Sexual Assault as a Contributor to Academic Outcomes in University: A Systematic Review.

Sexual assault continues to be a prevalent and consequential experience for university students. The aim of this systematic review was to synthesize the literature on the academic consequences of the sexual assault for university students. There is currently no comprehensive review of the literature focusing on the academic consequences for university students who experienced sexual assault. This review was conducted based on searches from five databases including Academic Search Complete, Education Search Complete, Education Resources Information Center (ERIC), PsycINFO, and Google Scholar. We identified 13 articles that examined academic consequences of sexual assault during university. Across all studies, sexual assault was associated with more academic problems including lower grade point average, dropping out of university, and self-regulated learning problems. Although the number of articles is small, the results are consistent. Practically, this means that universities, those providing psychological services, and victims themselves need to understand that the consequences are not just physical and psychological but can also negatively impact academic achievement. Our review also identifies limitations in the literature regarding this topic such as methodological concerns, diversity and inclusion concerns, and the need for future work to investigate mediators of the relationship between sexual assault and academic outcomes. We offer recommendations for future research to combat the concerns identified. Development of interventions to support those who experience sexual assault during university necessitates overcoming the limitations identified.

Interpreting time-series COVID data: reasoning biases, risk perception, and support for public health measures.

Effective risk communication during the COVID-19 pandemic is critical for encouraging appropriate public health behaviors. One way that the public is informed about COVID-19 numbers is through reports of daily new cases. However, presenting daily cases has the potential to lead to a dynamic reasoning bias that stems from intuitive misunderstandings of accumulation. Previous work in system dynamics shows that even highly educated individuals with training in science and math misunderstand basic concepts of accumulation. In the context of COVID-19, relying on the single cue of daily new cases can lead to relaxed attitudes about the risk of COVID-19 when daily new cases begin to decline. This situation is at the very point when risk is highest because even though daily new cases have declined, the active number of cases are highest because they have been accumulating over time. In an experiment with young adults from the USA and Canada (N = 551), we confirm that individuals fail to understand accumulation regarding COVID-19, have less concern regarding COVID-19, and decrease endorsement for public health measures as new cases decline but when active cases are at the highest point. Moreover, we experimentally manipulate different dynamic data visualizations and show that presenting data highlighting active cases and minimizing new cases led to increased concern and increased endorsement for COVID-19 health measures compared to a control condition highlighting daily cases. These results hold regardless of country, political affiliation, and individual differences in decision making. This study has implications for communicating the risks of contracting COVID-19 and future public health issues.

When daily planning improves employee performance: The importance of planning type, engagement, and interruptions.

Does planning for a particular workday help employees perform better than on other days they fail to plan? We investigate this question by identifying 2 distinct types of daily work planning to explain why and when planning improves employees' daily performance. The first type is time management planning (TMP)-creating task lists, prioritizing tasks, and determining how and when to perform them. We propose that TMP enhances employees' performance by increasing their work engagement, but that these positive effects are weakened when employees face many interruptions in their day. The second type is contingent planning (CP) in which employees anticipate possible interruptions in their work and plan for them. We propose that CP helps employees stay engaged and perform well despite frequent interruptions. We investigate these hypotheses using a 2-week experience-sampling study. Our findings indicate that TMP's positive effects are conditioned upon the amount of interruptions, but CP has positive effects that are not influenced by the level of interruptions. Through this study, we help inform workers of the different planning methods they can use to increase their daily motivation and performance in dynamic work environments. (PsycINFO Database Record

A formal, computational theory of multiple-goal pursuit: integrating goal-choice and goal-striving processes.

Understanding the processes involved when pursuing multiple goals over time is a central question for motivational theorists. A dynamic, computational model integrating theories of goal striving and goal choice is presented to account for data emerging from Schmidt and DeShon's (2007) multiple-goal-pursuit protocol. The simulated results match the results reported in their study, including the finding that relative discrepancy from the goals positively predicted resource allocation early on but negatively predicted it toward the end of the session. Variance in parameters in the model also accounted for individual differences found in the data. Discussion focuses on the theoretical contribution of formally integrating elements of self-regulation theories, further empirical work needed to test the model, and further theoretical work needed to continue the integration process exemplified here.