Work involvement among college-educated women: A methodological extension

This paper has two objectives: (1) to develop a more complex measure of work involvement than that typically used, and (2) to correlate this measure with selected lifestyle/family and work variables. The data were drawn primarily from a 1981 survey of 110 female graduates of a large Midwestern university who completed their undergraduate degrees in 1967. Respondents were categorized as high, moderate, or low on a work involvement index based on four variables: work continuity, work status, current or most recent occupation, and educational achievement. Findings in the area of lifestyle/family suggest that high work-involved women are more likely to be single and to marry later when they do marry, less likely to have children, and less likely to perceive conflicts between marriage/relationships and/or children and a career. Findings in the area of work suggest that high work-involved women are significantly more likely to work in male-dominated occupations and to earn salaries of $20,000 or more. High work-involved women are also significantly more likely to be supervisors, to report that most of the people in their work group or branch are below them in rank/position, to be working with all or predominantly men, to have men above them in rank, and to have experienced sex discrimination on the job. In the area of job satisfaction, the differences by work involvement are not as pronounced. High work-involved women are significantly more likely to be employed and not job hunting — one measure of job satisfaction. However, they are no more or less likely than moderate or low work-involved women to perceive their job as a compromise with what they expected or to report overall job satisfaction. Some directions for future research are discussed.Environmental Strategies, Inc.Preparation of this report was supported, in part, by the Providence College Fund to Aid Faculty Research. Thanks are due to the staff of The Henry A. Murray Research Center of Radcliffe College for access to the 1970 questionnaires, to Sharon R. Jenkins for data processing consultation, and to the anonymous reviewers for their helpful suggestions.     

Coping with victimization: The impact of rape on female survivors,male significant others,and parents

This paper reports on an unusual study of survivors of rape and the effects on the victim, her significant male other person, and her parents. All survivors were victims of the same rapist and were interviewed from 21 months to ten years after the event. The study indicates that the long-term effects of rape may be more significant than previous researchers and practitioners thought was the case. Recommendations are given for more effective help for survivors and those close to them.This study was funded by the Ohio Department of Mental Health, Office of Program Evaluation and Research, Columbus, Ohio, 1985.     

Retroactive interference in the retention of prose: A reconsideration and new evidence

The sensitivity of naturalistic prose material to retroactive interference (RI) was investigated in three experiments, with due consideration given to the conditions known to produce RI in non-prose material. In experiment 1, unrelated, related, and nearly identical (parapharase) prose passage conditions yielded a pattern of results very similar to those obtained with non-prose material, with only the related condition associated with significant amounts of RI. Based upon these results and a few simple assumptions, a classificatory scheme was developed within which predictions were made regarding RI in related prose material. Several such predictions were tested and confirmed in Experiments 2 and 3. It was concluded that the many previous failures to detect RI in the retention of prose may be attributed to factors other than any inherent insensitivity of the material itself, and that RI may be just as predictable in prose as it is non-prose material.     

Learning from lectures: The effect of varying the detail in lecture handouts on note-taking and recall

Previous research on the effect of lecture handouts on student learning indicates that students who are given skeletal handouts usually perform better in course examinations than students who take all their own notes. The present study investigates whether the amount of detail in the handout is a critical factor in this. A randomized groups experiment was conducted in the context of a course on dental surgery. Four lecture handout conditions (headings and full text; headings and key points; headings only; no supplementary materials) were compared on tests 2 days and 2 weeks after the lecture. The significant differences between conditions were: ‘headings only’ better than ‘headings and key points’ on the first test; ‘headings only’ better than ‘no supplementary materials’ on the second test; and ‘headings and full text’ better than ‘no supplementary materials’ on the second test. These results indicate that the amount of detail is a critical factor in handout effectiveness.     

Edward Kellog Strong,Jr.: First Author of the Strong Interest Inventory

Ralph Bedell, professor emeritus of educational and counseling psychology, was interviewed to gain insight into the influence of the National Defense Counseling and Guidance Institutes on the history of counseling and to learn about the man who was responsible for the NDEA program.     

UCLA's Career Counseling Center: A Dialogue About a Unique Service

In this interview, two counseling psychologists describe aspects of a relatively unique career counseling service that has been validated by 40 years of success in the marketplace. Composed of 3 intensive individual interviews and 15 to 25 hours of educational and psychological testing, the service assists clients in identifying and beginning pursuit of suitable educational and occupational goals. The counselors describe how they organize and sift through test results to formulate recommendations for a client's unique career circumstances, why they accept responsibility for developing and presenting concrete recommendations, and what the changes in their clients' concerns suggest about the evolution of work in the United States. Their specificity and professionalism will help counselors understand the craft of career counseling.     

Self-help and child abuse: Victims,victimizers, and the development of self-control

Study of child abusers reveals that many victimizers were once victims and that the behaviors underlying the perspectives of victims and victimizers are related. Three groups of abusing parents using directed self-help were studied at Parents Anonymous by participant observation methodology for two and-a-half years. Four of the 52 participating parents read and commented on a draft of the research. Their violence appeared to be an attempt to gain a sense of control or to deal with the frustration of not feeling in control. Suggestions are made for developing social services that enhance individuals' sense of control.Paper presented at the Groves Conference on Marriage and the Family, London, England, July, 1986.     

Evaluation of a mutual help network for the elderly residents of planned housing

We set up a mutual help network among the elderly residents of a government-subsidized apartment building and evaluated its impact on their social ties, social support satisfaction, and depression. A quasi-experimental design was used, with the residents of a similar building located in the same neighborhood serving as the control group. A total of 230 individual services were exchanged, and 28 group activities were organized during the study period. There was almost no difference between experimental and control groups with respect to the change over the study period in the number of social ties with other residents of the building. Support satisfaction decreased in both groups, but the decrease was larger in the experimental group. The control group had a slight decrease in the frequency of their depressive symptoms, whereas the experimental group had a moderate increase. More research is needed on the ability of social support interventions to produce beneficial effects on mental health among individuals who are not experiencing a particular life stress.     

A longitudinal study of the psychosocial impact of stroke on primary support persons

We investigated longitudinally the effects of a stroke on the social support systems and well-being of the patient's primary support person, both acutely and as the condition stabilized. Individuals who had suffered a first stroke and a primary support person participated in two waves of data collection, carried out in 6-month intervals beginning 7 weeks after the stroke. Our data show that the prevalence of depressive symptoms is from 2 1/2 to 3 1/2 times higher than rates found among representative samples of middle-aged and elderly populations. Mean level of depression did not change over time, although level of optimism declined significantly. Multiple regression analyses showed that levels of depression and perceived burden in support persons are highly related to aspects of the stroke such as its severity, and that demographic variables such as age and income play a relatively minor role in attenuating these relations in the acute adjustment phase. However, from 7 to 9 months after the stroke, well-established demographic variables such as health, income, and age were significant predictors of depression. Individuals who were older and who had good health and higher incomes were least depressed.     

A content analysis of the conversational behavior of accepted and rejected children

The present study was designed to assess whether the conversational behavior of children separated into accepted, rejected, and mixed-status dyads differed along the dimensions of listening to, paying attention to, and indicating interest in their dyadic partner. Conversations of 40 third-grade dyads were analyzed as they occurred in a 2- min waiting period and a 4- min conversation period. Seventeen categories of verbal behaviors that indexed these dimensions were used as content codes. Multivariate analyses of variance performed on the observational data yielded significant main effects for status, sex, and experimental condition. Results are interpreted in terms of previous social skills research, and suggestions for future research are offered.