Do worksite stress management programs attract the employees who need them and are they effective?

Employees who planned to attend a worksite stress management program (volunteers), those who planned not to attend (nonvolunteers), and those who had participated in worksite stress management training were assessed on the variables of work stressors, perceived stress, and organizational spontaneity (extrarole) behavior. Twelve hundred hospital employees were randomly selected from seven VA hospitals that had been offering a stress management program for at least 5 years. Participants received questionnaire packets in the mail and 461 (38%) of the employees responded. The results showed that volunteers reported significantly more perceived stress than the nonvolunteers. However, volunteers did not report greater frequency or intensity of work stressors. Also, respondents who had participated in past stress training reported less perceived stress than volunteers and significantly more organizational spontaneity behavior than respondents who had not participated in past stress training. These findings suggest that employees who plan to attend stress training have the greatest need and that the stress intervention reduces perceived stress levels and, possibly, affects work behavior.     

An object-oriented simulation of a brain system underlying human aggression

Neural structures involved in aggression were incorporated into a model on the basis of neuro-anatomical data. A software program written in Smalltalk, the Brain Structure Simulator (Seguin, 1994) was used to simulate the effects of activity levels of different brain structures. Relationships among brain structures were then tested by changing activity levels of key structures. Results were consistent with research reports on the brain basis of aggression (Albert, Walsh, & Jonik, 1993; Pontius, 1984).     

A program for parsing mouse movements into component submovements

Most current movement control theories include the idea that movement toward a target can be broken into several submovements. The complexity of analyzing a movement into its constituent submovement structure and the additional complexity imposed by the problem of noise in the data and hand tremor seem to be daunting to researchers. This paper discusses a program that can ameliorate both of these problems and parse movements into their constituent submovements. It also contains a graphing feature that is useful as a visual tool for analyzing submovement structure. The programs are easily modifiable, so that researchers can specify their own parsing rules on the basis of different assumptions about movement control and use the parser for data from different experimental tasks.     

The Progression and regression of slave morality in Nietzsche's Genealogy: The moralization of bad conscience and indebtedness

With the advent of slave morality and the belief system it entails, human beings alone begin to advance to a level beyond that of simple, brute, animal nature. While Christianity and its belief system generate a progression, however, allowing human beings to become interesting for the first time, Nietzsche also maintains in the Genealogy that slave morality is a regression, somehow lowering or bringing them down from a possible higher level. In this paper I will argue that this is not a mere inconsistency in Nietzsche's writing, but is instead an important clue to a correct interpretation of the Genealogy.     

Spline smoothing with model-based penalties

Nonparametric regression techniques, which estimate functions directly from noisy data rather than relying on specific parametric models, now play a central role in statistical analysis. We can improve the efficiency and other aspects of a nonparametric curve estimate by using prior knowledge about general features of the curve in the smoothing process. Spline smoothing is extended in this paper to express this prior knowledge in the form of a linear differential operator that annihilates a specified parametric model for the data. Roughness in the fitted function is defined in terms of the integrated square of this operator applied to the fitted function. A fastO(n) algorithm is outlined for this smart smoothing process. Illustrations are provided of where this technique proves useful.     

Opportunities For Learning: Course Sequences and Positional Advantages

Course sequences are strands of courses in particular content areas that span a student's educational career. Courses that are differentiated and sequentially organized, such as mathematics and science course sequences, create opportunities for positional advantages in a school's curricular structure. When students make a nonroutine change of schools – that is, transferring to a school outside of the regular attendance zone – they are at risk of changing their positional advantage. Using data from the National Education Longitudinal Study of 1988–94 (NELS:88–94), we examine the educational outcomes of sequences and explore curricular dislocations within the context of school choice. We find that the strongest predictors of 12th-grade mathematics and science course sequences are a student's course sequences at 10th grade. With regard to outcomes, students in higher mathematics and science sequences show greater achievement gains. Furthermore, students in higher mathematics sequences are less likely to have behavior problems and are more likely to graduate from high school and attend college. Students who make a nonroutine change of schools are more likely to be in lower course sequences than students who do not transfer. Thus, course sequences in mathematics and science are tangible experiences with real consequences for students' lives during and beyond high school and are sensitive to transitions which disrupt the continuity of students' high school careers.     

Asymmetries and errors in perception of depth from disparity suggest a multicomponent model of disparity processing

In three experiments, asymmetries between the processing of crossed and uncrossed disparities were investigated. The target was a luminance-defined circle concentric to a fixation mark, viewed stereoscopically on a computer monitor for 105 msec. Fifteen disparities were presented according to the method of constant stimuli. Observers indicated the apparent direction of target depth relative to fixation. All experiments measured both the accuracy and latency of this response. Experiment 1 showed fewer errors and shorter reaction times for identifying crossed disparities. Experiments 2 and 3 replicated Experiment 1 and also showed that observers may often perceive a target in the direction opposite that prescribed by the disparity information. We propose that the asymmetries and reversals result from differences in computation of sign, not of magnitude. This notion is consistent with a scheme of continuous disparity tuning and accounts for such asymmetries and errors without positing disparity pooling mechanisms.     

Making the Right Connections: Perceptions of Human Resource/Personnel Directors Concerning Electronic Job-Search Methods

To be competitive in today's job market, many entry-level management candidates are looking to electronic technology to help them find employment. Although technology is an essential part of today's business environment, the findings of this study indicate that very few of the human resource/personnel directors (HR/PD) in the top 100 privately owned companies in Georgia are using electronic technology to fill entry-level managerial positions. These HR/PD, however, view positively those applicants who use electronic methods for job searching and predict that these methods will become a common practice within 2 years.     

An Evaluation of a Program to Influence Academic Self-Concept Among African American Male College Students

African American men suffer one of the highest attrition rates of any racial or gender group in college. This study evaluated a retention program designed to increase academic self-concept by engaging participants in a 10-week course that taught career planning, cultural awareness, job interviewing and resume writing skills, and academic responsibility. The results of the analysis suggest that the course had no effect on academic self-concept.     

Current status of the Rorschach Inkblot Method

The current scientific, clinical, and professional status of the Rorschach Inkblot Method (RIM) is reviewed with respect to its psychometric properties, the applied purposes it can be expected to serve, the extent of its use, and the nature of prevailing attitudes toward it. Available evidence indicates that the RIM is a psychometrically sound measuring instrument that provides valid assessments of personality characteristics and can facilitate differential diagnosis and treatment planning and evaluation. The RIM continues as in the past to be widely used by both clinicians and researchers. However, the esteem in which it is held by practitioners, who are generally agreed that clinical psychologists should be competent in Rorschach assessment, is not universally shared by academicians, many of whom presently question the future place of Rorschach training in graduate education.