The effect of variations in answer-sheet format on aptitude test performance

Three different answer sheets were used in the administration of the General Aptitude Test Battery to groups of young adults (n = 302). The answer sheets, designed for use with different brands of Optical Mark Reader, varied in the shape of the response space. A two-factor, repeated measures analysis of variance revealed a significant interaction between subtests and type of answer sheet. Further analyses showed that performance on ‘speed’ tests was affected by the format of answer sheet used, whereas performance on mainly ‘power’ tests was not. The implications of the results for testing practice are discussed.     

THE PREDICTION OF OCCUPATIONAL SUCCESS AND PROFICIENCY

Neither standardized test data nor grades made in required courses in high school contribute significantly to the prediction of occupational success or proficiency. The General Aptitude Test Battery makes practically no contribution to the prediction of success although the instrument is widely used to predict trainability. Intelligence test scores are of little value in predicting success in the labor market. It may be that efforts to predict occupational success and proficiency are in reality exercises in futility since workers tend to be successful regardless of test results. Apparently workers find places where they are considered successful. Possibly new research designs will be required before success can be predicted. Success should not be considered an entity, however, because it does not lend itself to exact measurement.     

The Efficacy of the General Aptitude Test Battery in Allocating Prisoners to Work and Trade Training Courses

Ninety trainees at Deerbolt Borstal, County Durham, were randomly assigned to four groups for placement on trade training courses and work. The first group was assigned on the basis of the General Aptitude Test Battery and a brief interview about their interests; the second group on the basis of the General Aptitude Test Battery; the third group on the interview about their interests; whilst the fourth group was assigned randomly to existing vacancies. A 16-week follow-up showed significant differences across the groups in terms of successfully completing placements, the General Aptitude Test Battery being the crucial factor in allocating individuals successfully. Ratings of trainee performance from supervisors taken after two weeks did not, however, show significant differences across the groups.     

THE DEFENCE OF THE MYSTERIES OF THE TRINITY AND THE INCARNATION: AN EXAMPLE OF LEIBNIZ'S 'OTHER' REASON

In this paper I will discuss certain aspects of Leibniz's theory and practice of ‘soft reasoning’ as exemplified by his defence of two central mysteries of the Christian revelation: the Trinity and the Incarnation. By theory and practice of ‘soft’ or ‘broad’ reasoning, I mean the development of rational strategies which can successefully be applied to the many areas of human understanding which escape strict demonstration, that is, the ‘hard’ or ‘narrow’ reasoning typical of mathematical argumentation.¹ These strategies disclose an ‘other’ reason, i.e. a complementary set of arguments and methods developed by Leibniz in order to deal with crucial issues such as the ‘weighting’ of probabilities and truths of fact. I will argue that one of the most compelling examples of the importance and fertility of Leibniz's ‘other’ reason is provided by his solution to the problems posed by the unique epistemological status of theological mysteries.     

USE OF APTITUDE SCORES AS PREDICTORS OF SUCCESS IN OCCUPATIONAL TRAINING UNDER THE MDTA

Results from studies utilizing the General Aptitude Test Battery (GATB) to predict success in specific vocational training programs authorized by the Manpower Development and Training Act of 1962 are summarized. The summary involves over 1,200 trainees from a number of states in a variety of occupational areas. Trainees from all included studies were combined and then subgrouped on the basis of number of years of formal education claimed. Good prediction was obtained for the 0–7, 8, 9, 10, 11, and 12 years-of-education groupings. The prediction obtained with the 13–16 years-of-education grouping is not at an acceptable level of significance, but this may be a result of the small sample available for this grouping. The results are seen as supporting Manpower Administration efforts to devise ways in which aptitude tests can be used to help match applicants with low levels of reported educational attainment with suitable vocational or training opportunities.     

A Review of the Nonreading Aptitude Test Battery

This article re-examines data from the Nonreading Aptitude Test Battery (NATB) and General Aptitude Test Battery (GATB) test manuals in light of some conventionally accepted psychometric considerations. The NATB standardization sample is adequate. However, the validity is open to question since the NATB demonstrates only a modest correlation with the GATB. It is recommended that caution be employed in relating NATB profiles to the Occupational Aptitude Patterns' norms. This is especially relevant since the NATB, lacking norms of its own, relies on GATB norms and its derived Occupational Aptitude Pattern (OAP).     

