Usefulness of assessment techniques in assessing classification for emotional disturbance and generating classroom recommendations

A national survey of specialist school psychologists examined the perceived usefulness of assessment techniques in making decisions regarding eligibility for the educational classification of emotional disturbance and in generating classroom recommendations. Analysis showed measures rated as most useful were interviews with the parent, teacher, and student, observations of the student, and norm-referenced rating scales. Projective techniques were least useful. These findings are important in the context of "best practices" for the multidimensional assessment of emotional disturbance which promotes a more direct link between assessment and intervention.     

Psychotherapie und Internet

Zusammenfassung  Die Außendarstellung im Internet ist wichtig und in der Zukunft unverzichtbar. Jedoch hat die Liberalisierung des Werberechts der freien Berufe keineswegs zur absoluten Schrankenlosigkeit geführt. Vielmehr sind die zu beachtenden Regeln auf verschiedene Gesetze und Rechtsgebiete verstreut, so dass ohne fachkundige Hilfe—etwa durch die Kammern oder durch juristische Beratung—die Selbstdarstellung im Internet schnell zu einem bösen Erwachen führen kann.

Victimization and PTSD in a Faroese youth total-population sample

Petersen, T., Elklit, A. & Olesen, J. G. (2010). Victimization and PTSD in a Faroese youth total-population sample. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology, 51, 56–62.
The prevalence of twenty traumatic events and negative life events in relation to posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) was studied in a Faroese total-population sample of 687 eighth-grade students with a mean age of 14.2 years. Ninety-four percent of the females and 89% of the males were directly exposed to or had witnessed at least one traumatic event or a negative life event. The odds ratios for PTSD after direct and indirect exposure to specific events are described. The lifetime prevalence of PTSD was 20%, whereas another 14% reached a subclinical level of PTSD. After exposure, females had PTSD more than twice as often as males. Being exposed to multiple traumatic events, living with a single parent, and having experienced a traumatic event or a negative life event within the last year were all associated with PTSD and its subscales.     

Executive career management: Switching organizations and the boundaryless career

There has been little research examining executives who change jobs by specifically following these individuals both before and after their employer changes. By incorporating research on the boundaryless career [Arthur, M. B., & Rousseau, D. M. (Eds.). (1996). The boundaryless career: A new employment principle for a new organizational era. New York: Oxford University Press; Sullivan, S. E., & Arthur, M. B. (2006). The evolution of the boundaryless career concept: Examining physical and psychological mobility. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 69, 19-29] and applying Frank’s theory of relative standing (1985), this study examined factors that may cause executives to change jobs in the context of managing their careers. Our findings revealed that factors, such as age and compensation, were related to the likelihood of job movements as well as declining organizational health. Post-hoc analyses also indicated that executive job-changers received significantly greater increases in total compensation and were more likely to receive increases in organizational status.     

The impact of job complexity and performance measurement on the temporal consistency, stability, and test-retest reliability of employee job performance ratings

Although research has shown that individual job performance changes over time, the extent of such changes is unknown. In this article, the authors define and distinguish between the concepts of temporal consistency, stability, and test-retest reliability when considering individual job performance ratings over time. Furthermore, the authors examine measurement type (i.e., subjective and objective measures) and job complexity in relation to temporal consistency, stability, and test-retest reliability. On the basis of meta-analytic results, the authors found that the test-retest reliability of these ratings ranged from .83 for subjective measures in low-complexity jobs to .50 for objective measures in high-complexity jobs. The stability of these ratings over a 1-year time lag ranged from .85 to .67. The analyses also reveal that correlations between performance measures decreased as the time interval between performance measurements increased, but the estimates approached values greater than zero.