Communication skills and self-esteem in prevention of destructive behaviors.

This study demonstrates the long-range effectiveness of SAY IT STRAIGHT training as a school-based program for the prevention of destructive behaviors by comparing juvenile police offenders among trained and untrained 9th-12th graders for 1 1/2 years following training. In the 1984-85 school year, 357 of the 740 9th-12th graders in a southwestern town completed SAY IT STRAIGHT training. Participation was voluntary and required parental permission. During a five-month pretraining period which began with the first day of school, the number of juvenile police offenders was not significantly different among students who would eventually be trained or not be trained. During the following 7 months including summer vacation, there were significantly fewer offenders among the trained students. The following school year and summer vacation there were again significantly fewer offenders among the trained students. During the whole 1 1/2-year study, the untrained students had about 4.5 times as many criminal offenses as the trained students and their offenses were more severe. Finally, 9th, 10th, and 12th graders as well as 11th-grade females who had been trained showed a significant shift toward behavioral intentions reflecting a greater willingness to implement their constructive decisions and feel comfortable doing so. This study extends the applicability of SAY IT STRAIGHT training which previously has been reported to significantly reduce alcohol/drug-related school suspensions among 6th-8th graders.

Brief SAY IT STRAIGHT training and follow-up in adolescent substance abuse prevention.

A shorter version of SAY IT STRAIGHT (SIS) training was investigated during the 1983-84 school year with 1055 5th, 6th, 7th and 8th graders. Training was delivered in 7- and 5-day models which were compared with the 10-day model used in 1982-83 with 509 6th, 7th and 8th graders. Both shorter training models yielded significant changes toward more assertive/leveling attitudes (p<.01). Comparisons of 10, 7 and 5 day training models yielded no significant differences in such attitude changes as a function of training length. Alcohol/drug related school suspensions were not found in 1983-84 among 5th graders whether or not they were trained. However, such suspensions were significantly lower among the 1564 6th-9th graders who had received training either in the 1982-83 or the 1983-84 school year compared to the 1295 6th-9th graders who were not trained (p<.05).

Assertive/leveling communication and empathy in adolescent drug abuse prevention.

This paper presents the feelings reported by 5th, 6th, 7th and 8th graders when role playing situations in which they wanted to say "no" to alcohol/drugs or to talk to a friend who was "using." These role plays were part of SAY IT STRAIGHT (SIS) training, which was described in the preceding paper. Youngsters described themselves as feeling good and having high self-respect/esteem only when they said "no" in an assertive/leveling way. Only youngsters toward whom an assertive/leveling "no" was addressed described themselves as surprised/shocked and respectful of the person who was saying "no." Finally, youngsters reported that the most effective way to convince a friend to quit "using" and/or get help was to express caring and friendship, and to touch the friend rather than being aggressive/blaming, irrelevant or super-reasonable. This feedback from youngsters opens conceptual issues relevant to some assertiveness training and drug abuse prevention programs.

Female sexual arousal and the menstrual cycle.

Self-reports of sexual arousal were significantly affected by conditions under which they were elicited. Such self-reports in women not taking oral contraceptives were congruent with a hormonal basis for such arousal only when the women were "unaware" that the study investigated sexual arousal as a function of the menstrual cycle. The "unaware" condition was operationalized by means of daily self-reports elicited from males and females for 11 weeks under the guise of a study of biological rhythms. A composite of one to three menstrual cycles for 26 women not taking oral contraceptives showed that sexual arousal during the luteal phase, when progesterone is relatively high, was significantly lower compared to peaks around ovulation, and premenstrual and late menstrual days (p less than .02). For the "aware" condition, women were asked to remember moods for the premenstrual, menstruating and luteal phases of the very last cycle on which they had just finished giving "unaware" daily self-reports. A 2 x 3 analysis of variance (with "aware" versus "unaware" conditions and premenstrual, menstruating, and luteal phases of the last cycle as the two independent variables) yielded a significant interaction effect with F = 6.5, df = 2, 50, p less than .003. In the "unaware" condition, sexual arousal was reported lowest during the luteal phase. The opposite pattern was reported in the "aware" condition. The results suggest that cyclical variability may not be simply due to women's misattributions. However, "awareness" has an effect on self-report measures and may bias reports according to cultural stereotypes. Daily self-reports of sexual arousal for men were averaged over the duration of the study. This average was 3.16. The equivalent average for women not taking oral contraceptives was 2.35 and for women taking oral contraceptives was 2.62. Analysis of variance of these three means yielded a significant difference with F = 4.49, df = 2, 59, p less than .02.

Stability of perceived tension as a function of the menstrual cycle.

The stability of tension judgments among males and females who were either taking or not taking combination low-progestin oral contraceptive pills was investigated. Judgments of interpersonal pressure in videotaped vignettes provided tension measures. The vignettes were presented in two sessions separated by two weeks. Correlations between pressure judgments of .94 for males, .79 for pill females and .40 for non-pill females (all sig less than .002) supported the prediction that non-pill females experience the largest fluctuations in tension across the menstrual cycle. A significant number of non-pill females who changed their scores and who changed from midcycle to premenstrual-menstrual phases or vice versa between the two experimental sessions shifted their tension scores in the predicted direction (p less than .04). As predicted, non-pill females scoring in the lower half on premenstrual-menstrual symptomatology were more consistent in pressure judgments than those high on symptomatology, with correlations of .51 (sig less than .004) and .24 (NS) respectively. Analysis of pressure judgments as a function of menstrual phase and high-low symptomatology indicated a main effect for symptomatology (sig less than .01) with the high group perceiving more pressure. Lack of a main effect for menstrual phase was attributed to large individual variations in tension scores. Results were interpreted as indicating physiological causality underlying the variability in tension across the menstrual cycle. Substituting the Repression-Sensitization dimension for symptomatology yielded no significant results which could lead to a psychological interpretation of such variability.