The study takes servant-leadership and attempts to find if there is an equivalent concept in management. Leadership and management have been extensively compared and contrasted in research and theory and while there are divergent views of exactly what each entails, others hold the view that they might be equal and complementary. The research design follows a positivist philosophy. An instrument that measures distinct leader, manager and professional role preferences is used to check the discrete operation of three contexts among a sample of members of the accountancy profession. The instrument is derived from contextualising pre-developed and pre-tested servant-leadership measuring instruments. Items from the role preference map instrument are added together with demographic details to come up with a meta-instrument adapted for the study. After validating it through pilot-testing, the instrument is applied in real-world research. The research was conducted among a sample of professional accountants working in 28 countries across four continents in organisations with over 82,000 employees. Statistical analysis, employing; analysis of variance, correlations, frequencies, significances, means, variances and tests of scale reliability was performed on both the data and the instruments. The research found clear and reliable servant-leadership-type behaviours exhibited across the three discreet roles and contexts of leader, manager and professional. Some professional accountancy courses are delivered across many countries in the world. The Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA) is one such professional accountancy body that offers qualifications on a global scale. However, as accountants originate from, and practice in diverse cultures and economies around the world they are trained by institutes like ACCA from a common syllabus that has elements of management as a subject. Servant-leadership is a type of leadership that is theorised to be humanistic and spiritual rather than rational and mechanistic. Management practice on the other hand needs rationality and contains some mechanistic elements in typical management functions like coordinating and controlling. The implication is whether servant-leadership attributes can be exhibited if professional accountants contextualise themselves as leaders, managers or professionals. The study focuses on the profession of accountants and tests the operation of servant-leadership behaviours from the manager, leader and professional contexts using pre-tested servant-leadership scales and applying them in specific leader and manager contexts. This approach is new in its treatment of servant-leadership in this fashion. A further original approach is the use of the accountancy profession. This treatment of instruments from other fields like psychology and sociology is new.

Caregiving for a dementia patient is a stressful experience and can last for years. The exposure to stress over time can lead to negative health outcomes in caregivers (e.g. depression) and can decrease their ability to provide care. Caregivers need resources such as good sleep quality and mastery to have the physical, emotional, and mental energy to perform the caregiving role. The purpose of this study was to explore the relationships between the resources of sleep quality, mastery, and the outcomes of perceived stress, and depression in informal caregivers of community-dwelling persons with dementia (PWD). The data presented were from a cross-sectional non-experimental study with interviews conducted with 80 informal caregivers of PWD utilizing a demographic questionnaire for the caregiver, an assessment of the frequency of behavior and psychiatric symptoms (BPSD) of dementia, the Dementia Severity Rating Scale to assess the caregiver’s perception of the PWD’s cognitive and functional abilities, the Pittsburgh Sleep Questionnaire to asses the caregiver’s sleep, a combined global and domain-specific mastery instrument, the Perceived Stress Scale and the Center for Epidemiologic Depression Scale to measure outcomes. The results of this study found that male and female caregivers shared a similar caregiving experience, similar levels of mastery, depression, and stress but, female caregivers had poorer sleep than male caregivers. Caregivers experienced a higher rate of sleep disruptions by the PWD than previous studies and these disruptions were related to poorer perceived sleep quality and poor global sleep. There was a direct relationship between mastery and perceived stress, mastery and depression, sleep quality and stress, sleep quality and depression, but not a statistically significant relationship between mastery and sleep quality in this sample. Sleep quality was not found to have an indirect effect on stress or depression through mastery. The contribution of these findings to nursing knowledge is the establishment of the direct relationship between sleep quality and stress, and mastery and stress to be considered in future intervention research. Further exploration is needed to understand the relationship of mastery and sleep quality. / text

Using a large sample from the NICHD Study of Early Child Care, the current study examined the processes through which children's agentic processes promoted their resilience in the face of mothers' depressive symptoms at first grade. Children's resilience in the presence of mothers' depressive symptoms was demonstrated to be homogeneous across domains of academic performance, social competence, internalizing behavior, and externalizing behavior. Children's effortful control, self-assertion, and mastery motivation predicted their resilience in these domains to a varying degree. The agentic processes mediated the relation of different patterns of individual (i.e., child intelligence, temperament), relational (i.e., attachment security), and environmental (i.e., maternal sensitivity, childcare quality) factors to children's resilience across domains. Interrelations among child individual, relational, and environmental characteristics were also observed. Moreover, findings from two analytic approaches converged in terms of underscoring the importance of the agentic system in promoting child resilience in the face of mothers' depressive symptoms. Children's agentic processes promoted their resilience via additive main effects rather than interactive effects. / text

4 pp. / REPLACES 182: MAKING THE BEST YOUTH BETTER: PIECING TOGETHER THE 4 ESSENTIAL ELEMENTS OF POSITIVE YOUTH / Youth development is the continual growth process in which all youth are invested in meeting their basic personal and social needs to feel safe, well cared for, valued, useful, and emotionally grounded. Scientists have long studied what youth need to be successful and contributing adults. The purpose of this set of fact sheets is to provide research based information to youth development professionals, volunteers and youth on the four essential elements of positive youth development.

