Competency-Based Employment-Counseling Model: Local Office Implementation

This article describes the early stages in the implementation of the competency-based employment-counseling model in a local employment office in Kentucky. Preliminary steps taken at both the state and local levels are discussed. The actual application of the model in the Louisville local office is then presented. The conclusions provide several key factors to successful initial implementation.     

Developmental pathways of behavior problems in the young child: factors associated with continuity and change

The continuity and discontinuity of behavioral problems from age 4 through age 7 until 10 were examined in 120 children. The mothers rated childhood behavior problems at the three age points. Problems were defined as above 80th percentile. Individual transition classification of problematic and non-problematic children showed that 7% had stable behavior problems, 60% stable non-problematic behavior and the rest displayed transitions related to either onset or offset of problems. The mechanisms involved in onset were different from those involved in offset. Children showing onset of problems had fewer friends, participated less often in organized leisure activities and were more passive in class than the well-functioning children. Maternal characteristics such as continued education, current employment and high educational ambitions for the child were associated with having children changing their pathway from risk to an adaptive one.     

Social representations of aggression: Crossing the sex barrier

Controversy over Moscovici's concept of social representations has focused upon the extent to which they can be viewed as enduring cognitive structures characterizing social groups and whether individual members are ‘prisoners’ of their social representations, unable to duplicate the social representations of other social groups. Previous research has established a consistent gender difference in orientation toward aggression with men viewing it as an instrumental act of coercion and women as a temporary loss of self-control. These two social representations, originally recovered from spontaneous conversation, have been measured with a psychometric instrument called Expagg. To examine the mutability of these representations, men and women in the present study were asked to complete the questionnaire either spontaneously or as they believed a member of the opposite sex might respond. Under conditions of same-sex responding the usual significant sex difference appeared. When asked to respond as a member of the opposite sex, men accurately mirrored women's higher expressive total score on the questionnaire but psychometric analysis revealed that there was no similarity in terms of item–total correlations. Women grossly overestimated the degree of men's instrumentality but item–total total correlations revealed a considerable degree of similarity with men's structure. The male representation whether natural or assumed showed higher internal consistency than did the female mode. The results are discussed in terms of differential modes of access to gender-linked representations and the cultural dominance of a masculine and instrumental representation of aggression.