L'Arche: Homes for People Who Are Mentally Retarded

The author describes L'Arche, an international federation of homes for mentally retarded people, and explores the views of Jean Vanier, the organization's founder, on issues of social justice and world peace. The therapeutic relationships formed in L'Arche communities are compared to healing counselor-client relationships, and the role of the counselor as consultant on problems related to mental retardation is discussed.     

SYSTEMATIC BIASES IN CODED SOCIAL INTERACTION DATA

Sequential techniques to analyze social interaction (lag-sequential analysis, Markov chains, semi-Markov models) are newcomers to the methodological arsenal of communication researchers. As with any new methodology, these have many as yet unvoiced presumptions whose violation can affect materially the outcome of their applications. I identify one such presumption—“the perfect measurement presumption”—and demonstrate that violations of it can lead to serious systematic bias in parameter estimates. In addition, I discuss briefly a set of palliatives for this source of systematic bias.     

Donald Campbell's Model of the Creative Process: Creativity as Blind Variation and Selective Retention

This special issue honors Donald Campbell, who died on May 6, 1996. Although Campbell became best known for his methodological contributions, he also published a classic 1960 paper in which he developed a blind-variation and selective-retention model of the creative process. Not only does this Darwinian model accurately describe Campbell's own creative modus operandi, but in addition it may provide the basis for a comprehensive theory of creativity. The articles collected for this special issue are devoted to evaluating Campbell's theoretical proposal from the hindsight of nearly 40 years of research and thinking on the creative process.     

PATTERNS OF LEADERSHIP BEHAVIOR RELATED TO EMPLOYEE GRIEVANCES AND TURNOVER: SOME POST HOC REFLECTIONS

This study investigates some relationships between the leader behavior of industrial supervisors and the behavior of their group members. It represents an extension of earlier studies carried out at the International Harvester Company, while the authors were with the Ohio State University Leadership Studies.