COUNSELING IN THE STATE EMPLOYMENT SERVICE

The place and importance of counseling in State Employment Services has, in many instances, not been recognized as a necessary function of the United States Training and Employment Service (USTES) by some local office managers as well as administrators. After discussing this matter with the counselors in the Halsted office, the following article was written not to justify the existence of counseling but hopefully to show its importance.     

EFFECTS OF AN INDEPENDENT GROUP CONTINGENCY SPECIAL ACTIVITY PROGRAM ON INAPPROPRIATE BEHAVIOR IN A RESIDENTIAL SETTING

Group contingencies targeting inappropriate behavior may be especially useful in residential settings where the staff to client ratio makes individualized behavior plan implementation difficult. The purpose of the current study was to evaluate an independent group contingency on inappropriate behavior in a secure residential facility for offenders with disabilities. The independent group contingency involved differential reinforcement of low rate and differential reinforcement of other behavior via access to a special activity (a catered weekly lunch). The group contingency was alternated with non‐activity weeks for a total of 48 weeks. Results were analyzed across and within residents and showed lower overall rates of inappropriate behavior on activity weeks than non‐activity weeks for the majority of residents. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

PROFILE OF EMPLOYMENT SERVICE COUNSELORS

As a guide to program planning, the United States Employment Service makes periodic surveys of the numbers and characteristics of counseling staff employed by the various State Employment Services. The information obtained from these studies helps to provide answers to many administrative questions regarding recruitment, staffing, training, and utilization of counselors as well as their physical facilities. The most recent survey indicates that overall substantial progress has been made in staffing to meet increasing responsibilities and in upgrading the professional qualifications of counselors, although there are still some problem areas.     

ANALYSIS OF WORK GROUP PRODUCTIVITY IN AN APPLIED SETTING: APPLICATION OF A TIME SERIES PANEL DESIGN

We provide a demonstration of a time series panel analysis applied under typical field research conditions characterized by (a) a small number of groups (b) all of which experience an intervention (thus there is no traditional control group), and (c) perform noncomparable tasks. The time series techniques allow a direct test of Naylor, Pritchard, and Ilgen's (1980) theory of behavior in organizations applied to work group productivity in a large-scale study of work groups conducted by Pritchard and colleagues (1989). The responses of 5 work groups to priority scores for 37 indicators of productivity over 23 months were used to predict month-by-month changes in productivity for each of the 37 group products. The results show that group productivity improvements can be explained by feedback including priority scores derived from nonlinear contingency functions of the productivity indicators. Furthermore, groups differed in their response to priority feedback. Goal setting positively affected productivity gain consistently across work groups, after the effects of priority feedback and the interaction of work groups with priority feedback were accounted for. Implications for group performance strategies and appropriate applications of the time series panel analysis are discussed.     

MEMORY WALLET INTERVENTION IN AN ADULT DAY-CARE SETTING

The use of memory wallets to prompt factual information during conversations with day-care center volunteers was evaluated for four subjects with dementia. Memory wallets contained 15–20 pictures and sentences about familiar persons, places, and events that each subject had difficulty remembering. All subjects used the memory wallets to improve their conversations by increasing factual statements and decreasing ambiguous, unintelligible, and perseverative utterances. Volunteers decreased their use of questions and prompts during conversations in which subjects used their memory wallets. These results demonstrate the effectiveness of using volunteers to develop memory wallets and to encourage their use during conversations with day-care clients.     

ETHNIC GROUP DIFFERENCES IN COGNITIVE ABILITY IN EMPLOYMENT AND EDUCATIONAL SETTINGS: A META-ANALYSIS

The cognitive ability levels of different ethnic groups have interested psychologists for over a century. Many narrative reviews of the empirical literature in the area focus on the Black-White differences, and the reviews conclude that the mean difference in cognitive ability ( g ) is approximately 1 standard deviation; that is, the generally accepted effect size is about 1.0. We conduct a meta-analytic review that suggests that the one standard deviation effect size accurately summarizes Black-White differences for college application tests (e.g., SAT) and overall analyses of tests of g for job applicants in corporate settings. However, the 1 standard deviation summary of group differences fails to capture many of the complexities in estimating ethnic group differences in employment settings. For example, our results indicate that job complexity, the use of within job versus across job study design, focus on applicant versus incumbent samples, and the exact construct of interest are important moderators of standardized group differences. In many instances, standardized group differences are less than 1 standard deviation. We conduct similar analyses for Hispanics, when possible, and note that Hispanic-White differences are somewhat less than Black-White differences.     

