Andrea Steele

Identifying predictors of pro-environmental behaviour (PEB) is critical for designing effective interventions to reduce environmentally harmful activities. This study examined whether personality traits, specifically the Dark Triad (Machiavellianism, narcissism, psychopathy) and Light Triad (Kantianism, humanism, faith in humanity), and environmental attitudes, predicted PEB. Australian participants (N = 383) completed an online survey assessing these personality traits, environmental attitudes, and two measures of PEB: dietary behaviour (meat consumption) and willingness to donate to an environmental charity. Analyses using hierarchical regressions and MANOVAs indicated that only narcissism and psychopathy modestly reduced donation likelihood and Kantianism modestly increased it; however, there was limited evidence of mediation by environmental attitudes between personality traits and PEB. In contrast, stronger environmental activism and lower human dominance attitudes robustly predicted both lower meat consumption and greater donation likelihood. These findings suggest that although personality shapes environmental attitudes, the attitudes themselves play a more direct role in driving PEB. Overall, the results support attitude-behaviour models and highlight attitudinal change as a pathway for designing effective sustainability interventions.

In Western settings where solitary, continuous infant sleep throughout the night is emphasised, parents might perceive their infant's nightwaking as a problem and seek solutions. Interventions typically aim to reduce nighttime parent-infant interactions to facilitate independent infant sleep. There are concerns regarding the acceptability of these interventions to parents, and their applicability for families with diverse parenting practices, such as co-sleeping. The specific theories and strategies applied by evidence-based infant sleep interventions have not been systematically explored. This scoping review aimed to characterise infant sleep interventions for their theoretical underpinnings and behaviour change techniques (BCTs]. Where applicable, this review also aimed to explore associations between meaningful groupings of theory type and BCTs and outcomes including parent satisfaction and intervention adherence. Online databases were searched for Randomised Controlled and cluster Randomised Controlled Trials of non-pharmacological interventions delivered in non-acute primary care or community settings that targeted the prevention or treatment of sleep problems in infants (0–3 years). Twenty-eight of 34,898 retrieved articles were included, describing 34 unique interventions. Operant conditioning theory underpinned 50 % (13/26) of the theory-informed interventions. Interventions were found to be multicomponent and the application of BCTs was heterogeneous across interventions. Findings suggest a need for more diversity of theoretical underpinnings and a clear indication of BCTs included in interventions. Future research should identify theories that can be adapted to align with family cultural contexts and parenting practices, and BCTs that can be operationalised to facilitate acceptable and culturally sensitive approaches to infant sleep intervention.

The destructive nature of unethical leadership can be seen in immoral behaviours used by senior leaders who morally mute employees. Research shows that unethical leadership behaviours may contribute to employee mutism, however, there is a paucity of research investigating the relationship between unethical leadership practices and employee moral voice. The current study aimed to better understand how unethical leadership practices and leader values relate to employee moral voice and ethical climates. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with employees who each had experience with a leader they deemed to be unethical. Results of this study show that unethical senior leaders used distortive communication, including euphemistic labelling, shaming, and moral justification, to prevent employees from speaking up about moral issues. These findings suggest that a socio-cognitive triadic interplay of factors, namely personal, organisational, and environmental, are facilitated by senior leaders to morally disengage from ethical concerns of employees, resulting in socially learned employee moral mutism. This study extends moral disengagement theory into the unethical leadership context.

Dating applications (‘apps’) have become a popular means for men who have sex with men (MSM) to seek sex or relationships. Indeed, dating apps have become popular, in part, because they are perceived as providing LGBTQIA+ people with a safe space to explore their sexuality with a reduced risk of discrimination and violence compared to non-virtual dating. The current study aimed to better understand how Australian MSM experience dating apps, specifically how they perceive that dating apps influence their attitudes about relationships and dating behaviours. Thematic analysis from interviews with 11 MSM adult dating app users identified three themes that were centred around exposure to non-traditional relationship models and conformity to gay dating norms, commodification of dating and safety concerns. Dating apps appear to be a conflicted space for young Australian MSM that may offer some safety for relationship development away from threats of homophobia, but which may facilitate online harassment and predatory behaviours. This paper concludes with recommendations for dating apps to increase security and verification to ensure they offer a safe space for LGBTQIA+ users.

