BENEFIT COVERAGE AND EMPLOYEE COST: CRITICAL FACTORS IN EXPLAINING COMPENSATION SATISFACTION

This research examined the joint effects of benefit coverage and the costs borne by employees on multiple dimensions of compensation satisfaction. Information regarding pay and benefit practices was collected by interviewing personnel specialists and reviewing policy and procedure documents in eight organizations. At a later time, satisfaction data were collected from employees via mail surveys. The results indicated that satisfaction with benefits increased with improved coverage and decreased with higher employee costs. Employees were particularly sensitive to variation in the cost of health insurance. Also, for respondents possessing accurate information about actual coverage levels, the relationship between coverage and satisfaction was more pronounced. For the organizations studied here, salaries and benefits were being administered using compensatory allocation rules. Salary levels were negatively correlated with the levels of benefit coverage, and the various components of the compensation systems covaried in complex ways. The methodological implications associated with this research are emphasized and suggest that the interpretability of much of the past research devoted to employee benefits has been compromised.     

RELIABILITIES OF RATINGS AVAILABLE FROM THE DICTIONARY OF OCCUPATIONAL TITLES

Job analysts who collect occupational information for the Dictionary of Occupational Titles observed and interviewed job incumbents representing 20 diverse occupations and rated each occupation on a wide variety of characteristics following standard United States Employment Services procedures. On the basis of four ratings, the large majority of 70 scales were found to have coefficient alpha (or KR-20) reliabilities in excess of .SO, and 25 scales had reliabilities ranging from .90 to .98; a variance ratio procedure yielded largely consistent estimates. Reliabilities were similar to those found in an earlier study using different procedures and were similar to those from a well-developed, occupa-tionally anchored scale of "Job Complexity," developed for this study. Scales representing broad, abstract job characteristics tended to have higher reliabilities than scales representing more concrete job characteristics.     

Counseling Foreign Law Students

This article examines issues that foreign students studying law in the United States may encounter, issues that are proposed within the context of existing information on foreign students, law students, and the law school experience. Implications for counseling are discussed.     

College admissions assistance by secondary school counselors

Information was collected over a three-year period dealing with college admissions assistance received by 2,500 (27 percent) of the entering freshmen at the University of Massachusetts. This information concerned the timing of various student decisions about college admission, sources of information, and reactions to the assistance provided by high school counselors. Entering freshmen perceived the counselor as being a helpful source of specific information but having little effect on their decisions to continue in higher education. The authors make interpretations related to the University, and they compare the results to Kerr's similar study in 1961.     

How One Family Perceives Another: The Relationship Between Social Constructions and Problem-Solving Competence

This paper delineates a rarely studied but important family process: how a family perceives and understands the relationships in other families it knows. We hypothesize that these perceptions of other families are fundamental components of a family's shared construing of its social world. Families differ in how they perceive other families, specifically, and in their approach to construing or apprehending their social world, generally. We have hypothesized that these general differences also play a crucial role in shaping the style and competence of family problem-solving. A family's approach to any problem depends upon how it construes or interprets the social context of that problem. Using these general concepts of family life, we construct specific hypotheses linking family problem-solving and interfamily perception. We describe methods for measuring both family problem-solving and how a family perceives other families. Findings confirm our major hypothesis: A family that searches for underlying and subtle patterns in a problem-solving situation will develop a more differentiated and organized conception of other families.     

CHARACTERISTICS OF EFFECTIVE EMPLOYEE PERFORMANCE REVIEW AND DEVELOPMENT INTERVIEWS: REPLICATION AND EXTENSION1

Eight performance review interview characteristics were related to 7 interview outcomes. Several of these individual variables had been examined in previous research. Two hundred seventy nursing personnel described their last review interview. Five of the interview characteristics were related to most of the outcomes, replicating earlier research as well as adding new findings. Implications for improving the conduct of appraisal interviews in organizations are offered.     

How to avoid developmental effects in free recall

Immediate and final free recall was tested in children from grades 4, 6, and 8, using lists of words and lists of tasks which the children performed. The expected developmental effect was found in both the immediate and the final free recall of the words, but there were no significant differences in the recall of the tasks as a function of age. These data are discussed within the Flavell-Brown framework of strategic and nonstrategic memory tasks.     

Counseling Parents of Handicapped Children: An Empathic Approach

Counseling is often perceived as a process one reluctantly goes through when life's problems become too overwhelming to handle alone. One such situation frequently occurs when parents become aware that they have a handicapped child. Prescott and Hulnick hold that essentially all of life's experience, including parenting a handicapped child, can be perceived as an opportunity for personal growth. Given this orientation, the truly empathic counselor assists parents in learning the skills and attitudes needed to deal effectively with their child and to learn to transform their own pain into caring and love.