A Response to Celmer and Winer

According to Celmer and Winer (1990). the presence of an absolute papal ban against women who aspire to the Roman Catholic priesthood creates both a unique opportunity for investigation of vocational theory (Holland, 1985) and a rare sample for the counselor and researcher. While acknowledging our respect for this ambitious and thought-provoking investigation, we found problems with the sample selection procedure, the choice of samples, and the instrument selection that threaten the external validity of the study. As a result of these limitations, the application of this study for the counselor and the researcher was diminished.     

Women in Management: Organizational Socialization and Assessment Practices that Prevent Career Advancement

This paper reviews some of the literature on women in management in the UK, with particular emphasis on the biographical data collected in major studies. In view of the small proportions of women in senior management it seeks to identify the potential barriers that assessment procedures create for women wanting to progress to top positions. As organizations are encouraged to increase the‘fairness’and 'sophistication’of these procedures, they may in fact be reinforcing the very nature of the discriminations they are supposedly attempting to reduce. This paper outlines how this may be happening.     

Psychological frailness and strength in an AIDS-affected community: A study of seropositive gay men and voluntary caregivers

Addressed both the psychological frailness and strength in an AIDS-affected community. The gay community in Sydney, Australia, was represented by men who were seropositive (n = 60) and voluntary caregivers (n = 60). They were compared with two samples of men outside the gay community, who were ill with non-AIDS-related medical conditions (n = 30), and well (n = 30). Their psychological frailness and strength were measured by content analysis scales. Both the seropositive men and the caregivers showed the frailness of anxiety, indirectly expressed anger and helplessness, but also the compensating strength of greater personal competence and good feeling relative to the other men. The men who were seropositive or had other illnesses showed the predicted frailness of anxiety and depression but neither indirectly expressed anger nor helplessness. The seropositive men and caregivers of the gay community differed from each other only in the high levels of depression of the former.     

Gay Asian Australians’ Safer-Sex Behavior and Behavioral Skills: The Predictive Utility of the Theory of Planned Behavior and Cultural Factors1

United States reports highlight that Asian Americans’ increasing HIV-infection rate results primarily from male-to-male sexual contact. Cultural factors, such as strength of identification with the Asian community, have been implicated. The ability of these and the theory of planned behavior (Ajzen, 1985) and information-motivation-behavioral skills model (Fisher & Fisher, 1992) to predict safe sex intentions and behavior were investigated among gay Asian Australians. Consistent with the theory of planned behavior, attitudes, subjective norms, and behavioral skills predicted intentions, while behavioral skills predicted current behavior. Cultural factors were related to components of the model. Notably, strength of identification with the gay community moderated the norm-intention link and was related to behavioral skills. The results suggest it is important to examine the predictors of safe sex behavior for different cultural groups.     

Spatial orientation by mental transformation

Across three experiments, college students read narratives describing two-dimensional horizontal, sagittal, or coronal environments, each with seven objects in surrounding directions (at 45° angles). Then they responded from memory to questions about which objects were in specific directions. The distributions of error rates and response times were compared with distributions predicted by a mental transformation model and two verbal-spatial decoding and retrieval models. The data fit the predictions of a modified mental transformation model (mental transformation plus 180° exception) better than the predictions of either verbal-spatial model. This was true even though the environment was presented narratively rather than perceptually, and it was true for both the vertical planes in addition to the more typical horizontal plane. Received: 8 August 1997 / Accepted: 2 June 1998     

Effects of Alcohol Intoxication on Parenting Behavior in Interactions With Child Confederates Exhibiting Normal or Deviant Behaviors

Experimental analogue methods were used to study how acute alcohol intoxication in parents influences their perceptions of and reactions to child behaviors, as well as their strategies for management of those behaviors. All participating parents had a grade school-aged son, but in half the cases this target child had a diagnosed externalizing disorder, whereas for the remaining half neither the target son nor any other offspring of the parents evidenced any psychopathology. Equal numbers of married fathers, married mothers, and single mothers from each of these groups received either alcoholic or nonalcoholic beverages prior to videotaped interactions with male child confederates who, depending on condition, enacted behaviors characteristic of either normal boys or boys with attention deficit hyperactivity/conduct/oppositional defiant disorders (ADHD/CD/ODD). Results indicated that intoxicated parents rated their ADHD/CD/ODD child partners as less deviant than did sober parents. Alcohol intoxication caused all participant groups to exhibit less attention and productive work and more commands, indulgences, and off-task talk in the interactions. Implications for better understanding of the role of psychosocial factors in the correlation between adult drinking problems and childhood behavior disorders are discussed.     

