Validity and utility of computer-based test interpretation

Computers have been important to applied psychology since their introduction, and the application of computerized methods has expanded in recent decades. The application of computerized methods has broadened in both scope and depth. This article explores the most recent uses of computer-based assessment methods and examines their validity. The comparability between computer-administered tests and their pencil-and-paper counterparts is discussed. Basic decision making in psychiatric screening, personality assessment, neuropsychology, and personnel psychology is also investigated. Studies on the accuracy of computerized narrative reports in personality assessment and psychiatric screening are then summarized. Research thus far appears to indicate that computer-generated reports should be viewed as valuable adjuncts to, rather than substitutes for, clinical judgment. Additional studies are needed to support broadened computer-based test usage.     

Retrospective assessment of childhood sexual and physical abuse: a comparison of scaled and behaviorally specific approaches

This study compared retrospective reports of childhood sexual and physical abuse as assessed by two measures: the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire (CTQ), which uses a Likert-type scaling approach, and the Computer Assisted Maltreatment Inventory (CAMI), which employs a behaviorally specific means of assessment. Participants included 1,195 undergraduate students recruited from three geographically diverse universities. Agreement was high across the two measures in the classification of victim status (92% and 80% for sexual and physical abuse, respectively). However, the CTQ classified more participants as sexually abused than did the CAMI, whereas the opposite trend was found for physical abuse. For child physical abuse, many participants reporting abusive acts on the CAMI scored below the cut-point for physical abuse on the CTQ. Classification differences for both types of abuse were largely unrelated to demographic factors, socially desirable responding, or self-reported withholding of information. The implications of these results are discussed in light of future research using retrospective methods of assessing childhood abuse.     

A model for school psychology practice: addressing the needs of students with emotional and behavioral challenges through the use of an in-school support room and reality therapy

This article describes a treatment approach for students with emotional and behavioral challenges. The approach involves conducting reality therapy in an in-school support room. Data from this pilot study indicate that the treatment assists in developing more effective choices and in turn promotes cognitive and behavioral change in most students, while reducing the number of disciplinary actions for these students.     

Challenges of organizational learning: perpetuation of discrimination against employees with disabilities

This article examines why organizations struggle with learning how to prevent discrimination against their employees with disabilities. To explore this issue, qualitative archival data were collected and analyzed from 53 Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) lawsuits filed against 44 organizations. Theoretical analysis of the qualitative data suggests that several organizationally based learning theories explain the difficulty organizations have with creating a disability-friendly work environment. These barriers to learning are embedded in complex defense mechanisms and discriminatory organizational routines. Furthermore, organizations have difficulties engaging in higher-order and vicarious learning. We conclude the article with examples of successful learning practices as they relate to barriers identified in the qualitative analysis.     

Speed of lexical and nonlexical processing in French: The case of the regularity effect

Words with irregular spelling-sound correspondences are read aloud more slowly than words with regular spelling-sound correspondences. This so-calledregularity effect is modulated by word frequency, with low-frequency words showing larger costs than do high-frequency words. Because French has more regular spelling-to-sound correspondences than English, we expected a different pattern in French than in English. This was indeed the case, since regularity effects were obtained for both high-and low-frequency words in French. We further showed that a French implementation of the dual-route cascaded model could not account for this pattern. In additional simulations, we investigated whether this failure was due to lexical processes being too fast (leaving little time for the nonlexical route to interfere) or nonlexical processes being too slow. The results showed that only speeding up the nonlexical route allowed the model to capture the data. This suggests that the delayed phonology assumption that characterizes nonlexical processing in the original model needs to be abandoned in a more regular orthography.     

