What comes out of the consulting-room? The reporting of clinical material

The author addresses the difficulties inherent in reporting clinical material. These fall into two main categories, the ethical problem of upholding confidentiality, and the technical problems which include the definition of analytical data, and the numerous ways in which truth can be distorted in the analytic context. It is advocated that consent be obtained from patients before publishing their material. It is also suggested that clinical reports should contain enough detail of the analytic interaction, including the analyst's thoughts and feelings, to convey the analytic process, and to enable the listener/reader to consider the evidence for himself and to draw his own conclusions. It is concluded that an analyst's anxiety about exposing a patient might obscure an anxiety about exposing himself.     

A note on dual scaling of successive categories data

Three methods for dual scaling of successive categories data are formulated. They are mathematically equivalent, and provide an appropriate technique to determine stimulus values and category boundaries on a joint scale, a problem that Nishisato's method (1980a) failed to handle. This study was supported by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (Grant No. A7942) to S. Nishisato. Comments on the earlier draft from anonymous reviewers were most helpful and much appreciated.     

SOCIAL VALIDATION: THE EVOLUTION OF STANDARDS OF COMPETENCY FOR TARGET BEHAVIORS

The use of social validation procedures has become widespread in recent years. Although most researchers have used social validation procedures to select target behaviors and to evaluate whether the changes produced by a treatment program should be considered socially useful, little attention has been focused upon using the social validation process to determine the optimal levels for target behaviors. This paper suggests several ways in which social validation procedures can be employed in order to select when and how much to change target behaviors.     

Reliability in the context of the experiment: A commentary on two articles by Birkimer and Brown

Two sources of variability must each be considered when examining change in level between two sets of data obtained by human observers; namely, variance within data sets (phases) and variability attributed to each data point (reliability). Birkimer and Brown (1979a, 1979b) have suggested that both chance levels and disagreement bands be considered in examining observer reliability and have made both methods more accessible to researchers. By clarifying and extending Birkimer and Brown's papers, a system is developed using observer agreement to determine the data point variability and thus to check the adequacy of obtained data within the experimental context.     

A graphical judgmental aid which summarizes obtained and chance reliability data and helps assess the believability of experimental effects

Interval by interval reliability has been criticized for "inflating" observer agreement when target behavior rates are very low or very high. Scored interval reliability and its converse, unscored interval reliability, however, vary as target behavior rates vary when observer disagreement rates are constant. These problems, along with the existence of "chance" values of each reliability which also vary as a function of response rate, may cause researchers and consumers difficulty in interpreting observer agreement measures. Because each of these reliabilities essentially compares observer disagreements to a different base, it is suggested that the disagreement rate itself be the first measure of agreement examined, and its magnitude relative to occurrence and to nonoccurrence agreements then be considered. This is easily done via a graphic presentation of the disagreement range as a bandwidth around reported rates of target behavior. Such a graphic presentation summarizes all the information collected during reliability assessments and permits visual determination of each of the three reliabilities. In addition, graphing the "chance" disagreement range around the bandwidth permits easy determination of whether or not true observer agreement has likely been demonstrated. Finally, the limits of the disagreement bandwidth help assess the believability of claimed experimental effects: those leaving no overlap between disagreement ranges are probably believable, others are not.     

TEACHING RETARDED WOMEN A CLOTHING SELECTION SKILL USING COMMUNITY NORMS

Five institutionalized retarded women were taught a clothing selection skill to coincide with popular fashion. Normative data concerning popular styles of color-coordinated clothing were collected through observations of women's apparel in a local community. Using a puzzle simulation of a woman with alternative pieces of colored clothing, color coordination training was conducted using modelling, instructions, practice, praise, and feedback to teach popular selections of color combinations. A generalization training component with actual clothing was also included. Training was accompanied by large increases in percentage of popular color selections with the puzzle and actual clothing. The increases maintained over a seven- to 14-week followup period. Time efficiency measures supported the use of the simulation procedure as opposed to total reliance on actual clothing. The results underscore the utility of local norms in community preparation programs and the efficacy of instructional procedures for severely and profoundly retarded persons as part of their participation in the deinstitutionalization movement.     

A study of the “central life interests” and “work attachments” of male and female workers

This paper reports the results of a survey undertaken to investigate the overall central life interests and attachments to work of a sample of 1112 male and female employees of six Southern California manufacturing firms. The major conclusions suggested by this study are three. First, male employees have a slight tendency to be more work oriented in their overall central life interests than female employees. Second, female employees tend to be more strongly attached to extrinsic work features than male employees. Third, male-female differences in occupational status and perceived mobility opportunities probably account for gender differences in overall central life interests but these variables do not account for the tendency for women to be more strongly attached than men to extrinsic work features.     

Multidimensional scaling of nominal data: The recovery of metric information with alscal

Multidimensional scaling has recently been enhanced so that data defined at only the nominal level of measurement can be analyzed. The efficacy of ALSCAL, an individual differences multidimensional scaling program which can analyze data defined at the nominal, ordinal, interval and ratio levels of measurement, is the subject of this paper. A Monte Carlo study is presented which indicates that (a) if we know the correct level of measurement then ALSCAL can be used to recover the metric information presumed to underlie the data; and that (b) if we do not know the correct level of measurement then ALSCAL can be used to determine the correct level and to recover the underlying metric structure. This study also indicates, however, that with nominal data ALSCAL is quite likely to obtain solutions which are not globally optimal, and that in these cases the recovery of metric structure is quite poor. A second study is presented which isolates the potential cause of these problems and forms the basis for a suggested modification of the ALSCAL algorithm which should reduce the frequency of locally optimal solutions.     

Relating tests given to different samples

Suppose a collection of standard tests is given to all subjects in a random sample, but a different new test is given to each group of subjects in nonoverlapping subsamples. A simple method is developed for displaying the information that the data set contains about the correlational structure of the new tests. This is possible to some extent, even though each subject takes only one new test. The method uses plausible values of the partial correlations among the new tests given the standard tests in order to generate plausible simple correlations among the new tests and plausible multiple correlations between composites of the new tests and the standard tests. The real data example included suggests that the method can be useful in practical problems.