Impacting Awareness of Child Abuse through a Spiritually Based Performing Arts Project

Using indigenous religious folklore images, a folk opera explored issues of child abuse, sexual assault and violence through a psychologically fictionalized character of Mary Magdalene. Befriended by an understanding Mary, Mary Magdalene is healed of her childhood ‘wounds through a religious conversion after almost refusing to encounter Jesus. Six hundred secondary students attended three daytime performances and 486 returned a Likert‐scaled questionnaire. The results indicated that most students perceived abuse as a personally relevant social problem, with this felt relevance increasing with age. Significant trends supported initial expectations that the play may help increase community and personal awareness of child abuse and sexual assault and that the play may also help increase a personal and community interest and effort toward helping others. Perplexing differences in school responses suggest that the schools in which prior discussion occurred may have led to students gaining more social insight and benefit from the play, although some of these same schools also tended to reject the personal relevance of the play. The latter may indicate community risk factors contributing to denial. More Hispanics responded positively to the sense of benefit, which may reflect the fact that there is a Hispanic Catholic majority in the community that sponsored the play itself. Overall, the findings suggest that performing arts can help increase awareness of child abuse as well as personal and community interest in helping and that this benefit increases with teacher discussion and age. In spite of procedural deprivations, the authors felt it was a relatively rare and useful effort to collect some data, hopefully to inspire more social scientists with more resources to consider collaborating with socially and spiritually meaningful fine arts productions in order to document scientifically the impact of the arts on human attitudes and behaviour. The reader's tolerance for the obvious limitations of investigation are requested and appreciated. A discussion of psychospiritual models of creativity and healing concludes the paper.     

Career planning inventories: “do-it-yourself” won't do

This article explores the practical difficulties encountered in using self-administering, self-scoring, and self-interpreting career guidance instruments with students who have white-collar aspirations and blue-collar histories. After dramatizing and summarizing the problems, the author describes a model for successful use of one such inventory—as a text rather than a test—with career exploration groups.     

SELECTION INTERVIEWING IN THE LIFE INSURANCE INDUSTRY: AN UPDATE OF RESEARCH AND PRACTICE

Over the past decade, the Life Insurance Marketing and Research Association has been researching and implementing the use of structured selection interviews in the agent selection process. The practical problems encountered during this period are reviewed, and studies of the most recent interview guide are presented. These studies are based on interview evaluations made by 270 managers in interview training sessions, as well as field managers'evaluations of 163 applicants in actual agent selection situations. The results indicate that it is possible for managers to agree on their evaluation ratings of an applicant, that there is a stable factorial structure for the ratings, and that the ratings are related to the selection decision although not all items carry the same weight. The implications of these results for the use of structured selection interviews and for further research are discussed.     

THE EFFECTS OF REALISTIC PREVIEWS: A STUDY AND DISCUSSION OF THE LITERATURE

The effects of realistic job previews (RJPs) were studied with a sample of 842 candidates for telephone service representative. Two types of preview, a film and job visit, were used. Results showed no significant differences between RJP candidates and control candidates with respect to job acceptance, met expectations, job commitment and turnover. Because the findings were at variance with the conclusions of previous RJP research the data from previous studies were reexamined. Based on pooled data from eleven studies the average effect of RJPs on turnover rate was estimated as six percentage points overall. Neither the type of media used nor the length of time turnover is studied appears to interact with RJP effectiveness. RJPs appear to be more effective with more complex jobs, however. Explanations of RJP effects on turnover have not been consistently supported. Though data are limited, self-selection, met expectations and coping ability do not appear to be impacted by RJPs. There is some evidence that RJPs result in more positive job related attitudes, but the explanation for this is not clear. Difficulties in interpreting job preview research are noted, including insufficient statistical power, differences in organizational roles and the lack of a clear operational definition of realism.     

Increasing Client Employability Through Skill Development

This article presents a three-part model for counseling in an employment setting. Three stages of the job cycle are identified: job preparation, search, and survival. The specific skills relevant to each stage represent potential content for individual and group employment counseling, but do not necessarily apply to all clients in all situations. The skills when learned have broad applicability to nonjob aspects of clients' lives, contributing to an overall improvement in personal effectiveness.     

A META-ANALYSIS OF TEAMWORK PROCESSES: TESTS OF A MULTIDIMENSIONAL MODEL AND RELATIONSHIPS WITH TEAM EFFECTIVENESS CRITERIA

Drawing from Marks, Mathieu, and Zaccaro (2001) , we proposed that narrowly focused teamwork processes load onto 3 higher-order teamwork process dimensions, which in turn load onto a general teamwork process factor. Results of model testing using meta-analyses of relationships among narrow teamwork processes provided support for the structure of this multidimensional theory of teamwork process. Meta-analytic results also indicated that teamwork processes have positive relationships with team performance and member satisfaction, and that the relationships are similar across the teamwork dimensions and levels of process specificity. Supplemental analyses revealed that the 3 intermediate-level teamwork processes are positively and strongly related to cohesion and potency. Results of moderator analyses suggested that relationships among teamwork processes and team performance are somewhat dependent on task interdependence and team size.     

SUSANNA AND THE PRE‐CHRISTIAN BOOK OF DANIEL: STRUCTURE AND MEANING1

The structure of the pre‐Christian book of Daniel as newly edited in Palestine in the first century B.C. is coherent, often symmetrical, and meaningful and was the version used by Jesus and the early Christians. Origen's and Jerome's reordering of the fourteen‐chapter book in conformity with the extant Hebrew, however, vitiated that structure. Susanna's account opened the pre‐Christian Palestinian version. That account inaugurates the themes of wisdom and judgment and provides the restoration of right order within the community in exile, a restoration essential for what transpires thereafter. Her experience is the first of four holy ordeals placed symmetrically in the first half of the book and framing the book as a whole. Significantly, the two chapters of Daniel most quoted in the Gospels are the ones that open the two halves of the book: Susanna, and the first vision of Daniel. Those two chapters are linked thematically and by diction, including the pair of unique phrases ‘[one grown] ancient of evil days' and ‘Ancient of Days’. Susanna exemplifies the experiences of the saints – suffering and then vindicated – and also, for the writers of the synoptic Gospels – the experiences of Jesus in his passion.