Reactivity and unreliability of husbands as participant observers

This study examined the reliability and reactivity of participant observation. Twelve couples engaged in two discussions in a laboratory, one on a conflict topic and one on a consensus topic. For the eight couples in the experimental sequences, a baseline discussion was followed by participant observation in which the husband recorded his wife's use of I while continuing to converse. The four couples in the control sequences conversed without participant observation. Compared to observations made by a trained observer, the husbands were unreliable observers, underestimating their wives' use of I. Participant observation was reactive (P<.01), with more wives decreasing their use of I in the experimental sequences than in the control sequences (p<.094). The topic of discussion did not differentially influence reliability or reactivity.This research was conducted as the first author's independent doctoral research project. We extend gratitude to the Research Council of the University of North Carolina at Greensboro for Grant 0-2-110-218-XXXXX-7548; the Statistical Consulting Center of the University of North Carolina at Greensboro; two anonymous reviewers; and our research assistants, Suzanne Brannon, Ben Hardie, Kathy Lindamood, Amy Mitchem, Regina Pierce, and Elga Wulfert. Portions of this paper were presented at the meeting of the Association for Advancement of Behavior Therapy, Washington, D.C., December 1983.     

Type A behaviour,financial performance and organizational growth in small business firms

Eight hundred randomly selected members of the Smaller Business Association of New England were mailed the Jenkins Activity Survey (JAS) and a biodata questionnaire. A total of 368 chief executive officers completed both instruments, representing a response rate of 46***.0 per cent. Based on the JAS, 82 per cent of the respondents were characterized by the Type A or coronary-prone behaviour pattern. Corporate performance was plotted against Type A and B scores. Firms run by Type As showed a higher return on investment and greater five-year growth in sales revenue than firms run by Type Bs, but this pattern was found only for the Job Involvement subscale.     

Behavioral consequences of song learning: Discrimination of song types by male white-crowned sparrows

The functional significance of learned population differences in male song in the white-crowned sparrow was explored in natural populations using playback tests. Laboratory results have shown that learning of the population-specific song seems to take place in early life and is strongly dependent upon the nature of the auditory experience at that time. However, the varied results of recent studies make it difficult to reach a confident conclusion about the ecological functions of song learning. The present research took advantage of naturally occurring variation in the differences between songs of adjacent populations to determine a function relating degree of difference in song to intensity of territorial singing elicited. Applying a typological evaluation of syllable structure to the four segments of the song allowed a crude quantitative ranking of the differences between local songs and playback stimuli. These results, together with those of other studies, suggest a unimodal aggressive response function of males to songs of other males. A maximum response to songs slightly different from the local song environment suggests that male exclusion based upon acquired song components may contribute to the maintenance of discrete and stable song dialects.     

The validity of Mobley's (1977) model of employee turnover

Unlike earlier tests of an oversimplified version of this model, the validity of W. Mobley's (1977, Journal of Applied Psychology, 62, 237-240) original turnover model was fully investigated. Constructs that were neglected in prior studies were assessed and previously examined constructs were operationalized with more reliable measures. Measures of all constructs in Mobley's model were obtained from a survey of 192 hospital employees. Turnover data were collected a year following survey administration. Following the theoretical causal ordering of Mobley's constructs, each construct was regressed on all causally prior constructs. In general, each construct was accurately predicted by the linear combination of predictors representing its causal determinants. In the majority of instances, the best predictor of a model construct was the construct's immediate causal antecedent. Further, an alternative model was evaluated and compared with Mobley's model using path analysis.     

DETERMINANTS OF R AND D COMPENSATION STRATEGIES IN THE HIGH TECH INDUSTRY

This study indicates that sales volume, stage in the product life cycle, profitability and turnover are all important predictors of the method and magnitude of financial rewards provided by high tech firms to R and D employees. The most favorable situational factors for R and D incentive compensation are a low sales volume high tech company, operating in the growth stage of the product life cycle, with high turnover rates, and capable of linking profitability to incentive rewards such as bonuses.