Nearly 10% of college students experience chronic insomnia. Cognitive-behavioral therapy for insomnia (CBTi) is an empirically validated multi-component treatment that has been demonstrated to produce reliable and durable benefits in the general adult population. However, there have been no studies examining the effectiveness of multi-component CBTi in a college student population, even though many studies have examined the efficacy of single treatment modalities. These young adults are different from the general adult population because they are in a unique transitional developmental phase as they are maturing from adolescence into adulthood, they are sleepier than adults, they tend to have irregular sleep schedules, and their living situations are often different from the general adult population. In this study college students with chronic insomnia were randomly assigned to either six sessions of CBTi or a wait list control (WLC) group. All participants completed sleep diaries, sleep measures, and psychosocial measures. The results indicated students who received CBTi showed improvements in sleep efficiency (SE), sleep onset latency (SOL), number of awakenings (NWAK), time awake after sleep onset (WASO), and sleep quality (SQ). They also had decreased insomnia severity (ISI), dysfunctional beliefs about sleep (DBAS), and general fatigue (MFI), as well as increases in …

Chronic insomnia is a highly prevalent disorder in general and young adult populations, and contributes a significant economic burden on society. Previous studies have shown healthcare utilization (HCU) is significantly higher for people with insomnia than people without insomnia. One limitation with previous research is accurate measurement of HCU in people with insomnia is difficult due to a high co-morbidity of medical and mental health problems as well as varying operational definitions of insomnia. Assessing HCU in people with insomnia can be improved by applying research diagnostic criteria (RDC) for insomnia, using a population with low rates of co-morbid medical/mental health problems, and measuring HCU with subjective, objective, and predictive methods. The current study found young adults with chronic insomnia had greater HCU than normal sleepers, specifically on number of medications, and chronic disease score (CDS) estimates of total healthcare costs, outpatient costs, and predicted number of primary care visits. The presence of a medical and/or mental health problem acted as a moderating variable between chronic insomnia and HCU. Simple effects testing found young adults with chronic insomnia and a medical/mental health problem had the greatest HCU followed by normal sleepers with a medical/mental health problem, chronic insomnia, and normal …

In recent years, organizations have invested increasing financial and labor-related resources on employee training. The assumption is that training will benefit the organization through improved performance which will result in greater efficiency, greater customer satisfaction and, ultimately, increased revenue and profits. Further, employees are assumed to benefit because their improved performance should lead to career advancement and increased compensation. However, measuring the effect of training on employee performance has been problematic due to the difficulty of isolating the effect of training from other human resource management practices and environmental and organizational influences. Hierarchical multiple regression analyses were used to test a model for predicting merit pay increase, job promotion and performance ratings from measures of general and finance training, as well as employee tenure, gender, educational level and organizational level. It was found that while significant contributions (i.e., betas) were made by finance and general training for performance ratings, promotion and merit pay increase, they did not increase the variance accounted for by tenure, organizational level and gender.

Individualist and collectivist cultural approaches describe the relationship between an individual and his or her social surroundings. the current study had a two-fold purpose. the first was to investigate whether Brazilians, like other collective peoples, displayed more group self-representations, categorized items more relationally and paid more attention to context than Americans. the second purpose of this study was to investigate if counter-cultural primes played a role in activating either collective or individual selves. Both American (n = 100) and Brazilian (n = 101) participants were assigned either to a no-prime condition or a counter-cultural prime condition and then were asked to rate emotion cartoons, categorize items, complete the Twenty Statement Test (TST), and choose a representative object. As expected, unprimed Brazilian participants displayed more collectivist patterns on emotional (F[1,196] = 10.1, p = .001, ?²= .049; F[1,196] = 7.9, p = .006, ?²= .038; F[1,196] = 9.0, p = .005, ?²= .044) and cognitive (F[1, 196] = 6.0, p < .01, ?² = .03) tasks than Americans. However, Brazilians offered more individualist self-representations (F[1, 195] = 24.0, p < .001, ?² = .11) than American participants. Priming only had a marginal effect on item categorization (F[1,194] = 3.9, p = …

The most effective and useful way to diagnose and subtype depression has been a long debated topic which even now does not have a definite answer. The biopsychosocial approach to diagnosis may be a solution to this problem by linking various etiologies to symptom presentation. The biopsychosocial model, in regard to depression, takes into account biological risk factors/contributors, psychological or cognitive risk factors/contributors, and social risk factors/contributors to depression when making diagnosis and subtyping determinations. However, the most effective way to use this model in the assessment, diagnosis, and treatment of depression is not yet clear. In this study, the utility of the biopsychosocial model as an effective approach to conceptualizing and treating depression was assessed by testing hypotheses that showed that etiological contributors are related to the presence and differential presentation of depression, and that these etiologically-based subtypes of depression respond differently to different forms of treatment. These hypotheses were tested using data from the National Comorbidity Survey - Replication (NCS-R). Results showed that the biopsychosocial model can effectively predict the presence, severity and chronicity of depression, and may inform specific biopsychosocially-based subtypes. No conclusions could be drawn regarding success in treatment based on the biopsychosocial model. Future directions …

The purpose of this study was to examine the roles that values and the family environment play in young adult engagement in risky behavior. One hundred seventy-two male and female college students between the ages of 18-25 completed a demographics questionnaire, the Aspirations Index which measures seven life-goal contents that represent different values, the Cognitive Appraisal of Risky Events that assesses young adults’ perceptions of the risks and benefits associated with involvement in risky activities as well as past involvement in risky behaviors and the Family Environment Scale to assess participants' perceptions of their current family environment. A series of regression analyses were then used to assess the relationship between three dimensions of the family environment and risky behavior involvement and the relationship between participants' intrinsic and extrinsic values and perceived positive consequences and negative consequences of risky behavior. Results from this study supported the idea that certain dimensions of the family environment are related to risk-taking behavior in emerging adults; however, contrary to previous research, the relationship dimension of the family environment was not predictive of young adult risk-taking. Moreover, family activities that communicate family values did not contribute any additional information to the prediction of risk-taking behavior. Findings …