Preferences for Job Attributes Associated with Work and Family: A Longitudinal Study of Career Outcomes

We examined the relationship between family responsibilities, job attribute preferences, and career-related outcomes (salary, management level, job satisfaction) in a longitudinal study of 171 women and men students in the same MBA program. Findings indicated that preferences for high salary and good advancement opportunities assessed when students entered the MBA program predicted satisfaction with their salary and advancement outcomes 3 years later. Preferences did not predict actual salary or management level outcomes, however. Together, these findings suggested that individuals may adjust their feelings of satisfaction to reduce dissonance created by their inability to attain higher salaries or a higher management rank. Perhaps because these individuals were in the early stage of their management careers, we found no significant associations between family responsibilities and career-related outcomes. An earlier version of this paper was presented as part of the symposium, “You can't have all of it all of the time: Moderators of the relationship between family and career,” at the Academy of Management in New Orleans, LA, August 2004.     

Preferences for involvement in medical decision making: comparing British and German views

Despite beneficial outcomes of patients' involvement in medical decision processes, it has been claimed that patients are generally not interested in medical decision making (MDM). Whereas current research focuses on actual MDM, this research explored the impact of nationality and perceptual processes of MDM. Preferences for involvement in decision making were examined in a sample of 204 German and 143 British university students. Hierarchical multiple regressions were employed to explore the link between socio-demographic information, individuals' perceived relationship with their GP, Health Locus of Control - Powerful Others, perceptions regarding the frequency and sufficiency of information provision and involvement in MDM, and individuals' preferred level of involvement and information. A significant amount of the variance in individuals preferences for involvement could be explained (Adjusted R2 = .59, p < .001). Independent t-test analyses showed that British and German perceptions of care differed significantly on a variety of different measures. Separate analyses for the German and British group highlighted cross-national differences in care and preferences for involvement. The study suggests that preferences to become involved might depend more on perceptual processes than actual involvement in decision making, and that communication and national health policy could play an important role.     

Preferences for Life-Prolonging Medical Treatments and Deference to the Will of God

We defined and measured a dimension of religiosity frequently invoked in end-of-life (EOL) research—deference to God’s Will (GW)—and examined its relationship to preferences for life-prolonging treatments. In a 35-min telephone interview, 304 older men and women (60 +) were administered the 5-item GW scale, sociodemographic questions, three attitude items regarding length of life, and measures of two health indices, depression, and life-prolonging treatment preferences. The GW scale demonstrated internal consistency (Cronbach’s alpha = .94) and predictive and discriminant validity. Higher scores indicative of greater deference to GW were associated with stronger life-prolonging treatment preferences in poor-prognosis scenarios. Implications for the role of religiosity in medical decision-making are discussed.     

Couple and Family Treatments: Study Quality and Level of Evidence

This paper examines the application of the guidelines for evidence‐based treatments in family therapy developed by Sexton and collaborators to a set of treatment models. These guidelines classify the models using criteria that take into account the distinctive features of couple and family treatments. A two‐step approach was taken: (1) The quality of each of the studies supporting the treatment models was assessed according to a list of ad hoc core criteria; (2) the level of evidence of each treatment model was determined using the guidelines. To reflect the stages of empirical validation present in the literature, nine models were selected: three models each with high, moderate, and low levels of empirical validation, determined by the number of randomized clinical trials (RCTs). The quality ratings highlighted the strengths and limitations of each of the studies that provided evidence backing the treatment models. The classification by level of evidence indicated that four of the models were level III, “evidence‐based” treatments; one was a level II, “evidence‐informed treatment with promising preliminary evidence‐based results”; and four were level I, “evidence‐informed” treatments. Using the guidelines helped identify treatments that are solid in terms of not only the number of RCTs but also the quality of the evidence supporting the efficacy of a given treatment. From a research perspective, this analysis highlighted areas to be addressed before some models can move up to a higher level of evidence. From a clinical perspective, the guidelines can help identify the models whose studies have produced clinically relevant results.     

Limitations to the deficit attenuation hypothesis: Aging and decision making

The deficit attenuation hypothesis is the proposal that age related declines in basic cognitive functions often result in compensatory changes in decision making strategies. However, the patterns of cognitive changes across the adult life span are complex: Many cognitive abilities change across the adult life span while others do not. Some of the cognitive changes will be detrimental to decision making, others will have no impact and still others may actually improve decision making. We illustrate the complexity of the impact of cognition on aging and decision making with examples from working and long-term memory and use these to suggest boundary conditions for the deficit attenuation hypothesis.     

On the application of J.M. Keynes's approach to decision making

It is shown that J. M. Keynes was the originator of what is called a weighted monetary value (WMV) approach to decision making under uncertainty and risk as opposed to either the expected monetary value (EMV) or subjective expected utility (SEU) approaches.     

Military Family Advocacy in the U.S. Army: Program Service Outcomes and Family Participation

Violence in military families remains a vexing problem. Since the advent of the Global War on Terror, there is inconsistent evidence that the prevalence of family violence is increasing, particularly during and after military deployments. However, child neglect appears to increase significantly during military deployments. The military has developed family advocacy programs designed to keep families safe and intervene to reduce the deleterious effects of exposure to family violence. This is one of the first studies to examine the quality with which a family advocacy program is implemented and the degree to which families engage with the program. To conduct this study, the case files of 226 families who came in contact with the Army Family Advocacy Program (FAP) and whose cases were closed in 2013 were reviewed and coded across several implementation and service outcomes. These included involvement of qualified staff, whether or not appropriate victim and offender assessments were completed, degree of inter-agency communication, and appropriateness of referrals, among others. Soldier and family member participation in FAP and other Army-sponsored programs designed to reduce violence was also assessed. Generally speaking, the Army Family Advocacy Program was implemented with high quality, established processes and procedures for handling cases were largely followed, and FAP staff responded rapidly and thoroughly to reported abuse. However, family engagement with Army services and supports was low. Developing robust approaches to engaging families in family programming must be a high priority going forward.     

