Counselling in higher education: Some basic issues

A survey was undertaken in May/June 1972 into conditions of service and training among members of the Association for Student. Counselling. The replies revealed considerable diversity and confusion among employers and practitioners alike over such issues as the range of duties expected, qualifications acquired and required, the need for specific training, and salaries     

Some ideas for beginners on using a microcomputer in an introductory psychology class

This tutorial workshop presented several microcomputer applications for a large introductory psychology class with limited equipment. Applications demonstrated were word processing, gradebook management, and demonstrations.     

The new qualification in careers guidance in higher education: A collaborative partnership

The raison d'être for the new Certificate and Diploma in Careers Guidance in Higher Education is outlined. The different perspectives of the partners in this enterprise–the Department of Community Studies at the University of Reading and the Association of Graduate Careers Advisory Services (AGCAS)–are discussed. The initial difficulties and successes are explored and a suggested strategy is offered for other such collaborative ventures.     

Some old and new directions in Rorschach testing

The perennial dispute between clinicians and researchers as to the validity of the Rorschach is discussed. It is suggested both groups are correct in that the Rorschach provides both poor psychometric data as seen by the researcher and rich idiographic data as seen by the clinician. The freedom of the Rorschach response process is viewed as largely responsible for both these situations. Some possible new directions for Rorschach usage and research are discussed which may improve on the quality of the idiographic information provided by the Rorschach test.     

Predicting juvenile recidivism: new method, old problems

This prediction study compared three statistical procedures for accuracy using two assessment methods. The criterion is return to a juvenile prison after the first release, and the models tested are logit analysis, predictive attribute analysis, and a Burgess procedure. No significant differences are found between statistics in prediction.     

Some new problems in biomedical regulation

The purpose of this paper is to present rather than resolve some new ethical problems which are likely to become the subject of public discussion in the near future. Some problems likely to be the subjects of extensive debate are: the foetal patient, 'home abortifacients' and abortifacient vaccines, the withdrawal of life-sustaining treatment, experimentation on 'spare' human embryos, the legalization of heroin abuse and the use of anencephalics and the persistently comatose as organ donors.     

Social class and cross-border higher education: Mainland chinese students in Hong Kong and Macau

In China’s deepening economic reform, higher education plays a crucial role in social stratification and mobility. External higher education is both a symbol of cultural capital and a means of fulfilling social mobility. This article examines the relationship between students’ socioeconomic backgrounds and the opportunities derived from cross-border higher education, focusing on Mainland Chinese students in Hong Kong and Macau. It shows that students with scholarships come from a range of social backgrounds, but that fee-paying students are only from relatively prosperous families. Higher education in Hong Kong and Macau promotes mobility for some, but preserves social stratification for others. Alors que la réforme économique s’ intensifie en Chine, les études supérieures jouent un rôle crucial dans la stratification et la mobilité sociales. L’séducation supérieure obtenue à l’étranger constitue un symbole de capital culturel ainsi qu’un moyen d’acquérir la mobilité sociale. Cet article étudie, chez un groupe d’étudiants de la Chine continentale à Hong Kong et à Macau, le rapport entre leur milieu socioéconomique et les occasions qui découlent d’une éducation supérieure internationale. Les résultats indiquent que les étudiants ayant reça des bourses proviennent de divers milieux sociaux, mais que ceux qui ne sont pas boursiers viennent exclusivement de families relativement aisées. À Hong Kong et à Macau, l’éducation supérieure facilite la mobilité pour certains; pour d’autres, elle maintient la stratification sociale.     

Careers education in higher education: Principles and practice

It is argued that careers education represents a distinctive new approach in careers guidance within higher education. A detailed analysis is presented of American and British experiments to date, dividing them into three groups: unit courses leading to credit, courses not leading to credit, and intensive experiences. Attention is also paid to the need to integrate formal group work of these kinds with other formal and informal learning experiences. Finally, an attempt is made to identify some crucial dilemmas and issues which need to be addressed if careers education is to be structured into the British higher education system.     