Tinder is a popular mobile dating application among emerging adults (18 to 29-years-old) seeking new romantic and sexual partners. Tinder’s design features are proposed to encourage hookups (casual sexual relationships) while undermining romantic relationship commitment (David & Cambre, 2016). Research into female dating application users is particularly underinvestigated despite research suggesting that female Tinder users report their application use to have a greater impact upon their dating behaviors compared with male users (Newett et al., 2018). This quantitative study explores relationships between Tinder use and attitudes and behaviors surrounding hookups and committed romantic relationships in female Tinder users. It was hypothesized that Tinder users (n = 146) would engage in more hookups and place less importance on committed relationships than nonusers (n = 103). Data were collected using online surveys. As expected, Tinder users reported less-strict sexual standards scripts, lower soul-mate beliefs, greater sexual permissiveness, have greater numbers of relationships, and hookup more than nonusers. Contrary to expectations, no differences were observed between Tinder users and nonusers on sexual communion. Obtained findings suggest that Tinder may facilitate greater sexual liberality or alternatively that those already high in liberality are drawn to nontraditional forms of dating. Further research should qualitatively investigate the extent to which female dating application users are active agents in pursuing casual sex. Obtained findings have implications for emerging adults to enable informed decision-making about their Tinder use and to ensure their motivations for use are aligned with potential attitudinal and behavioral outcomes. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved)

A significant number of university students are leaving their institutions before completing their degrees. The present research project applied embeddedness theory, from organizational research, to understand student retention in a tertiary student population, and develop a quantitative instrument that measured university student embeddedness. In Study One, a mixed-methods approach was employed to determine whether the Fit (similarity between the student and the university), Links (count of relationships at university), and Sacrifice (losses upon leaving university) dimensions of embeddedness related to students’ self-reported reasons for remaining enrolled at their university. Qualitative results from 15 undergraduate students indicated that intent to remain could be understood within the embeddedness dimensions of Fit, Links, and Sacrifice. These themes were employed to build the University Student Embeddedness (USE) scale. The measure was examined against Rasch measurement model assumptions for each of its subscales using data collected from 299 Australian tertiary students. Study Two sought to examine exploratory evidence of the concurrent validity of the scores from this developed measure. Responses from a separate sample of 196 Australian tertiary students showed only the Fit scale significantly related to student intentions to stay at university. All USE scales correlated with academic-related skills and motivations. These results suggest that the Fit scale may be valuable in identifying students at risk of dropout. Early identification of “at risk” students may lead to the development of targeted retention interventions. However, the USE’s role in detection requires further validation and the development of consistent findings within other student cohorts.

Background

Despite the growing popularity of transnational education, there is a dearth of quantitative research regarding how transnational students experience higher education.

Aims

This comparative study sought to explore differences in educational experiences between transnational and onshore domestic students enrolled either at the Australian (domestic) or Singapore (transnational) campus of an Australian university.
Sample and Methods

An online survey gathered responses from 199 domestic students and 313 transnational students.

Results

Results indicated transnational students to be significantly lower than domestic students on social and academic integration, institutional commitment, and satisfaction. No group differences were found in persistence intentions. A series of regression analyses showed integration and commitment significantly predicted student persistence intentions, across both cohorts, beyond demographic and course characteristics.

Conclusions

This study offers several recommendations for how universities can better foster integration and commitment in their transnational students, including better funding the development of student societies and providing realistic course previews and career advice to students upon entry into their courses. Further, universities are encouraged to reconsider their transnational staffing models to provide more opportunities for academic support and student consultation beyond the classroom.

Interest pertains to an individual's psychological arousal toward a topic, which is thought to motivate effort allocation and attention. Interest in leadership has been identified as a potential antecedent of leader development; however, supporting empirical evidence has been hindered by the lack of a relevant scale to measure the construct. Study 1 outlines the development of the Interest in Leadership Scale (ILS) using Rasch scale development principles. Study 2 establishes the predictive validity of the ILS with self-rated leadership emergence and transformational leadership behaviors. This measure is likely to prove useful in the future measurement of and research into the topic of interest in leadership.

Academic and athletic identities are related to performance and wellbeing indicators in both the educational and sport domains, respectively. This paper presents a systematic literature review examining empirical research into the academic and athletic identities of student-athletes in dual (education and sport) careers. The 42 records identified in this review suggest that research on the academic and athletic identities of student-athletes has focused on the themes of: identity development, role conflict, career development and motivation, and student-athlete stereotypes. Future research directions are considered, including the need for mixed-methods and longitudinal assessments of academic and athletic identities to assess to dynamic nature of identity development, and to ascertain how these relate to future performance and wellbeing outcomes.

This paper presents a complementary multimethod approach to investigate the academic and athletic identities of Australian student-athletes. In Study 1, the authors explored the academic and athletic identities of 8 student-athletes using semistructured interviews. Results are congruent with the model of multiple dimensions of identity and indicate that student-athletes develop both academic and athletic identities. The corresponding fulfillment of self-determined needs in both academic and athletic identities was deemed beneficial to student-athletes' well-being. The authors used a quantitative approach (N = 86) in Study 2 and found that academic identity was positively associated with student-athletes' academic performance and life satisfaction. Differences in athletic identity were found based on the student-athletes' sport-competition levels. No significant associations were found between the student-athletes' academic and athletic identities.