The American Psychological Association’s editorial style urges authors to provide effect size estimates. Several journals, including Educational and Psychological Measurement, have adopted author guidelines that call for determining the minimum sample size necessary for a given result to have been declared statistically significant. MINSIZE2, a computer program that permits the user to determine both effect size and the minimum sample size needed for the results of a given analysis to be statistically significant, is described. Program applications for statistical significance tests for univariate, multivariate, and nonparametric statistics are provided. Explanation of the program’s operation is given, and examples are furnished.

Adolescent girls incarcerated in a state reformatory (N=246) were recruited and assigned to an 18-session health education program or a time-equivalent HIV prevention program. Cohorts were assigned to conditions using a randomized block design separated by a “wash out” period to reduce contamination. Post intervention, girls in the HIV risk reduction program demonstrated the acquisition of risk-reduction behavioral skills and improved condom application skill. At a follow-up assessment approximately nine months after release from the correctional facility, girls in both conditions reported fewer unprotected sexual intercourse occasions and less sex while under the influence of alcohol or other drugs.

Exposure to multiple traumatic events and high rates of mental health problems are common among juvenile offenders. This study draws on Conservation of Resources (COR) stress theory to examine the impact of a specific trauma, Hurricane Katrina, relative to other adverse life events on the mental health of female adolescent offenders in Mississippi. Teenage girls (N = 258, 69% African American) were recruited from 4 juvenile detention centers and the state training school. Participants were interviewed about the occurrence and timing of adverse life events and hurricane-related experiences and completed a self-administered mental health assessment. Hierarchical linear regression models were used to identify predictors of anxiety and depression. Pre-hurricane family stressors, pre-hurricane traumatic events, hurricane-related property damage, and receipt of hurricane-related financial assistance significantly predicted symptoms of anxiety and depression. Findings support COR theory. Family stressors had the greatest influence on symptoms of anxiety and depression, highlighting the need for family-based services that address the multiple, inter-related problems and challenges in the lives of female juvenile offenders.

Traditional assessments of divergent production have employed standard time press conditions of three minutes for measures of fluency, flexibility, and originality. Recent studies have provided evidence that the traditional time press condition may impede both fluency and quality of responses and that differences in divergent production responses have been found under a variety of creative prompting conditions. The purpose of the present study was to examine the effects of three time press and three creative prompt conditions on early vs. later trial originality scores for three divergent production stimuli. The participants were 91 undergraduate students enrolled in Educational Psychology courses who were randomly assigned to one of six experimental groups. The six groups were counterbalanced across the three vignette tasks in time press requirements and creative prompting. Aggregate differences were found in which there was a higher frequency of originality scores for the latter portions of trials as compared with the early portion of trials for all time press and prompting conditions.

Several journals, including Educational and Psychological Measurement, have adopted author guidelines that call for determining the minimum sample size necessary for a given result to have been declared statistically significant. MINSIZE, an MS-DOS computer program that permits the user to determine the minimum sample size needed for the results of a given analysis to be statistically significant, is described. Program applications for statistical significance tests based on z, t, r, F, or x2 statistics are provided. Explanation of the program's operation is given for each of the types of statistics, and examples are furnished.