3 pp. / REPLACES 182: MAKING THE BEST YOUTH BETTER: PIECING TOGETHER THE 4 ESSENTIAL ELEMENTS OF POSITIVE YOUTH / Youth development is the continual growth process in which all youth are invested in meeting their basic personal and social needs to feel safe, well cared for, valued, useful, and emotionally grounded. Scientists have long studied what youth need to be successful and contributing adults. The purpose of this set of fact sheets is to provide research based information to youth development professionals, volunteers and youth on the four essential elements of positive youth development.

3 pp. / REPLACES 182: MAKING THE BEST YOUTH BETTER: PIECING TOGETHER THE 4 ESSENTIAL ELEMENTS OF POSITIVE YOUTH / Youth development is the continual growth process in which all youth are invested in meeting their basic personal and social needs to feel safe, well cared for, valued, useful, and emotionally grounded. Scientists have long studied what youth need to be successful and contributing adults. The purpose of this set of fact sheets is to provide research based information to youth development professionals, volunteers and youth on the four essential elements of positive youth development.

3 pp. / REPLACES 182: MAKING THE BEST YOUTH BETTER: PIECING TOGETHER THE 4 ESSENTIAL ELEMENTS OF POSITIVE YOUTH / Youth development is the continual growth process in which all youth are invested in meeting their basic personal and social needs to feel safe, well cared for, valued, useful, and emotionally grounded. Scientists have long studied what youth need to be successful and contributing adults. The purpose of this set of fact sheets is to provide research based information to youth development professionals, volunteers and youth on the four essential elements of positive youth development.

3 pp. / REPLACES 182: MAKING THE BEST YOUTH BETTER: PIECING TOGETHER THE 4 ESSENTIAL ELEMENTS OF POSITIVE YOUTH / Youth development is the continual growth process in which all youth are invested in meeting their basic personal and social needs to feel safe, well cared for, valued, useful, and emotionally grounded. Scientists have long studied what youth need to be successful and contributing adults. The purpose of this set of fact sheets is to provide research based information to youth development professionals, volunteers and youth on the four essential elements of positive youth development.

This case study examined the problem of below-grade-level reading scores among kindergarten students despite the use of literacy centers in a large Title 1 public elementary school in a suburb of Atlanta, Georgia. The purpose of the study was to investigate whether application of the literacy center model might be connected to student performance. Specifically, the research question concerned whether implementation of literacy centers was consistent with principles of mastery learning based on differentiation by ability. This study was guided by Bloom's theory of mastery learning, which suggests that higher levels of learning may be achieved if each child is allowed to work at his or her own pace and academic level. The study documented literacy center activities over a 5-month period. Data sources included classroom observations within 11 kindergarten classrooms, interviews with 11 kindergarten teachers, and reviews of student assessments. Descriptive coding, category construction, and the constant comparison method were used to analyze the data. The findings revealed that although many components of mastery learning were evident, the frequent dependence upon subjective assessments and inappropriate task assignment for low-achieving students were not aligned. To improve classroom practices and achieve greater alignment, an in-service professional development project based on a training model by Sparks and Loucks-Horsley was developed, with attention to incorporating research-based classroom activities for low-achieving kindergarten students into the literacy center organization. Combating reading difficulties in the early school years offers educational and social advantages, such as later reading achievement, improved school completion rates, lower incarceration rates, and less dependence upon low-paying jobs.

The present study explored the influence of social support and psychological resources on depression in people living with HIV/AIDS. The mediating role of mastery and self-esteem was examined. Factor analysis of the MOS-SSS supported three dimensions of social support. Findings from a predominantly gay male sample of unemployed individuals living with HIV/AIDS in the Toronto-area indicated high levels of depressive symptomatology, which were negatively related to emotional/informational support, tangible support, and affectionate/interpersonal support. Mediation analyses indicated partial support of the Cognitive Adaptation Model, revealing significant mediating effects of mastery on the relationship between social support and depressive symptomatology. Self-esteem was not found to be a significant mediator of this relationship. Findings suggest the need for social support interventions that help to strengthen mastery in individuals living with HIV/AIDS in order to reduce depression. Attention should be paid to self-esteem and its relationship with gender and employment status in this population.