The Effects of a Parent Guidance Intervention on Communication among Adolescents Who Have Experienced the Sudden Death of a Sibling

Existing and new validity data on 3,880 cases from the Bricklin Perceptual Scales and Perception-of-Relationships Test address the assertion that custody data cannot be generated scientifically. Reliability (93 percent stability over 8 months) and validity data (90 percent agreement with multiple independent criteria) are presented, but without a fully explicated chain linking evidence to conclusions, one ends up with unresolvable, typically all-or-none, disputations about the adequacy of one's evidence. This chain includes, among others, the (confusing) role of values in science and how system complexities affect the choice of measurement units as well as measurement relevance. We also consider the value of information to a specific decision-maker. Psychometric indices, the usual source of such arguments, cannot alone address any of these areas.     

Student Perceptions of Salient Indicators of Integration of Faith and Learning (IFL): The Christian Vocation Model

This article presents findings from a qualitative study of 120 undergraduate students from seven schools in the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities. Using in-depth individual and focus group interviews, we explored participants' perceptions of salient indicators of integration of faith and learning (IFL) in the classroom. Findings highlight two main categories of indicators: 1) faculty relationships with God and with students, and 2) faculty competence, including specific IFL curriculum coverage and academically safe classroom settings. All indicators contributed to IFL experiences resonating with most students. We then set forth the Christian vocation model from our analysis to describe the interconnections between the two main categories. Implications, limitations, and suggestions for future research are discussed.     

Early Childhood Discipline: A Review of the Literature

In this literature review concerning early childhood discipline we particularly highlight American children's discipline with respect to historical perspectives, generational theories, gender issues, parental styles, methods of discipline, and corporal punishment. We also address corporal punishment's history, the debate among experts, beliefs and practices among parents, the controversy in public schools, religious influences, and a conflation of the issues.     

Training,Transforming, and Transitioning: A Blueprint for the Christian University

With respect to students, Christian universities have at least three interrelated missions or aims: training, transformation, and transition. That is, their role is to educate or train students to be excellent in their field, to facilitate the transformation of students’ worldview and character, and to transition students into their vocational calling. This article briefly examines the dimensions of training and transitioning, and then looks more deeply at student transformation as it may be the principal distinctive of a Christian school. The article proposes six conditions necessary to enable the transformation process.     

IS IT WORTH IT TO WIN THE TALENT WAR? EVALUATING THE UTILITY OF PERFORMANCE‐BASED PAY

Although the business press suggests that "winning the talent war," the attraction and retention of key talent, is increasingly pivotal to organization success, executives often report that their organizations do not fare well on this dimension. We demonstrate how, through integrating turnover and compensation research, the Boudreau and Berger (1985) staffing utility framework can be used by I-O psychologists and other HR professionals to address this issue. Employing a step-by-step process that combines organization-specific information about pay and performance with research on the pay-turnover linkage, we estimate the effects of incentive pay on employee separation patterns at various performance levels. We then use the utility framework to evaluate the financial consequences of incentive pay as an employee retention vehicle. The demonstration illustrates the limitations of standard accounting and behavioral cost-based approaches and the importance of considering both the costs and benefits associated with pay-for-performance plans. Our results suggest that traditional accounting or behavioral cost-based approaches, used alone, would have supported rejecting a potentially lucrative pay-for-performance investment. In addition, our approach should enable HR professionals to use research findings and their own data to estimate the retention patterns and subsequent financial consequences of their existing, and potential, company-specific performance-based pay policies.     

TWO SPHERES, TWENTY SPHERES, AND THE IDENTITY OF INDISCERNIBLES

Abstract:  I argue that the standard counterexamples to the identity of indiscernibles fail because they involve a commitment to a certain kind of primitive or brute identity that has certain very unpalatable consequences involving the possibility of objects of the same kind completely overlapping and sharing all the same proper parts. The only way to avoid these consequences is to reject brute identity and thus to accept the identity of indiscernibles. I also show how the rejection of the identity of indiscernibles derives some of its support from its affinity with a Kripkean account of trans-world identity and theories of direct reference.