THE REBIRTH OF THE IDOLS: THE FREUDIAN UNCONSCIOUS AND THE NIETZSCHEAN UNCONSCIOUS3

The author explores how psychoanalysis mutates in its passing from the privacies of the session to the public spaces of academia, shifting away from enquiry into unfolding unconscious psychic processes guided by its method, and from the clinically based notions Freud and his diverse followers constructed, here called the ‘Freudian unconscious’. In postmodern intellectual contexts Freud's work fuels a ‘Nietzschean unconscious’, issuing from public lecterns in the protagonistic, self‐creating feats of a ‘psychoanalytic discourse’. The ideology of such mutation ishere traced from Nietzsche on to Heidegger and Kojave, and then to Lacan and Laplanche. It reflects the might of the ‘death of evidences’ and the Romantic penchant for the limit‐experience and the primacy accorded to the creative imagination. Discourse as revelation rests on a ‘paradox of the enunciation’ whereby the subject (author) of the statement is taken to be identical to the subject (matter) of the statement. Banishing the boundaries of illusion and evidence, and of self‐overcoming and insight, academic ‘psychoanalytic discourse’creates a ‘return of the idols’ in ‘theoretical’ narcissistic identification.     

THE SORROW THAT DARE NOT SAY ITS NAME: THE INADEQUATE FATHER,THE MOTOR OF HISTORY

Although the following essay is literary‐philosophical, it arose from a practical interest. I have been struck by how widespread today is the complaint about the ‘inadequate father’. Of course a father may be inadequate in diverse ways, either absconding, absent and weak, or overbearing, bullying, and tyrannical, or some combination of these. Further, I am not restricting the term ‘father’ to its narrow biological sense, but using it rather as a metaphor for any institution or structure which an individual or a group feels should have been in place to guide, direct, and protect them in important situations, but did not do its job properly. Consequently they are willing to concede they are not all they could have been, but they insist it is not their fault, rather the fault of the ‘father’ who should have done his job better. This ties in with the fashionable appeal of ‘victimhood’. Everybody today seems to want to cast themselves as a ‘victim’, for reasons similar to those mentioned above. If you are a ‘victim’, then there must be an ‘oppressor’– and some ‘parent’ organization that should have guided, directed, and protected you against the oppressor, but again did not do its job adequately. It is striking how many individuals and groups around the world today choose to perceive themselves, and to present themselves to others, as ‘victims’; it has indeed become a preferred characterization of our age, for it carries with it a rhetorical advantage that trumps all others. If you are able to cast yourself as a ‘victim’, and have others accept this, you disarm and neutralize criticism, not only of what you are, but of what you are currently doing – because the latter can be presented as a just ‘compensation’ for what you have suffered. As with guilt, there is no built‐in quota or statute of limitations. This rhetoric was not as common thirty or forty years ago. There is an added factor here in America and the New World generally where, according to a whispered criticism, as our ancestors crossed the ocean, they experienced a ‘drop in civilization’. Life here was initially without some of the structures and institutions which had evolved over thousands of years in the Old World, which could thus be presumed there but here were absent. As we won with difficulty our independence, we unconsciously repudiated much of the ‘higher culture’ of the colonial master, throwing out the baby with the bathwater. As the ‘economic bubble’ of having won the Second World War has gradually dissipated, we discover we are handicapped by an absence of the forms of maturation and self‐realization that arise in and are necessary for dealing with prolonged peace. In our ‘ideology of liberty’, our adults become essentially grown children, unschooled in anything higher, and thus have particular difficulty assuming the responsibilities of parenthood. They are forced to fall back upon a military style of giving orders, because on this side of the water, ‘final causes’ in the form of commonly admired or agreed on goals for striving are not in place. In this sense there is an absence of the ‘adequate father’. Further, as ‘American Culture’ expands through publicity and the media, we spread the same disease. There is another relevant factor, the ‘celebrity‐liberationist’ lifestyle that has been diffused into the general population since the 1960's and has become a default secular ethic of our time, replacing the traditional Judeo‐Christian decalogue. The former is invoked as a justification for aggressively seeking fame and fortune, and making no attempt to conceal this; rather than worrying that such an attitude will cause offense, it is worn proudly and defiantly in the hope that others will identify with it, thereby branding the performer a cultural hero. This popular strategy towards fulfilment itself rests on a metaphysic of ‘expressive individualism’, a position that holds that the supreme ethical imperative to which other obligations must be subordinated is for each to bring forward their hidden noumenal core, the only source of value, into phenomenal appearances where it may be admired and benefit others and such that creation will for the first time be complete. This change in Western culture made possible by greater affluence and security represents a trickle‐down phenomenon and democritization of the awe reserved for the artist revered as a genius during the nineteenth century, now spread to the entire population. Anything that constrains this expansion, which interrupts or limits this transfer, is to be rejected as parental abuse, psychological repression, or cultural imperialism.     

