ASSESSMENT CENTERS—VALID OR MERELY PRESCIENT1

Published validation studies of assessment centers are reviewed with respect to criteria used, staff composition, and the number of organizations involved. Impressive, consistent results are noted, but a trend is identified: Acceptance of the method is based on relatively few studies, conducted by fewer organizations, using a limited range of criteria. It is argued that perhaps the assessment center staff is evaluating candidates based on its familiarity with the preferences of the decision makers who will actually promote, thus merely duplicating already existing decision procedures. What is needed are comparative predictive studies incorporating alternative predictors and criteria.     

LOG-LINEAR MODELING IN PERSONNEL RESEARCH

Log-linear modeling is a discrete multivariate statistical technique that is designed specifically for analyzing data when both the independent and dependent variables are categorical or nominal. The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the utility of this technique in personnel research. The paper (a) discusses behavioral areas of application, (b) compares log-linear modeling with chi-square and regression analysis, (c) presents the basic principles and hypotheses of log-linear modeling, and (d) shows how the technique is used.     

USE OF AN ASSESSMENT CENTER AS AN AID IN MANAGEMENT SELECTION

An application of assessment center procedures is described for the selection of first level managers from the craft ranks. Information is reported on how the assessment data are used in promotion decisions. An evaluation study was conducted that indicates that the assessment center program has a positive effect on performance of managers at the first level and the pool of potential for higher levels of management. The study results also suggest ways in which assessment data can be used more effectively in promotion decisions.     

Basic Counseling Skills Training Program for Juvenile Court Workers

Participants in a week-long counseling skills training seminar evidenced significant changes in certain behavior categories as measured by the FIRO-B.     

A Short List of Universal Moral Values

There may be virtual worldwide consensus on a few universal moral values like the Golden Rule. In this article, the authors argue that diversity and universality can coexist within the human community. Toward that goal, they construct a short list of universal moral values. Validation of these values is based on nomination by their frequent citation in previously published lists and endorsement by most of the major world religions and well‐known secular organizations (i.e., the United Nations). Implications for counseling are discussed. There is a universal moral law written on the human heart. (Pope John Paul II, as cited by Moody, 1995, p. 82)     

INTERRATER CORRELATIONS DO NOT ESTIMATE THE RELIABILITY OF JOB PERFORMANCE RATINGS

Interrater correlations are widely interpreted as estimates of the reliability of supervisory performance ratings, and are frequently used to correct the correlations between ratings and other measures (e.g., test scores) for attenuation. These interrater correlations do provide some useful information, but they are not reliability coefficients. There is clear evidence of systematic rater effects in performance appraisal, and variance associated with raters is not a source of random measurement error. We use generalizability theory to show why rater variance is not properly interpreted as measurement error, and show how such systematic rater effects can influence both reliability estimates and validity coefficients. We show conditions under which interrater correlations can either overestimate or underestimate reliability coefficients, and discuss reasons other than random measurement error for low interrater correlations.     

The Given Regained. Reflections on the Sensuous Content of Experience

The major part of our beliefs and our knowledge of the world is based on, or grounded in, sensory experience. But, how is it that we can have perceptual beliefs that things are thus and so, and, moreover, be justified in having them? What conditions must experience satisfy to rationally warrant, and not merely to cause, our beliefs? Against the currently very popular contention that experience itself already has to be propositionally and conceptually structured, I will rehabilitate the claim that there is given element in experience which is independent of thought and which is possessed of a distinctive nonpropositional and nonconceptual content. Further, I will argue that this given element is indeed fit to play a significant evidential role in the justification of our beliefs about the world.     

The NNPI: in sickness or in health

The much-maligned personality inventory is further maligned in this article by two authors who claim to have some expertise in the area of test development. This claim may or may not be substantiated by the fact that one author received his degree in water-skiing and the other received his degree in ceramics. The authors request that any correspondence regarding comments or criticisms of this article be sent to them in a plain brown wrapper.     

THE ANALYST'S WAY OF BEING: RECOGNIZING SEPARABLE SUBJECTIVITIES AND THE PENDULUM'S SWING

Whether the analyst finds the patient's emerging transference affectively tolerable or intolerable plays an important role in the analytic couple's negotiation of the configuration that the transference‐countertransference relationship ultimately assumes. If the analyst is deeply repelled by transference‐related roles to which he is assigned, patient‐ascribed attributions, or projection‐drenched interactions, he may react in violent protest, engaging in enactments that say more about his separable subjectivity than about the intersubjective situation. While there has been a recent trend to view enactments as a crucial aspect of psychoanalytic technique, this trend risks overlooking the way in which the analyst's way of being comes into play in the treatment.