitudes On Behavioral Intentions To Prevent Suicide

Abstract The suicide rate in the United States of America continues to climb despite national strategies to reduce it (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention & National Center for Health Statistics, 2016; U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office of the Surgeon General & National Action Alliance for Suicide Prevention, 2012). What the strategies lack is mechanisms to target implicit attitudes (IAs) about suicide. This omission is important as IAs have been effective at predicting future suicide attempts (Nock et al., 2010). This study used an implicit association test of attitudes to suicide (IAT-SUICIDE) to examine IAs to suicide using sympathy and stigma word pairings. The IAT-SUICIDE compared reaction times of participants to images of suicide attempts with stigma or sympathy word pairings (e.g., suicide + bad or suicide + sad). Six other measures were used in this study to assess (a) attitudes toward suicide (b) attitudes to people who die or attempt suicide (c) knowledge of suicide prevention and risk factors (e) intent to prevent suicide by asking or referring (e) exposure to suicide (f) depression symptomology. Adults (N=111) from 32 states participated in this study. Results show IAs to suicide significantly affected explicit attitudes to suicide in two domains (incomprehensibility, sympathy). Additional findings showed exposure to suicide significantly affected knowledge of suicide prevention and risk factors. Results show necessity for prevention education for people with implicit stigma and low to no exposure to suicide. Limitations to the study, areas for improvement, and directions for future research are also discussed

Social Cognitive Predictors of Engineering Students’ Academic Persistence Intentions, Satisfaction, and Engagement.

The demand for high quality engineers is of particular importance as engineering jobs are projected to grow in the next 10 years (United States Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2018). More work is needed to understand factors related to academic engagement, satisfaction, and persistence intentions of Latino/as and women in engineering: 2 underrepresented groups in the engineering pipeline. We present findings that explored the role of social-cognitive, environmental, and personality variables in engineering persistence intentions, engagement and satisfaction of a diverse sample of 1,335 engineering students using an extension of the integrative social cognitive career theory model (SCCT; Lent et al., 2013). Results indicated that (a) the hypothesized model fit the data well for the full sample and across 8 subsamples based on gender-ethnicity (i.e., Latinas, Latinos, White women, and White men) and ethnicity-school type (i.e., Latina/os at Hispanic-serving institutions [HSIs], Latina/os at predominantly White institutions [PWIs], Whites at HSIs, and Whites at PWIs), (b) all but 5 model parameters were significant and positive for the full sample, (c) a subset of model parameters differed by the interactions of race/ethnicity-gender and race/ethnicity-school type groups, and (d) the relations within the model explained a significant amount of variance in engineering academic engagement, satisfaction, and persistence intentions for the full sample and 8 subsamples. Implications of the findings for educational and career interventions aimed at retaining Latina/os and women in engineering are discussed in relation to building on social cognitions in engineering academic engagement, satisfaction, and persistence intentions