THE BIRTH OF PSYCHOANALYSIS FROM THE SPIRIT OF TECHNIQUE1

The author aims to demonstrate, through a textual analysis of Freud's work, how the creation of psychoanalysis as a plausible set of understandings of the human mind has a methodological origin that has sometimes been overlooked: in the Greek concept of techne. Freud, an acknowledged pupil of Brentano, was well versed in Aristotelian rhetoric, and selected this instrument of investigation, dependent on language, from the outset of his efforts to describe, understand and treat the world of the unconscious mind. Working in the tradition of techne Freud actually rehabilitated ‘guessing’ (zu erraten) ‐ although it became a largely overlooked concept in Freud's work ‐ and so sought to place conjectural reason as the definitive form of knowledge for the investigation and treatment of the mind. This explains why the 1895 ‘Project’ could not succeed and why technique became irreplaceable as the via regia in ‘The Interpretation of Dreams’. Its model is founded in Aristotelian rhetoric, whose conception of language was first rediscovered by Nietzsche and was used therapeutically by Freud. Freud's view is apparent in his 1923 definition of psychoanalysis which is compared to the current IPA definition, a definition which, the author suggests, gives a misleading prominence to ‘theory’ and which shows how far a questionable rationality has removed conjectural reason from the field, to its detriment. From this point of view it is argued that the ‘precious conjunction’ (Freud) between investigation and treatment has been abandoned, and the concept of historical truth and its significance for psychoanalysis obscured.     

THE TEAR IN THE FABRIC OF MULTICULTURALISM

Since 1984, there have been recurring images of Sikhs in Canada, as ‘extremists’, ‘militants’ and ‘terrorists'. As a result, when Sikhs are viewed as participating in ‘un-Canadian’ beliefs or practices, the general public often responds with discourses that state Sikhs need to return ‘home’, despite their citizenship status. These images produce conversations among Canadians about the extent Sikhs are compatible with Canadian society. I will use the aftermath of the Kamal Nath Protest (23 March 2010), organized by Sikh-Canadians (mostly born in Canada), to unpack the discourse of the Sikh ‘extremist’ in the media. I will explore how the idyllic discourse of Canadian multiculturalism has denied the political identities and histories of communities that have migrated to Canada. Despite discourses of universal tolerance and individual rights, it becomes apparent that any protest is not an appropriate form of dissent for the racialized immigrant within Canada.     

Differential Prediction of Immigrant Versus Majority Group Training Performance Using Cognitive Ability and Personality Measures

There are very few studies of the differential prediction of work and training performance for immigrant groups in the Netherlands. Scores on the General Aptitude Test Battery, an intelligence test, and the Amsterdamse Biografische Vragenlijst (ABV), a frequently used Dutch personality test, and training data for 78 immigrant and 78 Dutch trainee truck drivers were collected. Lautenschlager and Mendoza’s (1986) method of step-down hierarchical regression analysis was used to check for bias in the prediction of training results. Some predictor-criterion combinations showed differential prediction, especially with less cognitive and less objective criteria. The results with respect to the intelligence test appear to be in line with the findings of the US literature.     

THE CRISIS OF HISTORICISM: AND THE PROBLEM OF HISTORICAL MEANING IN NEW TESTAMENT STUDIES

The rapid rise of varieties of historicism in Germany, during the mid‐ to late‐nineteenth century, and subsequently in England and America, resulted in a radical transformation of the principles of coherence and methods of analysis within biblical studies. 1 This paper will argue that the foundational ‘subject/object’ metaphysics of historicism has been subverted over the past century. For this reason, historical positivism should no longer be accorded the status of ‘normative paradigm’ and ‘gatekeeper’ over and against other interpretive approaches. This paper next lays out five principles for a renewed practice of historical inquiry. It argues, first, that historical inquiry continues to serve a vital function within biblical studies in its ability to call attention to historical difference, and, thereby, to contribute to a strategy of resistance to ideology and to totalizing theories; second, that the traditional appeal to historical ‘context’ and ‘author’ in the interpretation of texts continues to be a useful practice – despite the provisional and constructed nature of both – as a way of taking into account extra‐lingual reference and of avoiding presentism; third, that the substitution of new ‘grand narratives’ of Christian origins in place of the (quasi‐theological) ‘historical’ narrative of traditional Christianity – under the claim of historical objectivity – should be abandoned because the very concept of ‘origins’ is the result of a literalizing of a metaphor. Such totalizing narratives always reduce history's inherent polycentricism. Fourth, I will argue that the continued use of historicism in the antiquarian attempt to reconstruct the past, disconnected from both a quest for social justice and a desire for personal self‐creation, represents a form of thought that alienates scholars from themselves and from their real material contexts. Finally, and following on the previous point, this paper submits that the practice of historical analysis has an ethical dimension by virtue of the fact that the personhood of the biblical historian is indissolubly linked to other dimensions of life including the social and ethical aspects of life. These added dimensions complicate the making of choices, which is implicit within all practices of interpretation. These five principles are here suggested as points of departure for the reconceptualization of the scope and function of historical inquiry within the discipline of New Testament studies.     

