Assessing pupil concerns about transition to secondary school

Background. The primary–secondary transition can negatively affect pupils' emotional and psychological adjustment. However, methods for assessing concerns regarding secondary school are limited. A reliable and valid measure of transition‐related concerns would be useful both in evaluating and shaping the content and delivery of universal and targeted transition support programmes. Aims. To assess the validity of a quantitative self‐report measure of school concerns as an assessment tool during the primary–secondary school transition. Sample. A UK sample of 147 Year 6 primary school pupils and 263 Year 7 secondary school pupils. Method. Self‐reports of school concerns and school liking as well as self‐reported and peer assessments on a range of psychological adjustment measures were collected. Results. The School Concerns Questionnaire (SCQ) showed good reliability at primary and secondary school. Secondary concerns reduced significantly post‐transition. Three factors emerged from an exploratory factor analysis of the SCQ and the pattern of results was replicated for post‐transition concerns. Pupils with higher school concerns at secondary school reported reduced liking of school and reduced trust and respect for teachers. The SCQ was associated with generalized anxiety and female gender both pre‐and post‐transition. Peer problems and depression were associated with pre‐ and post‐transition concerns, respectively. Conclusions. The SCQ is a simple to complete, reliable, and valid tool for assessing primary–secondary transition concerns. It could serve a valuable role in the evaluation and development of universal and targeted school‐based initiatives that aim to promote positive secondary transition.     

Some ethical concerns about counselling research

The whole approach of counselling researchers to ethics may be assumed to have been improving in recent years, especially with the BACP research guidelines (Bond, 2004 Bond, T. 2004. Ethical guidelines for researching counselling and psychotherapy. Counselling and Psychotherapy Research, 4(2): 4–9. [Taylor & Francis Online] [Google Scholar]), with its focus on trustworthiness and on the researcher engaging with ethical issues. In this paper we share our concerns about the background to ethical decision making for researchers today followed by our specific concerns for counselling researchers namely: why do counselling research at all?; research that hurts participants; the impact of research on the therapeutic process; restrictive notions around what is data; the politics of funding and informed consent revisited.     

Forging a feminine identity: Women in four professional schools

The American Journal of Psychoanalysis -     

Bogus concerns about the false prototype enhancement effect

Two experiments addressed the mechanism responsible for the false prototype effect, the phenomenon in which a prototype gradient can be obtained in the absence of learning. Previous demonstrations of this effect have occurred solely in a single-category paradigm in which transfer patterns are assigned or not to the learning category. We tested the hypothesis that any extraneous variable potentially responsible for this effect, such as compactness varying with pattern distortion (Zaki & Nosofsky, 2004), may be functional in the single-category paradigm but not when multiple categories are available at the time of transfer. In the present study, subjects received a bogus or a real category learning phase, followed by a transfer test that required assignment into 1 or 3 prototype categories. The results showed that a minimal prototype gradient was obtained in the bogus conditions, with performance approaching chance levels when classification into 3 categories was required. In contrast, a substantial prototype gradient effect was found following learning. We conclude that the prototype gradient typically obtained following multiple-category learning is primarily driven by real learning and that the false prototype effect is itself an artifact of the single-category paradigm.     

Defense attorneys' concerns about the competence of adolescent defendants

Research indicates that a sizable proportion of adolescent defendants have difficulty understanding and participating in legal proceedings against them, and may be incompetent to stand trial. To examine attorneys' experience in defending adolescents with competence‐related difficulties, 214 juvenile attorneys were surveyed. Findings indicated that attorneys have doubts about the competence of approximately 10% of adolescent defendants, and that they find these cases particularly challenging to defend. Most attorneys appear to recognize that developmental factors may contribute to adolescents' competence‐related difficulties, and believe that the law should accept developmental immaturity as a basis for incompetence findings. In approximately half of the cases in which attorneys had doubts about competence, attorneys did not request a competence evaluation but instead made other efforts to address competence issues, such as by teaching adolescents about legal proceedings and further involving their parents. The implications of these findings are discussed. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.