A System for Tailoring Change Measures to the Individual Family

The focus of this project is the problem of evaluating change in families. Prior work has tended to limit itself to anecdotal or self-report data. By and large, the studies that have evaluated a family intervention by observing family interactions have failed to demonstrate change. A major drawback in such studies has been the assumption that the few interaction variables selected (e.g., amount of silent time) have roughly the same salience and meaning for all the families studied. The measurement system described here was developed to fulfill four methodological requirements: (a) to represent the family as a whole; (b) to be sensitive to change; (c) to contain multiple measures; and (d) to be adaptable to the variation among families. The solution to these requirements, presented here, is a system for tailoring measures to individual families.     

Career Counseling With Handicapped Persons

This article presents a comprehensive overview of the career counseling process for handicapped persons, with emphasis on developmental differences, assessment techniques, occupational information and exploration, and job placement techniques.     

Paramodeling Effects in Counselor Training

This study was based on the hypothesis that modeling techniques utilized in counselor training may foster unintended and often undetected behaviors in counseling trainees. Samples of counselor trainees viewed either a series of expert modeling or coping modeling video-tapes. Specifically, it was hypothesized that counselor trainees who viewed expert models would illustrate concommitant or paramodeling phenomena by exhibiting a decrease in anxiety toward participation in a counseling interview. Similarly, it was predicted that those who viewed the coping models would demonstrate paramodeling phenomena by exhibiting an increase in tolerance of ambiguity. Results confirmed the hypotheses across the first sample, the cross-validation sample, and both samples combined. Implications regarding counselor training are discussed.     

HEALTHY, WEALTHY, OR WISE: PREDICTING ACTUAL ACCEPTANCES OF EARLY RETIREMENT INCENTIVES AT THREE POINTS IN TIME

Using a sample of several thousand faculty members and multiple measures of health, wealth, and productivity, this study examines the predictors of actual acceptance of 3 successive early retirement incentive offers. Consistent with previous research, the results here suggest that poorer health, lower salary, and higher pension benefits were significantly related to early retirement decisions. In addition, the results suggest that faculty members who planned on working part time after retirement and who expected there would be no future incentive programs were more likely to accept early retirement offers, while those with higher productivity and with spouses still in the workforce were less likely to do so. Implications for future research on early retirement and for the design of early retirement programs are discussed as well.