Stresses reported by UK trainee counselling psychologists

This study examined stressors and psychological distress in 109 UK counselling psychology trainees. The research focus was two-fold. What is the profile of stressors that counselling psychology trainees report about the components of training? What relationship is there between this profile, and other characteristics of trainees, including their level of current psychological distress? Data from a stress survey and from the General Health Questionnaire were examined. High stress scores were found on three aspects of the stress survey (‘academic’, ‘placements’, ‘personal and professional development’), but not–surprisingly–on the aspect, ‘lack of support systems’. Significant stress differences were reported for gender and age of participants, and highly significant positive relationships were found between General Health Questionnaire and stress scores. Overall, the results suggest actions to be taken. Further research is needed to clarify unavoidable and avoidable stressors in training, and the reduction of trainees’ experience of training stress to the necessary minimum needs to be adopted as an active target by programmes.     

THE HOLY & WHOLLY OTHER: KIERKEGAARD ON THE ALTERITY OF GOD

In response to prevailing perceptions, I contend that Søren Kierkegaard (1813–55) conceives of the wholly otherness of God via his dialectical category of the ‘infinite qualitative difference’ between the human and the divine, initially through the self's consciousness of sin and ultimately through the self's acceptance of the gift of forgiveness. Therefore, I claim that while the common designation of Kierkegaard's God as ‘Wholly Other’ may initially evoke the alterity of sin; it is not ultimately sufficient to describe the divine alterity which Kierkegaard regards as more faithfully manifest in the ‘impossible possibility’ of forgiveness. Through this reading, I finally suggest that the ‘Wholly Other’ is not ultimately representative of God in Kierkegaard's writings and might be more faithfully supplemented by the appellation of the Holy Other.     

汽车司机安全驾驶性向测验的建构

本研究之目的是建构适用于我国的汽车司机安全驾驶性向测验。经各种检验结果表明,无论是能力测验还是个性测验,它们在信度和效度上均达到了要求。因此,为进一步标准化奠定了基础。     

军用能力倾向测验的产生、发展和贡献

军用能力倾向测验是为军事需要服务的能力倾向测验,它有独立的产生和发展过程并在整个能力倾向测验领域起关键作用。在特殊能力倾向的效度研究,能力理论的验证,发现新的能力和测验手段上的创新等方面均有重要贡献。     

TOWARDS THE POSSIBILITY OF IMPASSIBILIST PASTORAL CARE

Not a few scholars reject the notion of divine impassibility. Contemporary theodicists in particular often see impassibility as impotent in the face of evil and suffering. At best, it is assumed that impassibility has no contribution to make to pastoral practice. At worst, it is argued that impassibility has negative repercussions for sufferers and carers. The purpose of this article will be to argue that impassibility has the potential to positively impact pastoral practice. It will be proposed that a constructive ‘impassibilist pastoral care’ arises from a well defined understanding of impassibility and an awareness of the weaknesses of passibility. Consequently, five principles of pastoral care will be identified. Relationality engenders practice which is mutual. Particularity resists the tendency in much care towards ‘normalisation’. Equivalence challenges the passibilist by submitting that the incarnation provides an ontologically equivalent divine suffering which stands in contrast to the so‐called ‘suffering of God’ thesis. Arationality affirms that human reason is limited and therefore prevents the carer from over rationalising suffering. Otherness arises from the belief that God is ontologically distinct and therefore he alone is the source of salvation. In light of these principles, the proposed understanding of ‘impassibilist pastoral care’ is brought into dialogue with the questions sufferers ask and a positive and effective definition of impassibility is submitted. In sum, this article seeks to bring together philosophical and theological defences of impassibility in order to submit a fresh approach to the care of those who suffer.     

THE VAGARIES OF VEGETARIANISM

The following was meant to be a ‘fun paper’, which the author's honesty and natural seriousness of mind prevented from coming off well. Its main theme is that it is not wrong to eat meat provided the animals eaten are painlessly killed or – usually in the case of human animals – already dead. In the course of his remarks the author touches on: the bearing of affluence on vegetarianism; animal rights; child eating; treating animals as ends and with due Kantian respect; the inadequacy of the word ‘duty’; aesthetics and morals; the distinction between private behaviour – say driving on the left hand side of the road – and public duty – say advocating or legislating for driving on the right hand side of the road; our duties to vegetables, snakes, flying ants and Martians; and the desirability of irrationality in matters of duty; stealing and eating as much meat as possible as a way of bringing the meat industry to its knees; the contribution that animals should make to animal welfare, viz. allowing themselves to be eaten. He ends by emphasising the likeness of non‐human animals to human animals. 1