In the Field: The Evaluation of an Employee Assistance Program

This article presents the results of an evaluative study of an employee assistance program sponsored by the Russell Corporation, an apparel manufacturing firm. Its results suggest that the program is beneficial in terms of both productivity enhancement and humanitarianism.     

The Gap Between Research and Practice on the Question of Counseling Effectiveness

This article looks at outcome research from a practitioner's point of view and suggests that a serious problem may be caused by research that assumes the technique being studied is experienced by the clients. An argument is made for a research model that emphasizes the client's experience of the effect of the technique.     

Personality Profiles of Recently Terminated Executives

Empirical comparison of terminated executives' personality profiles with employed controls revealed no pathological indicators in those terminated.     

Anorexia Nervosa: The Hospital's Role in Family Treatment

When an anorexia nervosa patient requires hospitalization for her ¹ 1 We will use the pronoun “her” to refer to anorexic patients since the overwhelming majority are female. Our discussion will focus mainly on younger adolescent girls who are still living with their families.
medical condition, the treatment team faces the problem of integrating the individual focus of inpatient care with the systems focus of family therapy. In this paper we propose a family-systems model of hospitalization, the aim of which is to facilitate such integration. The model draws on current theories of anorexia nervosa, as well as general concepts from psychodynamic, developmental, and family systems theories. The major hypothesis of the model is that all members of the anorexic family are developmentally arrested in the area of separation-individuation. On this assumption, we propose that the entire treatment team (including medical professionals and therapists) needs to function as “parents” to the anorexic family in much the same way that two cotherapists become parental figures in family therapy. Specifically, the team needs to provide those parenting responses that facilitate the family's individuation process.     

Techniques for Simultaneous Inference

When more than one significance test is carried out on data from a single experiment, researchers are often concerned with the probability of one or more Type I errors over the entire set of tests. This article considers several methods of exercising control over that probability (the so-called family-wise Type I error rate), provides a schematic that can be used by a researcher to choose among the methods, and discusses applications to contingency tables.     

Implementing “Starting Points”: A Follow-Up Study

The article describes a follow-up study of the implementation of a group-based needs assessment program for unemployed people titled “Starting Points.” The study was conducted using a focus group methodology that resulted in 813 statements from staff and clients involved with the program. The statements were categorized within 15 themes. The themes generated suggested that the program was successful in connecting clients with needed resources. They also pointed out the importance of the way in which clients were referred to the program and the availability of resources following completion of the program. Recommendations are made regarding future implementation of the program. The article concludes with questions raised by the study regarding the implementation of employment counseling interventions generally.     

The Effects of Self-Efficacy on Job Acceptance Behavior Among American College Students

The differential effects of high and low self-efficacy on mock job acceptance behavior were assessed using a sample of 292 American college students. It was found that high and low self-efficacy groups demonstrated different regression equations. These results suggest that different processes must be used to explain the acceptance behavior of high and low self-efficacy groups.     

Crisis centers and hotlines: a survey

Crisis centers and hotlines are relatively new approaches to the nation's growing concern for mental health problems. In order to provide information for those beginning a center, 253 centers were surveyed regarding five major aspects of crisis center operations: screening procedures for telephone listener-counselor applicants, training procedures, services offered, types of calls received, and financing. Resources for further information and for better communication among centers are identified.     

On the Nature of Marital Relationships: Measurable Differences in Spontaneous Agreement

The Spontaneous Agreement (SA) scores on a lengthened form of the Ferreira-Winter Questionnaire of 242 normal and 177 abnormal couples were compared in a cross-sectional study, taking into account the duration of their marriage. For those couples married a short time, SA did not differ for the two groups. The overall SA was higher for normals, and the longer the normal couples were married, the higher their SA. SA did not increase with duration of marriage for abnormal couples. Both groups had higher SA scores than synthetically matched couples.