Family Sculpting in Preventive Work with "Well Families"

This paper will describe an experimental community project aimed at "well families". The program was designed to be preventive by providing service to families before their problems escalated into crisis proportions. It emphasized an educational rather than treatment bias; this orientation forced us to expand concepts, experiment with new techniques, and re-evaluate our ideas on how families change. Of particular importance to us was the emphasis on behavioral change rather than intellectual insight. In the course of this work, family sculpting came to be an increasingly valuable tool.     

THE EFFECT OF QUALITY CIRCLE INITIATION ON MOTIVATION TO ATTEND QUALITY CIRCLE MEETINGS AND ON TASK PERFORMANCE

The motivation to attend quality circle (QC) meetings and the task performance of 47 quality circles over a three-year period were examined as a function of quality circle initiation (self- vs. management-initiated) in a field study. Motivation to attend meetings was operationally defined as the number of members per QC (QC size) and the attendance rate at QC meetings. Task performance reflected the number of projects completed and the amount of time required to complete the project. The results of a MANOVA suggested that QC initiation had significant impacts on motivation to attend meetings in that self-initiated QCs had more QC members than had management-initiated QCs. Further, management-initiated QCs solved more work-related problems and solved their problems significantly faster than did self-initiated QCs. The effect of QC initiation on the number of projects completed failed to reach significance, however, when QC size was controlled as a covariate. Further, a high attendance rate at QC meetings was associated with a low quantity of projects completed in self-initiated QCs and a slow speed of problem solving in management-initiated QCs. Some implications related to the effectiveness of QCs are discussed.     

ETHNIC GROUP DIFFERENCES IN COGNITIVE ABILITY IN EMPLOYMENT AND EDUCATIONAL SETTINGS: A META-ANALYSIS

The cognitive ability levels of different ethnic groups have interested psychologists for over a century. Many narrative reviews of the empirical literature in the area focus on the Black-White differences, and the reviews conclude that the mean difference in cognitive ability ( g ) is approximately 1 standard deviation; that is, the generally accepted effect size is about 1.0. We conduct a meta-analytic review that suggests that the one standard deviation effect size accurately summarizes Black-White differences for college application tests (e.g., SAT) and overall analyses of tests of g for job applicants in corporate settings. However, the 1 standard deviation summary of group differences fails to capture many of the complexities in estimating ethnic group differences in employment settings. For example, our results indicate that job complexity, the use of within job versus across job study design, focus on applicant versus incumbent samples, and the exact construct of interest are important moderators of standardized group differences. In many instances, standardized group differences are less than 1 standard deviation. We conduct similar analyses for Hispanics, when possible, and note that Hispanic-White differences are somewhat less than Black-White differences.     

The Greek Chorus and Other Techniques of Paradoxical Therapy

This paper has described some of the interventions developed at the Ackerman Brief Therapy Project in treating the families of symptomatic children. The interventions are based upon a differential diagnosis of the family system and upon an evaluation of that system's resistance to change. They are classified as compliance-based or defiance-based, depending upon the family's degree of anxiety, motivation, and resistance. Paradoxical interventions, which are defiance-based, are used as a clinical tool in dealing with resistance and circumventing the power struggle between therapist and family. A consultation group acting as a Greek chorus underlines the therapist's interventions and comments on the consequences of systemic change. This group is also sometimes used to form a therapeutic triangle among the family, therapist and group, with the therapist and group debating over the family's ability to change.