Characteristics of Alcoholism Among Catholic Sisters: Results of a National Survey

In this article the author reports results from a national survey of recovering alcoholic Catholic Sisters, describing their addiction history, treatment, and the role of the community.     

The Role of the School Counselor in Facilitating Sexual Development

Because there is a trend in the helping professions toward recognizing sexuality as an integral and important dimension of healthy personality development, school counselors and other school personnel have become committed to assisting students in understanding and dealing with their sociosexual needs and concerns. Yet school counselors need to be better prepared to meet these needs. This article suggests skills and attitudes that are necessary for accomplishing the goals of counseling on issues of human sexuality, and how counselors can acquire these skills and attitudes.     

APGA Members in Retirement and Their Advice to the Rest of Us

Retired and emeritus members of APGA answered a survey on their lives in retirement, their recommendations to APGA concerning activities for retired members, their suggestions for training programs in geriatric counseling, and their advice to younger counselors on planning for retirement. The results indicate most retired counselors are financially comfortable and continue to lead happy and productive lives in retirement. In their recommendations the counselors emphasized the need to remain active and stressed the importance of planning well in advance of actual retirement. They had many specific suggestions for APGA programming.     

On being mindful,emotionally aware,and more resilient: Longitudinal pilot study of police recruits

Police officers are at particular risk of stress when compared to people in other occupational groups. A compounding factor is that police are prone to the use of avoidant coping strategies when attempting to deal with this stress. Evidence suggests that “anti‐avoidance” strategies, of acceptance, mindfulness and emotional awareness, are more effective ways of coping, and are linked to both mental health and personal effectiveness. This study followed 60 trainee police officers from the recruit phase into the workplace to determine if these processes predicted more positive mental health and wellbeing in police recruits after 1 year of service. Mindfulness predicted depression at follow‐up, while emotion identification skill predicted general mental health. These results suggest that police officers and police organisations may benefit from interventions aimed at developing and promoting mindfulness and emotion identification.     

Female Aspirants to the Roman Catholic Priesthood

Parish priests (n=85), nonparish priests (n=55), and women who aspire to, but who are barred from, ordination in the Roman Catholic Church (n=235) participated in an investigation of Holland vocational-personality types, job satisfaction, and psychological dysfunction. Of the three groups, the women's Holland-type code, as determined by the means of the Holland-type scales of the Vocational Preference Inventory, was the most similar to the Holland-type code of clergy member as assigned by the Dictionary of Holland Occupational Codes. Women who were barred from the priesthood reported less job satisfaction than the priests. Significant differences on three clinical scales of the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory were in the direction of greater psychological dysfunction on the part of the priests.     

ARE WE VALIDATING MORE BUT PUBLISHING LESS? (THE IMPACT OF GOVERNMENTAL REGULATION ON PUBLISHED VALIDATION RESEARCH–AN EXPLORATORY INVESTIGATION)

Criterion-related validity studies published in the Journal of Applied Psychology and Personnel Psychology between 1960 and 1979 are examined to determine what changes have occurred in the volume of published research, the types of research design, occupations investigated, predictors and criteria used, and obtained validities. The major changes in the published research are both an absolute and relative decline in the volume of reported validation research, an increase in the average sample size, a decline in the proportion of studies utilizing supervisory rating criteria, a de-emphasis of aptitude tests as predictors, and a tendency towards greater use of predictive research designs. However, no significant change has occurred in the absolute magnitude of reported validity coefficients during this 20 year period nor in the types of occupations being investigated. These changes are interpreted in terms of increasing governmental intervention in employment selection during the last two decades.     

THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN TRAIT AND STATE COMMUNICATION APPREHENSION AND INTERPERSONAL PERCEPTIONS DURING ACQUAINTANCE STAGES

The primary purpose of the research was to examine the effect of trait and state communication apprehension on interpersonal perceptions (credibility, attraction, and opinion leadership) during initial and later acquaintance stages of dyadic linkages. The results of the investigation indicated that the results of previously reported simulated studies may not generalize to real, interacting dyads. Trait CA was found to account for little variance in interpersonal perceptions. However, state CA was found to be a potent predictor of such perceptions, particularly in a later stage of acquaintance. It was found that trait and state CA were significantly correlated in the early acquaintance stage, but were unrelated at a later stage. It was also found that state CA did not decline as a function of length of acquaintance, nor did interpersonal perceptions become more positive as a function of increased interaction.     

Motion organization in "stop action" sequences

Abstract.— Do the contents of our successive glances combine by virtue of motion segregation (Johansson) effects? Some explanations of the effects (for example, that they result from uncompensated pursuit eye movements, or that they occur only with continuous stimulus movement) would oppose that proposal. The effects can be obtained with discontinuous stimulus displacements (500 msec jumps), even with a fixation point and visible surroundings. The proposal that glances combine as a result of motion segregation remains viable, therefore, but segregation effects themselves may need reformulation as relational schemas.     

THE MEDIA AND POLITICAL VIOLENCE

The meanings of violence, political violence, and terrorism are briefly discussed. I then consider the responsibilities of the media, especially television, with respect to political violence, including such questions as how violence should be described, and whether the media should cover terrorism. I argue that the media should contribute to decreasing political violence through better coverage of arguments for and against political dissidents' views, and especially through more and better treatment of nonviolent means of influencing political processes. Since commercial pressures routinely conflict with media responsibility, I argue that society should liberate substantial amounts of culture from such pressures.