Change-oriented behavior: A meta-analysis of individual and job design predictors

We propose and meta-analytically test a theoretical model of individual and job-based predictors of change-oriented behaviors. Meta-analytic tests (106 effect sizes, N = 28,402) demonstrate that employee's proactive personality is a stronger predictor of change-oriented behavior than the five-factor model (FFM) personality traits of openness and extraversion. Also, enriched job characteristics (autonomy, complexity, and task significance) are more important in predicting change-oriented behavior, than un-enriched job characteristics (routinization and formalization). Finally, we establish work engagement as a mediator that provides an explanation for how and why proactive personality and enriched job characteristics predict change-oriented behavior. We provide both theoretical and empirical integration of the literature with practical implications for managing change-oriented behaviors, which are increasingly recognized as important to both organizational effectiveness and employee career management.     

A Comparison of Taped-Problem Interventions to Increase Math Fact Fluency: Does the Length of Time Delay Affect Student Learning Rates?

An alternating treatments design with a control condition was used to evaluate and compare the effects of two taped-problem interventions on addition fact fluency. Both taped-problem interventions were identical with the exception of the time delay between the auditory cue of the problem and the answer. One condition used a 2-s delay and the other condition used no delay. Results showed that both taped-problem conditions showed growth in student digits correct per minute scores and that the no-delay condition was slightly more efficient as the taped-problem no-delay procedure took approximately 33% less time. Discussion focuses on using comparative intervention designs to detect nuances in procedures to improve our understanding of math fact interventions that result in the highest learning rates.     

Aesthetics and Affect: Engaging Energy Communities

ABSTRACT

Engaging publics in participatory events has become a central means to introducing lay people's voices into processes of technoscientific innovation and governance. However, little attention has been paid to the role of aesthetics, especially in terms of opening up potential ways of critically and creatively engaging with technoscientific matters of concern. The terms semblamatic and matters of potentially are proposed as addressing this dimension of aesthetics. Drawing on practice-based design research, a probe workshop with members of energy communities was implemented. Three probe exercises served to open up potential re-articulations of such core themes as energy, communities and futures. Our goals were to examine the whether such probes enabled semblamatic responses and the emergence of matters of potentiality. Findings were mixed. The continued retention of standard meanings of these core themes suggested that such events can be anaesthetic, blunting access to the semblamatic aspects of engagement. Conversely, there was some opening up in which the core themes were creatively re-articulated. The present perspective, with its three novel terms - semblamatic, matters of potentiality, and anaesthetic - might prove useful in alerting scholars to the complex role of aesthetics in the methodological and analytic practices entailed in engagement with publics.     

Father Involvement in Parent Training for Oppositional Child Behavior

Outcome literature (1981 to 1988) on behavioral parent training interventions for nonhandicapped children with oppositional behavior is reviewed to assess the extent and effects of father involvement in parent training. Thirteen studies were found that included some father involvement. Weaknesses of these studies include a failure to observe and measure changed in father-child interactions, a lack of emphasis on the impact of the marital relationship, a lack of attention to similarities in parental child management strategies, and a lack of assessment of paternal characteristics. Further research to assess the effects of including fathers on parent training outcomes can improve the efficiency and effectiveness of these interventions.     

Using a Technological Augmentation to Enhance Parent-Infant Interactions With Parents at Risk

ABSTRACT

Effective parent training programs may need to be tailored for at-risk parents by using simple language, presenting concrete concepts, and simple technologies. We present four single-case research-design studies examining if the use of digital frames enhances parent-infant interactions with a diverse range of mothers with varied levels of risk for maltreatment. Based on self-modeling, the frames contain photographs of mother-infant dyads in posed interactions representing desired criterion behaviors from the parent-infant interaction (PII) module of SafeCare®. Results indicate that the use of inexpensive digital frames appears to enhance already good outcomes of the SafeCare PII module.     

Fostering Students’ Appraisals of the Relevance of History by Comparing Analogous Cases of an Enduring Human Issue: A Quasi-Experimental Study

To identify the challenges that students must meet to engage in effective self-directed inquiry, a class was followed for three years, from the fourth through the sixth grades, as they engaged in a sequence of progressively more demanding inquiry activities. Students made substantial progress in understanding the objectives of inquiry, identifying questions, attending to evidence, identifying patterns, making controlled comparisons, interpreting increasingly complex data, supporting claims, and drawing justified conclusions. Retaining awareness of inquiry objectives and integrating influences of multiple variables in predicting outcomes were two areas that remained challenging. A comparison group of seventh graders who had not been involved in the program displayed strikingly different approaches to an inquiry task, indicating that the skills identified here are not ones that develop in the absence of appropriate kinds of educational experiences.     

Research Quality: Critique of Quantitative Articles in the Journal of Counseling & Development

The purpose of this study was to examine the quality of quantitative articles published in the Journal of Counseling & Development. Quality concerns arose in regard to omissions of psychometric information of instruments, effect sizes, and statistical power. Type VI and II errors were found. Strengths included stated research questions and appropriateness of analyses. Implications of these results are provided.