Selecting Unskilled and Semi‐Skilled Blue‐Collar Workers: The criterion‐related validity of the PDI‐employment inventory1

Two concurrent criterion‐related validity studies were conducted with blue‐collar workers employed in Australia. The first sample consisted of 77 unskilled and semi‐skilled manufacturing employees. The second sample consisted of 243 stockpeople who worked in piggeries. A range of work‐related criteria was used, and this range differed across the two studies. The results showed that Employment Inventory–Performance was a reasonable predictor of some aspects of supervisor ratings of work performance but unrelated to other aspects. A similar pattern of findings emerged with self‐ratings of work performance. Employment Inventory–Tenure was weakly related to turnover intentions and actual turnover.     

When does prior knowledge disproportionately benefit older adults’ memory?

Material consistent with knowledge/experience is generally more memorable than material inconsistent with knowledge/experience – an effect that can be more extreme in older adults. Four experiments investigated knowledge effects on memory with young and older adults. Memory for familiar and unfamiliar proverbs (Experiment 1) and for common and uncommon scenes (Experiment 2) showed similar knowledge effects across age groups. Memory for person-consistent and person-neutral actions (Experiment 3) showed a greater benefit of prior knowledge in older adults. For cued recall of related and unrelated word pairs (Experiment 4), older adults benefited more from prior knowledge only when it provided uniquely useful additional information beyond the episodic association itself. The current data and literature suggest that prior knowledge has the age-dissociable mnemonic properties of (1) improving memory for the episodes themselves (age invariant), and (2) providing conceptual information about the tasks/stimuli extrinsically to the actual episodic memory (particularly aiding older adults).     

Screening for eating disorders in primary care: EDE-Q versus SCOFF

OBJECTIVE AND METHODS: The comparative validity of the Eating Disorder Examination Questionnaire (EDE-Q) (22 items) and SCOFF (five items) in screening for cases of the more commonly occurring eating disorders was examined in a primary care sample of young adult women (n=257). Diagnoses were confirmed in a sub-group of interviewed participants (n=147). RESULTS: Twenty-five cases, primarily variants of bulimia nervosa (BN) not meeting formal diagnostic criteria, were identified in the interviewed sample. An EDE-Q global score of >or= 2.80 yielded the optimal trade-off between sensitivity (Se) (0.80) and specificity (Sp) (0.80) (positive predictive value (PPV)=0.44), whereas a score of two or more positive responses on the SCOFF was optimal (Se=0.72, Sp=0.73, PPV=0.35). Validity coefficients for both measures varied as a function of participants' age and body weight, although these effects were more pronounced for the SCOFF. CONCLUSIONS: Both measures performed well in terms of their ability to detect cases and to exclude non-cases of the more commonly occurring eating disorders in a primary care setting. The EDE-Q performed somewhat better than the SCOFF and was more robust to effects on validity of age and weight. These findings need to be weighed against the advantage of the SCOFF in terms of its brevity.     

Matching familiar and unfamiliar faces on identity and expression

Summary Subjects were asked to decide whether or not simultaneously presented photographs of pairs of faces were pictures of the same person or of different people (identity matching), or to decide whether or not the pairs of face showed the same expressions or different expressions (expression matching). Faces of familiar and unfamiliar people were used as stimuli. For identity matching, reaction times to familiar faces were faster than reaction times to unfamiliar faces, but there was no difference between familiar and unfamiliar faces for expression matching. These results support the view derived from neuropsychological and neurophysiological studies that analyses of facial expressions proceed independently from processes involved in establishing the person's identity.This research was supported by the ESRC (Grant C 0023 2075)     

Methodological problems in the use of participant observers

A multiple baseline design across observed students and teachers was used to investigate the relationship between observations by participant observers and changes in the behavior of those observed ("observee" reactivity) and the observers (observer-mediator reactivity). Two teachers recorded consecutively the appropriate student verbalizations of four students and two teachers recorded the inappropriate student verbalizations of four students. Independent observers simultaneously recorded student verbalizations (appropriate and inappropriate) as well as teacher behaviors (positive, negative, and instruction) throughout all phases of the study. The results substantiated the prediction of "observee" reactivity and observer-mediator reactivity in one of four classrooms. The results of the present study suggest that in some instances, observations by participant observers may result in changes in the behavior of those being observed ("observee" reactivity) and/or the observers (observer-mediator reactivity).