A new method for analyzing aesthetic preferences: Some theoretical considerations

The aesthetic preferences of a group of persons are obtained from their orders of sets of pictures and patterns according to “liking.” The same pictures are ordered independently by a team of experts, according to certain artistic criteria such as naturalism, composition, color, rhythm, etc. The orders of preference and orders according to the criteria are compared by correlation and matrices of correlation formed from (1) correlations between the persons' orders of preference; (2) correlations between the orders of preference and orders according to artistic criteria; and (3) correlations between the criterion orders. These matrices are symbolised byR _p ,R ₀, andR _c , respectively, and combined to form a single matrix

$$\left[ \begin{gathered} R_p R_o \hfill \\ R'_o R_c \hfill \\ \end{gathered} \right]$$     

Psychological testing on the Internet: new problems, old issues

The Internet has significantly changed the way people conduct business, communicate, and live. In this article, the authors' focus is on how the Internet influences the practice of psychology as it relates to testing and assessment. The report includes 5 broad sections: background and context, new problems yet old issues, issues for special populations, ethical and professional issues, and recommendations for the future. Special attention is paid to implications for people with disabling conditions and culturally and linguistically diverse persons. The authors conclude that ethical responsibilities of psychologists and current psychometric standards, particularly those regarding test reliability and validity, apply even though the way in which the tests are developed and used may be quite different.     

The nature of equity-restoration: Some approval-seeking considerations

Subjects performed a proofreading task and evaluated its difficulty both beforehand and afterwards. They were overpaid or equitably paid by an experimenter who was or was not directly responsible for the level of pay they received, and who they believed would or would not see their post-test ratings. All subjects knew the experimenter would grade their task performance. Consistent with equity theory, overpaid subjects rated the task as having been more difficult than they had expected and did higher quality work than did equitably paid subjects. However, subjects who thought the experimenter would see their ratings (Aware condition) rated it as more difficult and performed more poorly on it than those who thought she would not see them (Unaware condition). Reported task difficulty increased among overpaid subjects under aware conditions, remained stable among overpaid subjects under unaware conditions, and decreased for equitably paid subjects. These findings suggested that what appears to be “equity-restoration” may be a self-presentation strategy designed to win the experimenter's approval, and that task ratings rather than performance will be used for this purpose when they can be communicated to the experimenter. The experimenter's responsibility for the subject's pay had no effect in the present study.     

The new multidimensional and user-driven higher education ranking concept of the European Union

Higher education rankings constitute a important but controversial topic due to the methodologies applied in existing rankings and to the use being done of these interpreting their results for purposes which they were not designed for. At present there is no international ranking can responds to the needs of all users and that is methodologically sound by considering the various missions of higher education institutions, mainly due to a narrow focus on research giving less importance to other missions in which higher education institutions can excel beyond research such as teaching quality, knowledge transfer, international orientation, regional engagement etc. The European Commission is currently involved in the implementation of a new higher education ranking methodology, characterised by taking into account a diversity of missions and the diversity of existing higher education institutions. The final aim is to create a tool allowing users to choose the performance indicators of their interest and providing them with a personalised ranking according to their interests. This paper describes the motivation for designing such a tool, the principles of the methodology proposed, as well as the steps foreseen to have it ready for end users by 2014.     

Mentoring: Some ethical considerations

To counter confusion about the term ‘mentor’, and address concerns about the scarcity of mentoring, I argue for an “honorific” definition, according to which a mentor is virtuous like a saint or hero. Given the unbounded commitment of mentors, mentoring relationships must be voluntary. In contrast, the role of advisor can be specified, mandated, and monitored. I argue that departments and research groups have a moral responsibility to devise a system of roles and structures to meet graduate students’ and postdoctoral fellows’ needs for information and advice. An earlier version of this paper was presented at a conference sponsored by the National Science Foundation on Mentoring and Research Values: Students as Vital Human Resources, Chicago, March 1995.     

On the representation of multiple languages in the brain: old problems and new directions

This paper has attempted to show that when the relevant literature is critically scrutinized there is very little evidence for the idea that the right hemisphere participates in multiple languages in any way significantly different from the case of a single language. We have seen that most of the clinical data support the simple notion that the left hemisphere controls the first and subsequent languages to the same degree. The experimental data are full of contradictions, but many of the claims are invalid due to various methodological and analytical problems explained previously. It is suggested that future research concentrate on finer-grained questions than simply whether a language is left lateralized or not. These questions should make connections with other known neurological and neuropsychological facts. Of primary interest is obtaining converging evidence on the hypothesis of differential cerebral territories within the left hemisphere of bilinguals for different languages. In conclusion, we would be wise to consider the bilingual as a very rich potential source for testing various hypotheses about linguistic and neurolinguistic organization. But we should not lose the opportunity to test both more general and more specific hypotheses to which the multilingual gives us access. If treated with care the multilingual will tell us much, even though he may speak in many tongues.     

The treatment of sexual dysfunction: Some theoretical considerations

Journal of Contemporary Psychotherapy -