PROBLEMS ENCOUNTERED BY EMPLOYMENT SERVICE COUNSELING SUPERVISORS

Data from 24 counseling supervisors in the New York State Employment Service were obtained as part of an on-going training program. Small groups through spontaneous discussion presented problems that they wanted to solve. The data were classified and tabulated according to common content. The findings show that these supervisors were bothered primarily by organizational and interpersonal difficulties. Although also concerned with “job-task” problems, these represented a smaller proportion of their time involvement. Implications for management and training were discussed.     

USER ACCEPTANCE OF PEER APPRAISALS IN AN INDUSTRIAL SETTING

A survey of 218 industrial employees who had used a peer evaluation system for over a year found a higher degree of user acceptance than that reported in previous research. Users were significantly more favorable in their attitudes toward peer appraisals when the appraisals were used for developmental rather than evaluative purposes. Favorable user reactions were positively associated with the satisfaction that employees expressed with prior peer ratings and with the amount of leniency perceived in the peer rating process. User reactions were negatively associated with perceived friendship bias and years of company experience. No relationship was found between peer or self-ratings of performance and reactions to the peer appraisal process.     

SCHOOL COUNSELORS HELP OUT THE EMPLOYMENT SERVICE

For several years the Employment Service has been hiring school counselors to augment counseling staff in local offices during the summer months when school was not in session. The program has grown each year, and the results have more than exceeded expectations.     

CONTINGENT OBSERVATION: AN EFFECTIVE AND ACCEPTABLE PROCEDURE FOR REDUCING DISRUPTIVE BEHAVIOR OF YOUNG CHILDREN IN A GROUP SETTING1

Since a major task of childhood is learning to get along in a group without disrupting other children's activities, caregivers need explicit guidelines for gentle but effective procedures for dealing with disruptive behaviors in child-care settings. In a day-care center for normal 1- and 2-yr-old children, an effort was made to develop a procedure that appeared sufficiently humane and educational to be acceptable to parents and daycare workers, and yet effective in reducing disruptive play behaviors. Caregivers used the occasion of disruptive behavior to instruct the child in appropriate alternatives, then had the child sit on the periphery and observe the appropriate social behavior of the other children, “sit and watch”, for a brief period before inviting him or her to rejoin the play activities. The effectiveness of this procedure was compared with a method commonly recommended for use with young children: instructing the child, then distracting or redirecting the child to an alternative toy or activity. Contingent observation, combining instruction with a brief timeout (from being a participant in an activity to becoming an observer of the activity), proved considerably more effective in maintaining low levels of disruptions and was considered by caregivers and parents to be an appropriate and socially acceptable method of dealing with young children's disruptive behaviors. Therefore, contingent observation can be recommended for general use in day-care programs for young children.     

TREATMENT OF VOCAL STEREOTYPY IN AN ANALOGUE AND CLASSROOM SETTING

Vocal stereotypy is commonly seen in individuals diagnosed with autism. Vocal stereotypy maintained by automatic reinforcement may prove challenging to treat because of difficulty controlling access to the reinforcer for the behavior. Although previous research has shown reductions in vocal stereotypy using noncontingent reinforcement with and without a response cost component, these types of interventions may not be feasible in the natural environment. The present study presents a treatment package, conducive to the natural environment, consisting of a token economy with a response cost to reduce vocal stereotypy in a male adolescent with autism. Vocal stereotypy was reduced to near zero levels in both an analogue and classroom setting. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.