EVALUATING DEVELOPMENTAL ASSESSMENT CENTERS AS INTERVENTIONS

This study addresses the question of whether developmental assessment centers are effective interventions. Career outcomes of assessment center participants ( n = 151) were evaluated with respect to center ratings, developmental activity, and acceptance of feedback. Although comparison between a subgroup of assessees ( n = 113) and a naturally occurring control group of non-assessees ( n = 167) showed no differences in terms of career advancement, findings within the assessee sample did show that developmental activity related to advancement. Findings also showed that assessors' ratings of career motivation, rather than ratings of knowledge or skill (KS) dimensions, predicted both developmental activity and career advancement.     

Assertiveness Training and Christian Values

Assertiveness training, like any psychotherapeutic procedure, requires an understanding and tolerance of various values of clients. Studies exploring the relationship between religious values and assertiveness are reviewed. Ideological obstacles in assertion training with religious clients are considered, and appropriate therapeutic strategies suggested. The importance of presenting a rationale for treatment and of understanding the client's value system is emphasized.     

The Use of Counselor Profanity in Counseling

In this article the author reviews some of the literature on counselor profanity and provides guidelines for its use in counseling.     

Career Counseling: Those Powerful Beginning Counselor Leads

This article partially fills an expressed void in our professional literature: articles illustrating effective career counseling techniques.     

Client-Centered Reflections on Career Decision Making

This article offers some reflections about the career decision-making process that are congruent with client-centered philosophy.     

RELATIONAL DISTANCE IN MANAGING CONFLICT

This study assessed the extent to which providing a problem-solving structure to conflicting dyads might impact members' use of language to mark their relational distance. It was hypothesized that conflicting subjects instructed to use a set of decision rules to resolve the conflict would use less immediate and more formal relational code choices than conflicting subjects free to resolve the conflict in any manner they chose. This hypothesis was confirmed for the immediacy, but not the formality variable. The discussion section suggested that because decision rules may encourage conflicting dyads to use less “liking” language to resolve their dispute, such rules may serve to discourage participants from creating more integrative solutions to conflicts.