Retraining Displaced Workers: Factors Affecting Success in Training Programs

In this study 21 displaced workers were interviewed regarding factors affecting their participation in training programs funded by the Job Training Partnership Act. Differences between program participants and nonparticipants, differences among program participants, and differences among nonparticipants were identified.     

The Career Exploration Inventory: Expanding Options for the Unemployed

The Career Exploration Inventory, an innovative interest inventory that measures work and leisure interests throughout the life span, can be used by employment counselors to assist their clients in the exploration of the interaction of work and leisure interests.     

Effects of Response Set on the Infrequent Response Index of the Strong Interest Inventory

Associations of two different response sets on the Infrequent Response Index of the Strong Interest Inventory (SII) were examined. In one, participants responded to each item randomly; in the other, participants deliberately misrepresented their responses. The finding of scores higher than those proposed in the SII manual for the Infrequent Response Index suggests an alternative interpretation of this critical index.     

Career Aspirations of Pregnant Teens

This study examined the career aspirations of pregnant teens enrolled in a program designed to minimize their chances of dropping out of high school. The teens completed a demographic data form that included questions on their career aspirations. The data were coded by Holland type using the Dictionary of Holland Occupational Codes. Trends were discussed in light of the future labor market and critical need for career counseling for this at-risk population.     

Hiring Practices for Human Resource Professionals: Implications for Counseling and Curriculum Development

Employers of human resource professionals described their hiring practices. This information is especially useful for counselors and for developing curricula for nonbusiness majors interested in human resource careers.     

Whole words and decoding for short-term learning: comparisons on a "talking-computer" system.

Low-and average-ability readers in first and second grade studied a list of 36 words using a "talking-computer" system. The system highlighted and simultaneously pronounced orthographic units in the words when the children touched the words with a light pen. During two training sessions, the computer presented four groups of 9 words each, one group as whole words, one in syllabic units, one in subsyllabic units, and one as single grapheme-phoneme units. All children learned the least words with single grapheme-phoneme units, having had the greatest difficulty blending the units into words during training. The other presentation units did not differ significantly from each other for most students on post-testing. However, the low first-grade readers learned fewer words segmented and presented by subsyllables than by syllable or word units, but only for multisyllabic words. Monosyllabic words were blended and learned as easily with onset-rime segmentation as with whole word units, for all children.     

Information Load: A Test of an Inverted-U Hypothesis with Hourly and Salaried Employees

We surveyed 714 hourly and 516 salaried employees of a midwestern telephone company to test the effects of information load on work-related outcomes. Using curvilinear regression analyses, we found support for our hypothesis that employees are less satisfied with outcomes as the load of information deviates positively or negatively from some level. We also predicted, and found, that this quadratic function was more prevalent in the hourly group than in the salaried group. Implications, future research directions, and limitations of the present study are discussed.     

Prejudice Against a Progay Man in an Everyday Situation: A Scenario Study1

A scenario study was performed to investigate whether people in the street would be less likely to respond positively to a stranger's request for a small favor if the stranger wore a T-shirt bearing a progay slogan. One hundred and eighteen female and 112 male participants were each presented with six scenarios, all of which asked them to imagine being approached by a person requesting change for a banknote. The dependent variable in the study was the participant's judgment, on a 7-point scale, of how likely he or she would be to help. Five of the scenarios were included as distractors. In the critical scenario, the requester was described as wearing a plain T-shirt or one with either a progay or a control slogan printed on it. The male participants in the progay condition showed a significantly lower level of help than those in either of the control groups. The antigay pattern, however, was not obtained in the responses of the female participants. The results are discussed with reference to other findings in the literature, and their implications for people's responses to progay persons in everyday life are considered.     

The Influence of Applicant Communication Style and Interviewer Characteristics on Hiring Decisions1

This study examined the influence of the gender and communication style of job applicants, as well as the gender and sex-role stereotyping of interviewers, on hiring decisions. Fifty-six personnel officers viewed videotapes of simulated employment interviews, in which male and female candidates used either aggressive, assertive, or nonassertive styles of communication. Personnel officers rated job candidates on likeability, similarity to the officers themselves, and hireability. Interviewers were most likely to employ assertive applicants, and the sex-role stereotypes of interviewers did not influence their perceptions of these candidates. Sex-role beliefs, however, did affect evaluations of aggressive and nonassertive job applicants. Interviewers who were low in sex-role stereotyping were more likely to hire a nonassertive than an aggressive candidate, while interviewers with higher levels of sex-role stereotyping were more likely to hire aggressive candidates. For assertive candidates, judgments by the interviewers of the perceived similarity of the candidate to themselves and their liking for the applicant both influenced their decision to hire the candidate. For aggressive and nonassertive candidates, however, the interviewers' liking toward the candidate mediated the relationship between perceived similarity and hiring decisions.