The classification of violence risk

The Classification of Violence Risk (COVR) is an interactive software program designed to estimate the risk that a person hospitalized for mental disorder will be violent to others. The software leads the evaluator through a chart review and a brief interview with the patient. At the end of this interview, the software generates a report that contains a statistically valid estimate of the patient's violence risk-ranging from a 1% to a 76% likelihood of violence-including the confidence interval for that estimate, and a list of the risk factors that the program took into account to produce the estimate. In this article, the development of the COVR software is described and several issues that arise in its administration are discussed.     

Native Americans and alcohol: past, present, and future

Native Americans have higher rates of alcohol use, frequency of use, and increased rates of fetal alcohol syndrome, compared with other ethnic groups (J. Hisnanick, 1992; P. A. May, 1996; J. M. Wallace et al., 2003). High prevalence rates of alcohol misuse among Native Americans must be understood in light of their unique history, which has resulted in trauma and exposure to many risk factors for problem alcohol use. Many risk factors have been identified in the general population; however, only some of these risk factors have been examined among Native American populations. The unique history and world view of Native Americans mean that, often, risk factors operate differently from the way they do in other populations. The authors discuss interventions and promising treatments.     

Antecedents and Consequences of Perceived Barriers to Obtaining Mentoring: A Longitudinal Investigation

Mentoring is prototypically intended to advance the personal and professional growth of new employees at work. Although meta‐analyses have found that receiving mentoring can result in beneficial outcomes for employees' career success, employees may perceive barriers to obtaining a mentor. The present research examined antecedents and consequences to perceived barriers to mentoring in business and administrative jobs in a field study over 2 years. Socioeconomic origin, positive affectivity, organizational development culture, and previous mentoring experience predicted perceived barriers to mentoring after 2 years. New employees' perceived barriers to mentoring at Time 1 predicted changes in mentoring received and income after 2 years. Implications of this study, including a proposed mentoring training program, and directions for future research are discussed.     

Mourning Religion: A Response

Mourning Religion is a brilliant collection of essays responding both to Freud’s essay “Mourning and Melancholia” and Peter Homans’ assertion that the academic study of religion represents a creative expression of mourning the loss of religion in secular (western) society. This essay poses questions concerning the role of theology as a mode of analysis; Ricoeur’s concept of “second naiveté” in relation to disillusionment and religion; Celia Brickman’s reflections on globalization, marginalization, and a shift in psychological language from “primitivity” to “vulnerability”; the role of the body in the work of religious studies; melancholia as “re-membering” amid multiplicity and fragmentation; and mourning as protest and resistance. The essay concludes with a reflection on ambiguity and transcendence in dialogue with Freud’s essay “On Transience.”     

An Exploratory Study of the Relationship Between Mood States and Creativity Self-Perceptions

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between noninduced mood state and self-perceptions of creativity. Undergraduate teacher education students (N = 287) completed 2 mood state inventories (Teasdale 100-Point Thermometer and Perception of Mood States) and a creative self-perception inventory (What Kind of Person Are You? [Khatena &; Torrance, 1976]). The group expressed overall indications of happiness and normally distributed creativity perceptions. Findings were mixed when the 5 scales of the creativity measure (i.e., Acceptance of Authority, Self-confidence, Inquisitiveness, Awareness of Others, and Disciplined Imagination) were correlated to the 6 dimensions of mood (i.e., Tension/Anxiety, Depression/Dejection, Anger/Hostility, Vigor/Activity, Fatigue/Inertia, and Confusion/Bewilderment). There was, however, some indication that positive mood was related to creative self-perception. Results are discussed and future research is suggested.     

Thinking Outside the Square: Business Students' Conceptions of Creativity

Creativity is an important attribute of a successful graduate of higher education, recognised by universities and employers alike. In this paper, we investigate ideas about creativity that were discussed during interviews by a group of business students at a university in Sydney, Australia. Using a phenomenographic approach, we identified three levels of conceptions of creativity, labeled Definition, Attribute, and Comprehensive, from the narrowest and most limited to the broadest and most inclusive. We discuss the characteristics of these different ways of viewing creativity and the pedagogical implications of our findings for business education (and higher education generally).     

Effects of Event Probability and Animateness on Children's Comprehension of Active and Passive Sentences

Thirty-six three-, four-, and five-year-old boys and girls were asked to act out, with appropriate toys, 48 sentences presented with instructions to make the toys do what E said. Sentences were designed to test the effects on comprehension of (a) event probability, (b) sentence voice, and (c) subject/object animateness. Sentences with either an animate subject and object, or an inanimate subject and object, were considered to be reversible; however, not all reversible sentences were symmetrical with respect to event probability. All main effects were significant, and performance improved with age. The significant interactions indicated that there is a difference between animateness and inanimateness in reversible sentences. The data also suggested that (a) animateness may be an important variable in children's early comprehension of speech, and (b) the traditional definition of reversibility should be modified to unconfound the effects of event probability and animateness.