Career guidance in Wales: retrospect and prospect

Deregulation of the LEA Careers Service followed by the establishment of the National Assembly for Wales in 1999 led, through consultation, to the establishment of a bi-lingual all-age career guidance service under the banner of Careers Wales. The article traces the history of career guidance in Wales from 1974, showing how it has taken a very different path to England, gaining a positive outcome from an independent review of Careers Wales in 2004 and an accolade from the OECD. Current strengths, especially the innovative use of technology, are explored, and challenges for the future are investigated, including the contributions of other guidance providers. Priority is currently being given to the development of common pan-Wales standards. The need for a stronger research culture is recognised. Most crucial of all, in the authors' opinion, is the maintenance of client entitlement in the face of financial restrictions.     

What is the mechanism by which suicide attempts predispose to later suicide attempts? A mathematical model

A state dependence model of serial behavior suggests that each occurrence increases the subsequent likelihood of that behavior being repeated. A heterogeneity model, by contrast, suggests that the likelihood of a behavior occurring is predetermined, and uninfluenced by intervening occurrences. We have applied the random-effects probit model of Gibbons and Bock (1987) to examine the fit of the state dependence and heterogeneity models to longitudinal data on suicide attempts by 928 patients with affective disorder. Heterogeneity but not state dependence was required to model these data. The findings suggest that when considering patients with moderate to severe major affective disorder, the clinician should not interpret the absence of any recent suicide attempts to mean that the patient is at relatively low risk for attempting suicide in the future. An implication of the heterogeneity model is that suicide attempts made many years ago may have equal value to recent attempts when estimating an individual's "predisposition" to nonlethal attempts in the future.     

Providing help and desired relationship type as determinants of changes in moods and self-evaluations

Observed in 2 initial studies was converging evidence that helping improves the helpers' moods and self-evaluations. In these studies Ss induced to help showed improved moods and self-evaluations relative to Ss not given an opportunity to help. A 3rd study examined the moderating effects of desired relationship type on reactions to having helped. In this study Ss were led to desire either a communal or an exchange relationship with another. They then helped the other or were not allowed to help. Among Ss led to desire a communal relationship, but not among those led to desire an exchange relationship, helping was associated with greater improvements in moods than not helping. Helping tended to improve self-evaluations regardless of desired relationship type. However, this effect reached statistical significance only among subjects led to desire a communal relationship.     

General and specific self-esteem in late adolescent students: race x gender x SES effects

This study assessed the effects of gender, race, and social class on the general and area-specific self-esteem of high school students. One hundred and ninety-five high school students served as subjects in a 2 (gender: male, female) X 2 (race: black, white) X 3 (social class: low, middle and high) factorial design. The Rosenberg General Self-Esteem, the Piers-Harris Children's Self-Concept, and the Brookover Self-Concept of Ability and School Achievement scales were the measures of either general or specific self-esteem. Females, whites, and lower social class adolescents were consistently lower in their self-esteem scores than were males, blacks, and upper social class teenagers, respectively. White females were found to be lower in general and happiness self-esteem than all other gender by race subgroups. High SES white students were lower on the happiness and behavior self-esteem measures than black students and white middle-class students. Black males and white females were less confident in their school ability than were black females and white males.     

Individual differences in the experience of depressive and anxious, intrusive thoughts

Cognitive—clinical theorists such as Beck have implicated various personality traits as vulnerability factors in the experience of negative, distressing cognitions. A cluster analysis, performed on the basis of Ss' responses to a questionnaire specially constructed to assess anxious and depressive thoughts for features such as frequency, sadness, worry, controllability and unacceptability, demonstrated individual differences in the experience of negative cognitions. These differences were associated with varying levels of trait anxiety, dysphoria and obsessionality. Further analysis revealed that trait anxiety and neuroticism were more strongly associated with depressive rather than anxious cognitions. Obsessional complaints evidenced minimal association with anxious thoughts, though a moderate correlation was obtained between the former and depressive self-statements. It is suggested that personality factors are influential in the experience of negative cognitions in a highly specific manner.     

Causal modeling with the TETRAD program

Drawing substantive conclusions from linear causal models that perform acceptably on statistical tests is unreasonable if it is not known how alternatives fare on these same tests. We describe a computer program, TETRAD, that helps to search rapidly for plausible alternatives to a given causal structure. The program is based on principles from statistics, graph theory, philosophy of science, and artificial intelligence. We describe these principles, discuss how TETRAD employs them, and argue that these principles make TETRAD an effective tool. Finally, we illustrate TETRAD's effectiveness by applying it to a multiple indicator model of Political and Industrial development. A pilot version of the TETRAD program is described in this paper. The current version is described in our forthcoming Discovering Causal Structure: Artificial Intelligence for Statistical Modeling.     

Clinical tests of memory in dementia, depression, and healthy aging

In Study 1, carefully screened elderly adults with primary degenerative dementia or major depression were compared to healthy aged control subjects on three tests of learning and memory: the Benton Visual Retention Test, Inglis Paired-Associate Learning Test, and the Fuld Object-Memory Evaluation (OME). The sharpest distinction in performance among the groups was observed on the OME, and discriminant equations based on this test correctly classified a high percentage (greater than or equal to 90%) of participants. Study 2 applied the classification rules derived in the first investigation to an unselected series of geropsychiatry inpatients referred for neuropsychological evaluation. There was agreement between memory test classification and general categories of clinical discharge diagnosis (organic vs. functional) for 21 of 25 patients, and with status at follow-up approximately 18 months later. Predictive value computations suggested that the OME is more accurate in confirming true dementia than in detecting dementia syndromes associated with functional disorders.