Primary Prevention: Beginning at the Beginning

The growth and development of infants and children is examined from the perspective of parenting. White presents research evidence on early childhood development to substantiate his claim that educators and mental health specialists ignore these findings in their intervention approaches. The author sees the family as the first educational delivery system for the child, and presents concrete suggestions to aid educators and mental health specialists in their role. White concludes by favoring an educational approach to parenting over traditional social service work.     

Pass It On: Errors in Direct Quotes in a Sample of Scholarly Journal Articles

Concern has been expressed in the literature over inaccuracies both in reference listings and direct quotes. This study examined one volume year of each of four journals in the social sciences to compare 1,278 quotes against the original sources. Of this total, 89 could not be found and 519 (43.7% of the remaining quotes) had one or more inaccuracies, ranging from trivial punctuation differences to errors that significantly changed the content meaning. Implications as well as suggestions for editors and writers for reducing errors are discussed.     

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.     

CROSS-SITUATIONAL SPECIFICITY IN MANAGERs' PERCEPTIONS OF SUBORDINATE PERFORMANCE, ATTRIBUTIONS, AND LEADER BEHAVIORS

Managers' perceptions of subordinates' performance, causes (attributions) of subordinates' performance, and the leader behaviors they employed toward subordinates were examined from the standpoint of cross-situational consistency versus cross-situational specificity. Cross-situational consistency would be indicated if managers' perceptions of performance, attributions, and leader behaviors were stable over different situations, whereas cross-situational specificity would be indicated if these same perceptions indicated reliable variation, as a function of situation. Empirical results for 377 Navy managers provided strong support for cross-situational specificity. Results are discussed in relation to prior research, generated by interactional theory on consistency versus specificity of responses across situations, and in relation to research and developmental needs in leadership, attribution theory, and performance evaluation.