Female Postgraduate Students Research Articles

Attitudes toward parenthood and awareness of fertility among postgraduate students in Sweden

Postponing childbirth is becoming increasingly common in Western countries, especially among women with higher education. The aim of the present study was to investigate female and male postgraduate students' attitudes toward parenthood, their intentions to have children, perceived obstacles to having or raising children during postgraduate studies, and their awareness of fertility issues. A 52-question survey was mailed to randomly selected postgraduate students attending a Swedish university. The questionnaire was developed based on earlier research by, and the professional experience of, the authors. Three pilot studies were conducted to test the questionnaire's reliability and validity. The t, x2, and Mann-Whitney U tests were used, as appropriate, to analyze responses. Two hundred female and 200 male postgraduate students aged<or=40 years received questionnaires. The response rate was 71% (n=141) among women and 58% (n=116) among men. Most childless respondents had positive attitudes toward parenthood and wanted to have 2 or 3 children, and a majority of women wanted to have their last child after age 35. Compared with men, women were more pessimistic about the effects of parenthood on their postgraduate studies, and perceived more problems related to balancing work and family life. One of 4 respondents overestimated a woman's ability to become pregnant between 35 and 40 years of age, and about half had overly optimistic perceptions of the chances to have a baby by means of in vitro fertilization. Most postgraduate students wanted to have children in the future. More women than men perceived that having children while completing postgraduate studies was or would be difficult, and that parenthood would negatively affect their status in the labor market. Because many female postgraduate students intend to have children at an age when female fecundity is decreased, information on fertility issues would help them make informed decisions regarding family planning.

Tensions between student and institutional conceptions of postgraduate research

Universities assume that the conceptions of research represented in their policies and plans are universally applicable. However, if individual postgraduate research students experience significant tension between their understandings about research and those of the institution, and this tension impedes on‐time completion, then the institutions may be faced with a research funding shortfall. In both Australia and the UK, government research funding is contingent on on‐time student completion. With this imperative in mind, an in‐depth longitudinal analysis of the experience of three female postgraduate research students was undertaken to explore the question: how universally applicable to individual students' conceptions are institutional conceptions of postgraduate research? The investigation found that the gap between the students' understandings about research and those of the university was so wide and persistent that on‐time completion did not occur. As the gap was qualitatively different for each of the three women, it is suggested that an unknowable, but appreciable, number of students will also experience such gaps. It would seem desirable, then, for students and their supervisors to explore conceptions of research early in candidature, and to continue this exploration across the candidature, to enhance each student's ability to successfully negotiate tensions and so facilitate on‐time completion.

Prevalence of eating disorders in Pakistan: Relationship with depression and body shape

The current study was conducted to assess the prevalence of disturbed eating attitudes in postgraduate female students in Lahore, Pakistan. The interrelationships of disturbed eating attitudes, dissatisfaction with body weight and shape and depression were also investigated. A total of 111 volunteers were interviewed using the following questionnaires: Eating Attitude Test 26 items (EAT-26), Body Shape Questionnaire (BSQ) and the Depression Subscale of Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS). The findings indicated that 59% of the normal-weight and 21% of the underweight women considered themselves to be overweight; 17% scored above the EAT threshold. Two women met the DSM-IV criteria for bulimia nervosa (BN) and another two those for eating disorders not otherwise specified (EDNOS). Two multiple regression analyses indicated that greater exposure to Western culture and dissatisfaction with body shape were strong predictors of faulty eating attitudes, whereas unrealistic body shape perceptions could contribute to depressive affect. These results have important implications in view of the high prevalence of disturbed eating attitudes in an Asian country.

Impulsivity/sociability and reinforcement in verbal operant conditioning: A replication

The present investigation was designed to study the relationship between impulsivity/ sociability and modes of reinforcement in verbal operant conditioning. A randomized block design involving three levels of impulsivity/sociability (high, moderate and low) and two verbal reinforcement conditions (‘good’ and ‘poor’) was replicated 20 times. Two hundred and forty undergraduate and postgraduate female students (120 for impulsivity and 120 for sociability) were individually subjected to Taffel's verbal conditioning procedure. The study supports the following conclusions: (1) individuals with high scores on the impulsivity/sociability scale condition better with the rewarding reinforcer (‘good’) than with the punishing reinforcer (‘poor’); (2) the moderate scorers on the impulsivity/sociability scale condition comparably with both the rewarding and punishing reinforcers; (3) the high scorers on impulsivity/sociability as compared to low and moderate scorers on these scales condition better with the rewarding reinforcer; (4) the low scorers on the impulsivity scale as compared to high and moderate scorers condition better with the punishing reinforcer but such differences for low scorers on sociability are statistically nonsignificant.

"We Don't Contravene the Sex Discrimination Act"—female students at journalism school

ABSTRACT This paper looks at how female postgraduate journalism students coped with problems arising out of their experiences at journalism school. The fieldwork, collected during the course of a doctorate, was primarily carried out by participant observation where I followed a cohort of students through a one year, university based journalism course. The paper focuses on how female students adjusted to problems relating to sexism on their course and argues that despite the fact that they were a close‐knit group and had indentified a shared problem which as a group they sought to solve, no group solution to the problem emerged. It is argued that this is partly due to the fact that journalism is a male dominated occupation, particularly on the print side, and, as such, problems relating to female gender were marginalised. The students coped with the problem by either ignoring it or redefining it as unthreatening because they were unprepared to challenge staff members and so make themselves vulnerable durin...

Verbal operant conditioning as a function of extraversion and reinforcement

The present investigation was designed to study the effects of rewarding and punishing verbal reinforcers on verbal operant conditioning as a function of extraversion‐introversion. A randomized block design involving three levels of extraversion (extraverts, ambiverts and introverts) and two verbal reinforcement conditions (‘good’ and ‘poor’), was replicated 20 times. One hundred and twenty undergraduate and postgraduate female students were individually subjected to Taffel's verbal conditioning procedure. The study supports the following conclusions: (1) extraverts as compared to introverts and ambiverts condition better with the rewarding reinforcer (‘good’) while the introverts compared to extraverts and ambiverts condition better with the punishing reinforcer (‘poor’); (2) extraverts condition better with the rewarding reinforcer compared to the punishing one, whereas the introverts condition better with the punishing reinforcer compared to the rewarding one; (3) ambiverts condition comparably with both the rewarding and punishing reinforcers.

Styles of Learning and Thinking Among College Students in India

Summary In order to determine the suitability of the Torrance and Reynolds “Your Style of Learning and Thinking (form C)” to Indian conditions, the questionnaire which measures styles of learning and thinking associated with cerebral hemisphere functions, was administered to 250 male and female Indian postgraduate students. The item analysis showed several weak items. The retest reliabilities for 111 students, with 40–45 days between administrations, were fairly satisfactory and were comparable to that of the American normative sample.

Extent of spiral aftereffect as a determinant of spiral structural complexity.

The absolute magnitude of expansion/contraction reported by 10 male and 10 female postgraduate students, one of the three response measures employed, discriminated most among 8 arithmetic spirals of 2 bandwidths. It decreased as the number of turns increased in a spiral.