Diffusion within Marcia's identity-status paradigm: Does it foreshadow academic problems?

The present investigation attempted to ascertain longitudinally whether diffuseness about academic goals and plans would predict subsequent underachievement. Identity-status interviews were administered to 98 firstsemester college students. Their grade point averages (GPA) were obtained for their first six semesters in college. SAT and conceptual-level scores were used to generate predicted GPAs. Underachievement was operationally defined as a positive discrepancy between predicted-minus-observed GPA: underachievement=predicted observed GPA. Evidence for the hypothesized relationship between diffusion and academic underachievement was not found. To the contrary, Diffusions during their freshman year showed a tendency for relativeoverachievement (predicted observed GPA). The possibility of heterogeneity within Marcia's diffusion status was considered. Some diffuselike individuals may see their current lack of commitment and concern as a hiatus, whereas others may be truly unconcerned and myopic about their lives. A significant association between foreclosure and underachievement was found when the subjects were freshmen. This relationship was not replicated with an independent sample of 90 high school students. A post hoc interpretation focused on differences between transient and long-term Foreclosures and the role that the college environment may potentially play in instigating personal identity crises. The need for longitudinal tests on this account is underscored.     

Book reviews

Islamic homeland, soviet section

Alexandre Bennigsen and Marie Broxup, The Islamic Threat to the Soviet State. London & Canberra: Croom Helm, 1983, 170 pp. Cloth, £12.95. ISBN 0–7099–0619–6.

Islam Today: the USSR

T. S. Saidbaev, Islam: istoriia i sovremennost. Moscow: Znanie, 1985, 64 pp., 47,290 copies. Series Nauchnyi Ateizm, No. 11, 1985.     

Teenagers' perception of agreement over family expenditures,employment, and family life

Teenagers' perspective of disagreement over family finances and related factors were investigated. Involvement of teenagers in employment and percentage of earnings kept for personal use were examined. Reasons for employment affected disagreement over finances, whereas family income had no important effect on disagreement over finances in multivariate analysis. Disagreement over finances was important in explaining variation in satisfaction with money management in the family and in satisfaction with family life. Results have implication for reducing stress in family life and for contributing to theory on family resource management and adolescent development.This study is part of an interregional Agricultural Experiment Station Research Project NC-128 Quality of Life as Affected by Area of Residence. Cooperating states: Arizona, California, Colorado, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, Nevada, Ohio, and Texas.Received Ph.D. from Purdue University. Research interests include family economics.Received B.S. from Cornell. Research interests include consumer and family economics.     

The social context of adolescent self-esteem

The global self-esteem of adolescents was examined in relation to two aspects of their daily lives: (a) the perceived quality of their relationships with parents and peers; and (b) their self-evaluation in the areas of school, popularity, and athletics. The quality of relationships with parents made significant contributions to the explained variance in self-esteem of both boys and girls. The quality of peer relationships made a significant additional contribution for girls but not boys. The importance of parent and peer relationships to self-esteem did not vary as a function of age for either sex. Self-evaluation of popularity was related to girls' global self-esteem, while evaluation of school performance was more important for boys.Received her Ph.D. from George Peabody College. Research interests include adolescent stress and coping, and parent-child relationships.Received his M.D. from Medical College of Georgia. Research interests include stress, eating disorders, and pregnancy in adolescents.     

Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act: Implementation of an Administrative Remedy

Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act is an administrative remedythat has not been fully enforced to protect the voting rightsof minority citizens in those jurisdictions covered by the VRA.Failure to enforce Section 5 fully is the result of: (I) thestructure of the Section 5 review process, (2) the poor qualityof data received by the U.S. Department of Justice, and (3)the cursory analysis of data by the Equal Opportunity Specialists.What is needed to strengthen Section 5 enforcement is a strongpresidential commitment to protect the interests of minorityvoters. Reform of the Section 5 review process can only takeplace if the president places voting rights enforcement highon his political agenda.     

The congressional foundations of agency performance

When Congress delegates a policy mandate to a regulatory agency, Congress acts as a principal, choosing the institutional arrangements, or the ‘rules of the game’ for agency decision making. Individuals in the agency, acting as agents, take the rules of the game as given and do the best they can within these institutional arrangements. In this paper we develop a simple model that relates the congressional choice of institutional arrangements to two underlying environmental factors — uncertainty and conflict. We suggest that uncertainty and conflict of interest lead Congress, in delegating, to prescribe a greater scope of permissable regulatory activity, a wider array of regulatory instruments, and more confining regulatory procedures. Increased scope and stronger instruments tend to broaden the overall discretionary authority of the agency, while more confining procedures tend to narrow it. We conjecture that with increased uncertainty or conflict the narrowing tendency more than offsets the broadening tendency, for a net decrease in the agency's overall discretionary authority. Lastly, we argue that the performance of a regulatory agency in fulfilling its mandate is determined in large measure by the foundations Congress constructs for the implementation of delegated authority.