The present study examined the relationships between African American graduate students' experience of the imposter phenomenon and their racial identity attitudes, worldview perspectives, academic self-concept, background characteristics, and graduate school environment. It was hypothesized that racial identity, Afrocentricity, academic self-concept, and certain demographic characteristics would differentially predict imposter feelings. The results of multiple regression analyses revealed support for some but not all of the hypotheses.

An optimal Afrocentric belief system is characterized by a holistic, nonmaterialistic, and communal orientation in persons. An instrument to assess one's degree of adherence to an abstraction of this world view, the Belief Systems Analysis Scale (BSAS), was developed and psychometrically evaluated. To assess the instrument's construct validity, college students (66 females and 29 males) were administered the BSAS, the Dogmatism Scale, the Social Interest Scale, and the Symptom Checklist 90-Revised. The BSAS correlated significantly (p < .001) in the expected direction with all three of the criterion variables. Further analyses indicated that the BSAS is internally consistent (Cronbach's Alpha = .80) and multifactorial. The test-retest reliability coefficent (n = 41, one week apart) was r = .63. It is tentatively concluded that the BSAS has potential as a valid and reliable measure of an optimal Afrocentric world view and may be useful both as a research and clinical instrument.

This study describes the development of the Worldview Analysis Scale (WAS), an instrument designed to assess the way in which people perceive, think, feel, and experience the world. Four studies were conducted to describe the scale development of the WAS and to assess its psychometric properties. Eight hundred sixteen African, African American, European, European American, and multiethnic participants served as the validation sample. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses provided evidence for seven subscales: materialistic universe, spiritual immortality, communalism, indigenous values, tangible realism, knowledge of self, and spiritualism. MANOVA analyses found evidence for cultural differences in worldview at the ethnic level of analysis. Results indicated favorable reliability, validity, and factor structure indices for the WAS. Applications of the WAS in culturally competent research, training, and psychotherapy are discussed.

Three models�the pathology, structural-functional, and emergent�have been used to address the issue of stability in black families. It is presently argued that the lack of consensus in their conclusions is due to the impact of differing, underlying, and only implicitly stated, assumptions and values held by the researchers. In support of this thesis, a brief discussion of the role of values and assumptions in social scientific research is followed by a review and evaluation of research reported by advocates of each model. This examination suggested that the primary dimensions on which value differences exist are : (a) the extent to which black families should be assessed by standards developed in mainstream culture; (b) the relative importance of assessing stability in terms of socioeconomic status as opposed to socioemotional constructs; and (c) the role of African heritage in the lives of modern black American families. It is suggested that future researchers explicitly acknowledge their assumptions and values on these dimensions, use an ethnographic/parti- cipant observation methodology, and adopt a developmental perspective. Finally, the social policy implications for black families of this debate among social scientists are discussed.

This article explores the methods and practices of traditional African medicine in light of current research in modern physics and neuroscience using optimal theory, which comes from anAfrocentric culturalframe of reference, as the basis for interpretation. The utility of examining data from multicultural frames of reference for the purpose of cross-fertilization is illustrated. The Vimbuza healing practices of the Tumbuka people of northern Malawi and the changing significance of those practices when examined from the assumptions of optimal theory (Myers, 1988) provide the core data describedv The paradox of cultural imperialism, transition, and assimilation for mental health and healing amongAfrican people throughout the world is discussed in terms of implications for future research.