Of Families and Other Cultures: The Shifting Paradigm of Family Therapy

This essay proposes that family therapy is currently undergoing a paradigm shift as a result of the ascendance of an epistemological focus absent in the foundational works that gave rise to the field's dominant clinical approaches. While systemic metaphors for the family are based on mechanistic, biological, and linguistic models primarily concerned with how the world is (ontology), postmodernism's social constructionist leanings give primacy to meaning, interpretation, and the inter-subjectivity of knowledge (epistemology). Thus, the metaphor of the family as a system is gradually being subsumed by a metaphor that construes families as interpretive communities, or storying cultures. It is suggested that this largely implicit transformation be made explicit in order to explore more fully the clinical implications of the new epistemology.     

Debriefing the Family: Is Research an Intervention?

The primary focus of this article is to examine the general assumption that families are left largely unchanged by their participation in research, and to question whether family research can have unintended positive or negative effects on participants. The present article reports feedback from families participating in the Nonshared Environment and Adolescent Development project, a longitudinal study of family process and adolescent development. Families differed in their perceptions about whether the research experience was positive, detrimental, or inconsequential. This feedback underscores the researcher's ethical responsibility to detect and remove deleterious effects of participation. Suggestions are made for providing adequate debriefing to subjects and for using debriefing as a research tool to study the interaction between researcher and families.     

Group Work With Catholic Priests Who Have Exited the Clerical World

Currently, a growing number of Catholic priests choose to leave the priesthood. These former priests usually feel guilt ridden, isolated, and confused. They also experience great anxiety about fitting into a secular society and about being a “displaced person.” A group approach designed to help meet the needs of these individuals is described.     

A New Model of Job Training for Economic Rebirth

Many current welfare recipients lack the adequate training and education needed to become self-sufficient. Historically, government administered Job training programs have not been successful in efficiently moving people from government assistance to permanent employment, suggesting the need for a new model of job training. This article presents a resiliency model of job training that emphasizes applicant recruitment, assessment and development. Use of a resiliency model is intended to increase program success rates by using psychological assessment and professional development goals of the individual.     

WHERE ALL THE CHILDREN ARE ABOVE AVERAGE: THE PERFORMANCE APPRAISAL PURPOSE EFFECT

More than 40 years ago, Taylor and Wherry (1951) hypothesized that performance appraisal ratings obtained for administrative purposes, such as pay raises or promotions, would be more lenient than ratings obtained for research, feedback, or employee development purposes. However, research on appraisal purpose has yielded inconsistent results, with roughly half of such studies supporting this hypothesis and the other half refuting it. To account for those differences, a meta-analysis of performance appraisal purpose research was conducted with 22 studies and a total sample size of 57,775. Our results support Taylor and Wherry's hypothesis as performance evaluations obtained for administrative purposes were, on average, one-third of a standard deviation larger than those obtained for research or employee development purposes. In addition, moderator analyses indicated larger differences between ratings obtained for administrative and research purposes when performance evaluations were made in field settings, by practicing managers, and for real world subordinates. Implications for researchers and practitioners are discussed.     

A MULTIPLE LEVEL INVESTIGATION OF PERSONNEL RATINGS

A multiple levels of analysis approach was used to assess whether job performance and skill importance ratings were based on individual differences, incumbent/supervisor dyadic agreement, group membership, or functional department. Data were collected as part of a managerial training needs analysis conducted at a large gold and silver mining organization. Participants included 140 incumbent managers and their immediate supervisors, who were embedded in 140 incumbent/supervisor dyads, 39 managerial work groups, and eight departments of the organization. Results from Within and Between Analysis (WABA) suggested that (a) incumbent ratings of both performance and skill importance were characterized by individual differences, (b) supervisory ratings of both performance and skill importance were primarily characterized by between-groups (supervisors) differences, (c) matched incumbent-supervisory performance ratings displayed individual differences, and (d) matched incumbent-supervisory importance ratings displayed dyadic agreement (i.e., between-dyads differences). Practical implications of these results for interpreting these and other types of personnel-related data are discussed.     

Tomorrow's Resources are in Today's classroom

The National Consortium for Humanizing Education conducted training and research in 42 states and seven foreign countries. Its procedures were effective in increasing both emotional and academic indexes.     

Sensory Extenders Versus Meters and Predictors: Clarifying Strategies for the Use of Objective Tests in Family Therapy

Cromwell and Peterson's goal of introducing quantitative testing into family assessment and therapy is laudable; the system they propose--the Multisystem-Multimethod (MS-MM) approach is not. MS-MM is confusing, deceptive, and misleading for clinicians who want to use tests to sharpen their diagnostic assessments and predictions. What is needed is specific theory linking various family processes and individual behaviors, as well as equally specific information about the reliability and validity of the tests. Likewise, the MS-MM approach is completely inadequate for clinicians seeking to use tests to enlarge their clinical imaginations. What is needed is a more down-to-earth examination of the influence of testing on the family therapy system.