'Fairness and reasonableness of the child's decision:' a proposed legal standard for children's participation in medical decision making.

Using as illustration the case of Nikolas E., a six-year-old child with HIV/AIDS, this article considers the competing rights of children, parents, and state in cases involving pediatric medical disputes. The article outlines arguments in favor of and against children's participation in medical decisions and describes legal standards currently used in resolving pediatric medical disputes. The article then proposes adoption of a new legal standard described as the 'fairness and reasonableness of the child's decision,' and articulates advantages and disadvantages of such an approach, as well as the factors that should be considered in implementing the standard. Finally, the article argues for a methodology for including children's wishes in pediatric medical decision making that is based upon Monahan and Walker's model for including social science evidence in legal contexts and evaluates alternative strategies for including children meaningfully in the process of making medical decisions that affect them.     

Multimodal Treatments for Childhood Attention-deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder: Interpreting Outcomes in the Context of Study Designs

The goal of this article was to outline issues critical to evaluating the literature on incremental benefit of multiple effective treatments used together, vs. a single effective treatment, for childhood ADHD. These issues include: (1) sequencing and dosage of treatments being combined and compared; (2) difficulty drawing valid conclusions about individual components of treatment when treatment packages are employed; (3) differing results emerging from measurement tools that purportedly measure the same domain; and (4) the resultant difficulty in reaching a summary conclusion when multiple outcome measures yielding conflicting results are used. The implications of these issues for the design and conduct of future studies are discussed, and recommendations are made for future research.     

Minority dissent and team innovation: the importance of participation in decision making.

This study integrates research on minority dissent and individual creativity, as well as team diversity and the quality of group decision making, with research on team participation in decision making. From these lines of research, it was proposed that minority dissent would predict innovation in teams but only when teams have high levels of participation in decision making. This hypothesis was tested in 2 studies, 1 involving a homogeneous sample of self-managed teams and 1 involving a heterogeneous sample of cross-functional teams. Study 1 suggested that a newly developed scale to measure minority dissent has discriminant validity. Both Study 1 and Study 2 showed more innovations under high rather than low levels of minority dissent but only when there was a high degree of participation in team decision making. It is concluded that minority dissent stimulates creativity and divergent thought, which, through participation, manifest as innovation.     

Sensitivity analysis with interdependent criteria for multicriteria decision making: The case of soil pollution treatment

This paper is focused on interdependences between criteria in multicriteria decision analyses. Such interdependences are usually ignored in sensitivity analyses. After a discussion on the nature of interdependences, methods are presented to deal with interdependences in the context of Monte Carlo experiments. These methods are applied in the context of soil pollution treatment alternatives. It is shown that ignoring interdependences may have a distorting effect on the results of sensitivity analysis on rankings of alternatives.     

Characterization of children's decision making: sensitivity to punishment frequency, not task complexity.

On a gambling task that models real-life decision making, children between ages 7 and 12 perform like patients with bilateral lesions of the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VMPFC), opting for choices that yield high immediate gains in spite of higher future losses (Crone & Van der Molen, 2004). The current study set out to characterize developmental changes in decision making by varying task complexity and punishment frequency. Three age groups (7-9 years, 10-12 years, 13-15 years) performed two versions of a computerized variant of the original Iowa gambling task. Task complexity was manipulated by varying the number of choices participants could make. Punishment frequency was manipulated by varying the frequency of delayed punishment. Results showed a developmental increase in the sensitivity to future consequences, which was present only when the punishment was presented infrequently. These results could not be explained by differential sensitivity to task complexity, hypersensitivity to reward, or failure to switch response set after receiving punishment. There was a general pattern of boys outperforming girls by making more advantageous choices over the course of the task. In conclusion, 7-12-year-old children--like VMPFC patients--appear myopic about the future except when the potential for future punishment is high.     

Family Demands and Job Attribute Preferences: A 4-Year Longitudinal Study of Women and Men

A longitudinal data set was used to examine the relationships between family demands and job attribute preferences. Study participants were 207 students who responded to surveys upon entering the MBA program of a large university and to follow-up surveys 1, 2, and 3 years later. Hierarchical regression analyses indicated that preferences for short, flexible work hours at earlier time periods positively predicted hours of household labor at later times, which supports a rational action model. Significant interaction effects indicated that the relationship between the importance of work hours and household labor was stronger for women than for men, which indicates that women were more likely than men to develop plans for combining work and family. Higher levels of household labor were associated with increased preferences for short, flexible work hours, and a comfortable work environment, which supports an accommodation model, but MBA students performing more household labor did not show a reduction in the desire for high salaries, good benefits, and intrinsically rewarding work.     

Generating and evaluating options for decision making: the impact of sequentially presented evidence

We examined how decision makers generate and evaluate hypotheses when data are presented sequentially. In the first 2 experiments, participants learned the relationship between data and possible causes of the data in a virtual environment. Data were then presented iteratively, and participants either generated hypotheses they thought caused the data or rated the probability of possible causes of the data. In a 3rd experiment, participants generated hypotheses and made probability judgments on the basis of previously stored general knowledge. Findings suggest that both the hypotheses one generates and the judged probability of those hypotheses are heavily influenced by the most recent evidence observed and by the diagnosticity of the evidence. Specifically, participants generated a narrow set of possible explanations when the presented evidence was diagnostic compared with when it was nondiagnostic, suggesting that nondiagnostic evidence entices participants to cast a wider net when generating hypotheses.