State Regulations and the ACA Code of Ethics and Standards of Practice: Oil and Water for the Substance Abuse Counselor

State regulations for substance abuse treatment facilities showed low compliance ratings for counselor, supervisor, and assessor qualifications when compared to the ACA Code of Ethics and Standards of Practice (American Counseling Association, 1995). Similarly, few of the 34 participating states required treatment outcome studies or referenced licensed professional counselors. The authors raised concerns for treatment quality and accountability.     

Gender-role socialization and discipline processes in one- and two-parent families

Parental discipline and gender-role socialization are two interrelated normative processes that may be affected by family structure, parent gender, and child gender. To investigate these family processes and how they may differ depending on family composition, three groups of families (approximately 90% Caucasian) with 5-year-old children were studied: 67 two-parent families, 32 single-mother families, and 13 single-father families. In the two-parent families, mothers were focused on in 33 of the families and fathers were focused on in 34 of the families. Overall, gender-role socialization processes were affected by family structure and parent gender: Single-parent families and mothers had less traditional gender-role socialization than two-parent families and fathers. Family discipline processes were also affected by family structure, as single-parent families reported more positive behavior from their children and reported using more problem-solving strategies. Regardless of family structure, parents used different discipline strategies depending on the gender of parent and child. No evidence was found to suggest that gender-role socialization mediated the discipline process. Research for this article was sponsored by grants HD 19739 from the Center for Research for Mothers and Children, NICHD, U.S. PHS and MH 37911 from the Behavioral Sciences Research Branch, Family Processes Division, NIMH, U.S. PHS to the second author. Reporting of this research was partially supported by grant MH 46690, Prevention Research Branch, NIMH, U.S. PHS to Dr. John B. Reid. The authors would like to express their sincere appreciation to several reviewers for comments on previous drafts of this article. Additionally, the authors are grateful to Margaret McKean for her editorial assistance. Actual items for any of the constructs used are available upon request.     

Managerial Work, Job Analysis, and Holland's RIASEC Vocational Environment Dimensions

We examined relations between the environmental dimensions underlying Holland's theory of vocational choice and skill requirements, context characteristics, and task frequency ratings for managerial jobs. The Holland environmental constructs were measured by the recently developedPosition Classification Inventory(PCI). The task, skill requirement, and context variables were measured using traditional job analysis surveys. Ten judges provided estimates of the expected correlations between the job analysis variables and the Holland constructs. The profile of observed correlations was generally consistent with the judges’ expectations based on Holland's theory, providing support for both that framework and the construct validity of the PCI. The one Holland dimension for which the data were least consistent with predictions was “Realistic.” Results provide a detailed picture of the work content, skills, and context variables within managerial work that are likely to be associated with the RIASEC dimensions. Implications for management development are discussed.     

TEACHING CHILDREN TO SPELL: DECREASING CONSONANT CLUSTER ERRORS BY ELIMINATING SELECTIVE STIMULUS CONTROL

Six elementary-aged children were taught to spell words containing initial consonant clusters (CCs). They were trained to select printed words in response to the corresponding spoken words using computerized matching-to-sample procedures. After each training session, they were tested for spelling with a constructed-response transfer test. Based on previous selective stimulus control research, we hypothesized that only the first letter of an initial CC might control spelling when CC spelling errors are made. Thus, a critical-difference matching-to-sample training condition that required the children to respond to both letters of the CC to be correct was compared to a multiple-difference training condition that required the children to respond to only one letter of the pair. Results showed that children made fewer errors during the multiple-difference training condition than during the critical-difference training condition. On the constructed-response transfer tests, however, more overall errors and CC errors were made in the multiple-difference condition than in the critical-difference condition, and the words trained in the multiple-difference condition required more training sessions to reach criterion. All children improved their spelling of novel CC words by the completion of training. If normal classroom or home reading was to be supplemented by computer tasks of the kind used here, some spelling problems could be circumvented without costly intervention by a teacher or a special trainer.