Whole-school guidance?

The present status of guidance as a whole-school feature of the British secondary school is explored. The ingredients and issues in the development of such an approach are clarified. The status and terminology of 'cross-curricular' initiatives are examined. The need for re-asserting the rationales for guidance within an overarching whole-school view of pupils' personal-social development is suggested. Finally, a new window of opportunity for schools is identified in recent developments regarding the National Curriculum in England.     

The Individual Psychology of Alfred Adler: Toward an Adlerian vocational theory

Within the past couple of decades, the Individual Psychology of Alfred Adler has become increasingly popular among consultants, educators, and psychotherapists alike. The approach also has gained the attention of several vocational researchers, and some vocational investigations on Adler's theory have appeared. Unfortunately, such empirical studies have been all too few, seemingly because no articulated framework exists of an Adlerian vocational theory. In this article, an Adlerian vocational theory is proposed. Specific hypotheses and corollaries, each derived from the substantive base of Individual Psychology, are presented and explained.     

Some thoughts about a scientist-practitioner approach to assessment training in counselling psychology

Training effective scientist-practitioners has long been an issue of concern in counselling psychology. In a recent paper, Friedlander (1992) developed a useful prototype to foster science-practice integration in a counselling seminar. Drawing on Friedlander's prototype, the question of “how to foster science-practice integration in assessment” is considered. Some assessment reading lists and class exercises designed to illustrate such integration are proposed. These teaching materials are presented: (a) in hopes that they might prove useful for some assessment instruction purposes; and (6) in hopes that they might stimulate further thinking about how to best foster science-practice integration in counselling psychology assessment courses.     

Interobserver Agreement in Behavioral Research: Importance and Calculation

Behavioral researchers have developed a sophisticated methodology to evaluate behavioral change which is dependent upon accurate measurement of behavior. Direct observation of behavior has traditionally been the mainstay of behavioral measurement. Consequently, researchers must attend to the psychometric properties, such as interobserver agreement, of observational measures to ensure reliable and valid measurement. Of the many indices of interobserver agreement, percentage of agreement is the most popular. Its use persists despite repeated admonitions and empirical evidence indicating that it is not the most psychometrically sound statistic to determine interobserver agreement due to its inability to take chance into account. Cohen's (1960) kappa has long been proposed as the more psychometrically sound statistic for assessing interobserver agreement. Kappa is described and computational methods are presented.     

When good pain turns bad

Classically, pain is viewed as being mediated solely by neurons. However, recent research has shown that activated glial cells (astrocytes and microglia) within the spinal cord amplify pain. These nonneuronal cells play a major role in the creation and maintenance of pathological pain. Glia become activated by immune challenges (viral or bacterial infection) and by substances released by neurons within the pain pathway. Activated glia amplify pain by releasing proinflammatory cytokines. Taken together, research findings suggest a novel approach to human pain control that targets glia. In addition, it is likely that such glial-neuronal interactions are not unique to pain, but rather reflect a general rule of sensory processing.     

Ruminative self-focus, negative life events, and negative affect

Ruminative thinking is believed to exacerbate the psychological distress that follows stressful life events. An experience-sampling study was conducted in which participants recorded negative life events, ruminative self-focus, and negative affect eight times daily over one week. Occasions when participants reported a negative event were marked by higher levels of negative affect. Additionally, negative events were prospectively associated with higher levels of negative affect at the next sampling occasion, and this relationship was partially mediated by momentary ruminative self-focus. Depressive symptoms were associated with more frequent negative events, but not with increased reactivity to negative events. Trait rumination was associated with reports of more severe negative events and increased reactivity to negative events. These results suggest that the extent to which a person engages in ruminative self-focus after everyday stressors is an important determinant of the degree of distress experienced after such events. Further, dispositional measures of rumination predict mood reactivity to everyday stressors in a non-clinical sample.     

Intraorganizational communication, perceived organizational support, and gender

Gender differences in the relationship between perceived organizational support and employee perceptions of their communication with top management, immediate supervisors, and coworkers are investigated in a university and in two engineering firms. Respondents were predominantly Caucasian Americans. Gender moderated the relationship between perceived organizational support and two communication variables (coworker communication relationship and coworker information quality). Males reporting a positive coworker communication relationship also indicated higher perceived organizational support. This pattern did not emerge for females. Males who perceived receiving higher quality information from coworkers reported higher perceived organizational support. While a similar pattern emerged for females, the relationship was weaker.     

Distinct modes of ruminative self-focus: impact of abstract versus concrete rumination on problem solving in depression

One account for the negative effects of rumination on social problem solving (SPS) is the symptom-focus hypothesis, which proposes that focus on symptoms amplifies the vicious cycle between depressed mood and negative cognition. The authors tested a contrasting account, the reduced concreteness hypothesis, which postulates that the abstract thinking typical of rumination impairs SPS. In 40 depressed patients and 40 never-depressed controls, SPS was assessed before and after versions of symptom-focused rumination known to differentially induce abstract versus concrete self-focus (E. Watkins & J. D. Teasdale, 2001). As predicted by reduced concreteness theory, relative to abstract self-focus, concrete self-focus improved SPS in depressed patients, suggesting that the particular mode of symptom-focus, rather than symptom-focus per se, determines the effects of rumination on problem solving.