EU issue voting and the 2014 European Parliament elections: a dynamic perspective

EU issue voting in European Parliament elections has been shown to be highly conditional upon levels of EU politicization. The present study analyzes this conditionality over time, hypothesizing that the effect of EU attitudes on EP vote preferences is catalyzed as EP elections draw closer. In contrast to extant cross-sectional post-election studies, we use a four-wave panel study covering the six months leading up to the Dutch EP elections of 2014, differentiating between party groups (pro, anti, mixed) and five EU attitude dimensions. We find that EU issue voting occurs for both anti- and pro-EU parties, but only increases for the latter. For mixed parties we find no effect of EU attitudes, yet their support base shifts in the anti-EU direction as the elections draw closer. The overarching image, however, is one of surprising stability: EU attitudes form a consistent part of EP voting motivations even outside EP election times.     

Ethnicity and gender similarity: The effectiveness of counseling for adolescents

Few studies in counseling and psychotherapy have examined the relationship between counselees' perception of counselors' attractiveness and therapeutic outcomes using high school-age counselees in actual counseling sessions. This study investigated the extent to which perceived counselor-counselee similarity affected the counselee's perceptions of counselor attractiveness and how perceived counselor attractiveness affected the degree of counselee satisfaction with counseling. The results suggested that racial and gender differences appear not to have operated as barriers to effective counseling. The implications of these findings for counseling research and practice, in general, we well as for successful counselor-counselee interactions in a multicultural context, in particular, are discussed.She received her Ed.D. degree in curriculum and counseling from the UCLA Graduate School of Education in 1987. She has a long-standing interest in minority-group accessibility to higher education and the importance of matching in counseling and guidance.Her Ph.D. is also from UCLA, where she is currently a faculty member. Her areas of research include discriminatory testing and psychodiagnostic issues related to ethnic/minority-group populations.     

Personality,cognitive, and interpersonal factors in adolescent substance use: A longitudinal test of an integrative model

This study tests a multidimensional model of adolescent drug use. The model incorporates sociodemographic variables, personality variables (state and trait anxiety, depressive mood, and sensation seeking), cognitive variables (knowledge, attitudes, and intentions), interpersonal factors (relationships with peers and parents), and the availability of drugs. The model was tested in a longitudinal study, comprising two phases. A total of 1446 high school students served as subjects. The role of cognitive (attitudinal) and interpersonal factors (relationships with parents and peers) was confirmed. In addition, sensation seeking proved to have significant predictive power. Anxiety, depression, and sociodemographic factors, by contrast, had virtually no influence. Availability had a minor effect. The multidimensional explanation was validated longitudinally. The factors related to drug use at the first phase predicted use at the second. This multidimensional explanation accounted for the use of various substances, suggesting that different substances—whether legal or illegal—share a common multidimensional explanation.This work is based on the doctoral dissertation of Zipora Barnea supervised by Meir Teichman and Giora Rahav, and submitted to the Tel-Aviv University. The research was partially supported by a grant from the National Interministerial Committee on Substance Use and the National Research and Development Foundation.Received Ph.D. from Tel-Aviv University. Research interests are substance use, delinquency, and social deviance.Received Ph.D. from University of Missouri. Research interests are drug and alcohol abuse, and family violence.Received Ph.D. from Indiana University. Research interests are substance use, delinquency, and cross-national studies of deviant and violent behavior.