Quantitative

This study examines mediated effects of perceived supervisor support (PSS) and perceived organizational support (POS) on turnover cognitions, and their interactive effects on turnover behavior in a sample of 225 social services workers. In this study, we address a seeming contradiction in current findings regarding support and attachments to managers versus attachments to the organization itself. The POS literature suggests fully mediated causal paths to turnover from POS and PSS, through affective commitment. Whereas, the commitment, LMX, and turnover literatures suggest alternative causal paths that imply broader effects for POS and PSS on turnover. Contrary to earlier POS literature, findings showed that PSS had independent effects on turnover cognitions not mediated through POS. Model tests also indicated that POS had significant effects on turnover mediated through normative commitment, as well as affective organizational commitment. Moreover, a new significant interactive relationship was discovered such that low PSS strengthened the negative relationship between POS and turnover, while high PSS weakened it. Implications for research and practice are discussed. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

The purpose of the present study was to examine the role of skin color (i.e., lightness–darkness), as it pertains to racial identity development theory and self-esteem among 113 African American college students of various skin colors. Findings revealed that the sample preferred skin color of a medium tone, rather than exhibiting self-preference for either lighter or darker skin tones. There was also a significant relationship between one's perceptions of and preferences for his or her skin color and the skin tones idealized by others (e.g., opposite gender, family). Lighter skin color was positively related to higher levels of racial identity attitudes (immersion/emersion); the more satisfied darker skinned individuals were with their skin color, the lower their self-esteem, and gender differences existed in perceptions of others’ preferences for skin color. Implications of this study for providing therapeutic clinical services and fostering the healthy psychological development of African American men, women, and children are discussed.

Abstract
Nowadays authentic reading matter is extensively used in the teaching of English for academic purposes. However choosing and deploying such materials is not as straightforward as it might at first seem. In this paper, the pros and cons of authentic materials are assessed and difficulties in their deployment are discussed, together with suggestions for their successful utilisation.

Objectives
The aims of the paper are to examine the role of burnout in the relationship between stress factors related to nurses’ work and social environment and intention to leave the profession and to investigate the nature of the relationship between burnout and intention to leave the nursing profession.

Background
A postulate of the job demands-resources model is that two distinct yet related processes contribute to the development of burnout. The energetic process originates from demands and is mainly centered on emotional exhaustion; the motivational process originates from resources and is mainly centered on depersonalization. Moreover, we postulated that the two components of burnout are linked indirectly to intention to leave the profession via psychosomatic complaints, associated with the energetic process, and via professional commitment, associated with the motivational process.

Method
The research model was tested on cross-sectional data collected in 2005 from 1,636 registered nurses working in hospitals who responded to a self-administrated questionnaire.

Results
Demands are the most important determinants of emotional exhaustion and indirectly induce depersonalization via emotional exhaustion, whereas resources mainly predict depersonalization. Moreover, emotional exhaustion and depersonalization are linked to psychosomatic complaints and professional commitment, which are in turn associated with intention to leave the profession.

Conclusion
The results suggest that a dual strategy is needed in order to retain nurses within the profession: a decrease in job demands, coupled with an increase in available job resources. In particular, nurses’ tasks and role should be restructured to reduce work overload and increase the meaning of their work.

At the top of the assessment pyramid are multinational testing corporations, best known by the names of their standardized tests, such as IELTS, TOEIC, TOEFL, BULATS, TKT, Cambridge ESOL main suite, or G-TELP (there are many other aspirants). In some ways these testing companies can be thought of as the Big Pharma corporations (i.e. drug companies) of the educational world. Like Big Pharma they are subject to constant challenges to their ethics and reliability from within and without, and like Big Pharma they are rather prone to corrupt the issues which they were designed to assist with. The possible corruption of language learning by the requirements of testing is known as wash-back. Wash-back is not always malignant. The analysis in this paper is a tentative attempt to manipulate the wash-back from an international test in a manner which actually assists genuine language acquisition. This material is drawn from some Masters degree work (2005) and comes to 138 pages.

paper explores the application of video-based methods for the analysis of competitive swimming performance. A systematic search of the existing literature was conducted
using the following keywords: swim*, performance, analysis, quantitative, qualitative, camera, video on studies published in the last five years, in the electronic databases ISI Web of
Knowledge, PubMed, Science Direct, Scopus and SPORT discus.

Purpose – This study aims to investigate the relationship between organizational trust, psychological empowerment, and employee engagement. In addition, the study seeks to test the moderating role of psychological empowerment on the relationship between trust and engagement. Design/methodology/approach – Hierarchical regression analyses were carried out on a sample of 715 employees from seven commercial banks and four pharmaceutical companies in south-eastern Nigeria who participated in the survey. Findings – The results showed that organizational trust and psychological empowerment were predictors of work engagement. There was a moderating effect of empowerment on the relationship between trust and engagement. Research limitations/implications – The findings show that organizational trust and psychological empowerment that predict positive job behaviour in Western cultures are also critical in understanding Nigerian workers ' positive organizational behaviour such as work engag...

This article evaluates the utility of social development model constructs toassess the correlates of onset, escalation, deescalation, and desistance ofdelinquent behavior, from age 12 to age 15, using a dynamic classificationapproach. Dynamic classification places individuals into categories basedon changes in levels of delinquent behavior over time. These analyses assessthe extent to which specific constructs are associated with changes in thedelinquency status of individuals. Constructs of the social developmentmodel (SDM), including opportunities for conventional involvement, skillsfor conventional involvement, rewards for conventional involvement,proactive family management, bonding to conventional society, opportunitiesfor antisocial involvement, antisocial interactions, perceived rewards forantisocial involvement, and norms against drug use, were significantlyassociated with change in delinquent behavior over time. Many of theconstructs were particularly salient in distinguishing between youths whoremained involved in delinquency and youths who deescalated or desisted fromdelinquent behavior during this period. Implications for preventiveinterventions and criminological theory are discussed.

This study investigated the following research questions: (1) Do instructional games augment learning? (2) What is the impact of the challenge and fantasy features in instructional games on learning? For the purpose of this study, a game called “Humatan” was designed to teach human anatomy to high school students based on the Baltimore County Public Schools curriculum. Four different versions of the Humatan game were created: • A game with only the challenge feature turned on • A game with only the fantasy feature turned on • A game with both the challenge and fantasy features turned on • A game with challenge and fantasy turned off. High school students from Baltimore County Public Schools (n=202) were randomly assigned to play one of the above four versions of the Humatan game after taking a pretest on human anatomy. After playing the game, they also took a posttest and a survey to obtain information related to their Grade Point Average (GPA), Socioeconomic Status (SES), game skil...