Methodological issues in school-based evaluation

Methodology in school-based evaluation is importantly affected by economic and ethical constraints often absent or less pressing than in larger-scale evaluations. These and other factors also operate in the specialized school-based evaluations such as that of school psychological services. Defensible evaluation designs must take into account the impossibility of random assignment and reduced options for the use of control groups. In addition there are numerous pressures on the construction and deployment of measuring devices and a need for ingenuity in performing statistical analyses. This article explicates these issues and outlines alternative approaches to methodology which can result in usable data for school decision making.     

Value of interviews for admission to clinical training programs: Perspective of program directors

Abstract: The interview has a long history of being used to select individuals for positions in industry, professional occupations, and for a variety of specialised educational programs. Despite its widespread popularity, the selection interview is often criticised for its potential bias and unreliability, which in turn has led to its decreasing use in some settings. The purpose of the present study was to explore the views of the directors of 21 Australian clinical training programs as to the value of interviews as part of the admission process for their clinical psychology postgraduate training candidates. Three programs reported not conducting interviews at all, expressing reservations concerning their validity. Most other directors saw interviews as having at least some value, with the opportunity to evaluate interpersonal skills being one of the most commonly mentioned advantages. A variety of methods was used for the final admission decisions, with substantial variation in acceptance rates by candidates who survived the interview process. Implications for selection processes in the future are discussed.     

Family,peer and school connectedness in final year secondary school students

The study aim was to investigate Australian Year 12 students' sense of connectedness to their schools, families, and peers, and examine associations between connectedness and emotional wellbeing. Year 12 students (492 male, 449 female) from 10 secondary schools in Victoria, Australia participated in Phase 1 of the study. of these, 204 participants (82 male, 122 female) returned surveys 1 year later; 175 of these were attending tertiary education institutions. The study found high levels of depression, anxiety and stress among Year 12 students, with higher negative affect associated with lower levels of family, peer and school connectedness. Negative affect 1 year after leaving school was predicted by negative affect and peer connectedness at Year 12. Results suggest there are significant numbers of at‐risk young people in their final year of school, who feel lonely and disconnected from peers, and who maintain concerning levels of depression, anxiety and stress in first year of university.     

Prejudice and the function of attitudes relating to Muslim Australians and Indigenous Australians

The aim of the present study was to examine prejudice against Muslim Australians and Indigenous Australians and the function of those attitudes using previously identified functions, direct experiential–schematic and value expressive, and including a new indirect experiential–schematic function. Respondents were categorised into two groups: accepting and rejecting. For the Muslim data there was no difference between accepting and rejecting groups regarding the value‐expressive function, but acceptors reported the experiential–schematic function to a greater extent than did rejectors. For the Indigenous data there was no difference between groups on the value‐expressive or the experiential–schematic function. With both target groups, rejectors reported the indirect experiential–schematic function more than acceptors. The value‐expressive function was higher for the Muslim data and the experiential–schematic function was higher for the Indigenous data. The importance of taking into account the function of respondents' attitudes, the distinction between source and function of attitudes, as well as specific issues surrounding target groups themselves, is discussed.     

Better than brainstorming? Potential contextual boundary conditions to brainwriting for idea generation in organizations

Organizations and societies all need good, useful ideas to survive and prosper. People often enjoy brainstorming, though it is not as productive as they tend to believe. Groups can potentially generate more and better ideas when ‘brainwriting’; that is, silently sharing written ideas in a time‐ and sequence‐structured group format. This conceptual paper identifies likely boundary conditions to the promising findings from brainwriting laboratory research generalizing to real‐world organizational contexts. Important dimensions of organizational context may be revealed by drawing on the journalistic principle to examine what, who, when, where, and why certain outcomes result from particular organizational practices (Johns, 2006). Multiple potential contextual moderators are suggested in each of these five areas. Subsequent field research will inform the idea‐generation literature as well as those concerned with eliciting high‐quality, useful ideas to address particular organizational and societal challenges.     

Knowing who knows what and who knows whom: Expertise recognition,network recognition,and individual work performance

We tested the relationship between individuals' expertise recognition and work performance, the role of job resourcefulness (i.e. individuals' ability to garner resources to overcome obstacles) as a mediator, and network recognition as a moderator in the link between expertise recognition and job resourcefulness. We found that the positive impact of expertise recognition on work performance was mediated by job resourcefulness, but network recognition did not play a moderating role.