new options for college study

In an effort to meet the changing demands American society is placing on educational institutions, colleges and universities have begun reexamining their educational practices and philosophy. Here the author discusses two alternatives to traditional classroom learning: (a) universities' acceptance of standardized examination results as evidence of learning and (b) “external degree” programs, which involve a reorganization of the higher education system. She discusses one such program in detail. Both of these changes will encourage and enable more people to pursue college degrees; they will also demand new or redefined roles for counselors in and out of the academic community.     

Gender‐of‐author differences in study design of older adult friendship surveys

This research extends literature documenting gender differences in choice of quantitative or qualitative methods by examining whether men and women make different decisions regarding study design within one type of quantitative method—survey research. The population consists of 117 surveys (1960–1999) of older adults about friendship. We find that the use of communal methods, especially by women scholars, increased over time, and researchers who are women are more likely to use “communal” survey methods than researchers who are men. The gender difference in use of communal methods is not necessarily explained by essential differences between men and women or even by gender differences in commitment to feminist research as previous scholars have argued; rather, it is possibly explained by structured differences in access to resources to do agentic research.