Children with lesbian parents: a community study

Existing research on children with lesbian parents is limited by reliance on volunteer or convenience samples. The present study examined the quality of parent-child relationships and the socioemotional and gender development of a community sample of 7-year-old children with lesbian parents. Families were recruited through the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children, a geographic population study of 14,000 mothers and their children. Thirty-nine lesbian-mother families, 74 two-parent heterosexual families, and 60 families headed by single heterosexual mothers were compared on standardized interview and questionnaire measures administered to mothers, co-mothers/fathers, children, and teachers. Findings are in line with those of earlier investigations showing positive mother-child relationships and well-adjusted children.     

Positive Affect: A Neglected Group Treatment Outcome Measure in Assessing Efficacy of Psychosocial Group Interventions in Individuals with Heart Failure

Positive affect has been neglected in evaluation of group treatment efficacy. This pilot study for individuals with heart failure illustrates the contribution of positive affect to change processes. Assessment of positive affect pre- and post-group intervention can yield a better understanding of individuals' adjustment to heart failure, and provide additional information for selection of specific treatments for each individual. In an era characterized by standardized measures of outcome, inclusion of positive affect provides additional opportunity to document contributions in improving health related quality of life (psychosocial and physical functioning) of clients with heart failure.     

A position-sensitive Stroop effect: further evidence for a left-to-right component in print-to-speech conversion

In the classical Stroop effect, response times for naming the color in which a word is printed are affected by the presence of semantic, phonological, or orthographic relationships between the stimulus word and the response word. We show that color naming responses are faster when the printed word shares a phoneme with the color name to be produced than when it does not, in conditions where there is no semantic relationship between the printed word and the color name. This result is compatible with a variety of computational models of reading. However, we also found that these effects are much larger when it is the first phoneme that the stimulus and response share than when it is the last. Our data are incompatible with computational models of reading in which the computation of phonology from print is purely parallel. The dual route cascaded model computational model of reading, which has a lexical route that operates in parallel and a nonlexical route that operates serially letter by letter, successfully simulates this position-sensitive Stroop effect. The model also successfully simulates the “onset effect” in masked priming (Forster & Davis, 1991) and the interaction between the regularity effect and the position in a word of a grapheme-phoneme irregularity (Rastle & Coltheart, 1999b)-effects which, we argue, arise for the same reason as the position-sensitive Stroop effect we report.     

Individual Differences in the Effectiveness of Sexual Harassment Awareness Training1

Little research has investigated the effectiveness of sexual harassment awareness training videos on potential harassers' knowledge, behavior, or attitudes. A laboratory study was conducted that assessed the effects of a sexual harassment awareness training video on several training outcomes: sexual harassment knowledge, touching behavior, and attitudes associated with the likelihood of harassing others. Participants' propensity to harass was measured prior to their participation in the study. Results indicated that video-based training increased knowledge acquisition and reduced the inappropriate behavior of men who had a high propensity to harass. However, the training did not influence participants' long-term attitudes associated with the propensity to harass others. The research and practical implications of the study results are discussed.     

A Prototype Matching Approach to Understanding the Role of Applicant Gender and Age in the Evaluation of Job Applicants1

This research uses a prototype matching approach to understand how job applicant evaluations are made and the role that applicant gender and age play in these evaluations. It is hypothesized that raters represent information about jobs and jobholders in person-in-job prototypes. Raters evaluate applicants by matching information about applicants to the person-in-job prototype associated with the job for which the applicant is applying. Person-in-job prototypes are comprised of features that are more (i.e., central) or less (i.e., peripheral) strongly associated with the prototype. Three laboratory studies examined several hypotheses derived from a prototype matching approach. Results indicated that applicants who matched on more central features were evaluated more favorably than applicants who matched on fewer central features of person-in-job prototypes. In addition, applicants who matched on age were evaluated more favorably than applicants who did not match on age when age was a central but not a peripheral feature of a person-in-job prototype. However, applicants who matched on gender were not evaluated differently from applicants who did not match on gender when gender was a central or a peripheral feature of a person-in-job prototype. Finally, there was some evidence that raters used applicant gender in a complex manner when evaluating applicants. Implications for theory and research on bias in selection are discussed.