Master's-level training and employment in community mental health.

The training and employment of master's-level psychologists have long been controversial issues. We describe a master's-level program for training community mental health practitioners, and we present information on the placement of program graduates. The information suggests that there continues to be a demand for well-trained, master's-level practitioners. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Graduate training and employment experiences of community psychologists.

We surveyed the graduate training and employment experiences of 177 current students and 152 recent graduates from 39 psychology programs. Of interest were differences among applied social, community and community-clinical programs. Results suggested that these training programs represented a continuum of research, community, and clinical interests. Applied social and community programs had a stronger community and research emphasis, whereas community-clinical programs had a stronger orientation toward clinical skills. Similarly, the job skills used by recent graduates suggested that persons from applied social programs went into administrative and organizational consulting jobs, graduates of community-clinical programs were employed in areas demanding more human services skills, and community graduates found jobs requiring the use of research skills. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Intelligence, schooling, and society.

IQ test scores are measures of g, or general intelligence, the common element present in diverse tests of cognitive abilities that are positively related to each other. IQ scores are related to the acquisition of knowledge in school and occupational settings. IQ test scores also relate to the academic achievements of one's children. In many contexts, the relationship between IQ and various outcomes is not attributable to the relationship between IQ and social class background. IQ is an index that distinguishes among individuals with common social and demographic backgrounds. The relationship between IQ and various outcome measures may be reduced by relying on multivariable selection procedures, by modifying educational and occupational practices, and by interventions designed to increase IQ. Representative studies that provide evidence for these assertions are considered. Although the influence of the ability indexed by IQ may be reduced, it probably cannot be eliminated. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Intelligence, Race, and Genetics.

In this article, the authors argue that the overwhelming portion of the literature on intelligence, race, and genetics is based on folk taxonomies rather than scientific analysis. They suggest that because theorists of intelligence disagree as to what it is, any consideration of its relationships to other constructs must be tentative at best. They further argue that race is a social construction with no scientific definition. Thus, studies of the relationship between race and other constructs may serve social ends but cannot serve scientific ends. No gene has yet been conclusively linked to intelligence, so attempts to provide a compelling genetic link of race to intelligence are not feasible at this time. The authors also show that heritability, a behaviorgenetic concept, is inadequate in regard to providing such a link. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Impact of managed care on employment and training: A primer for survival.

Managed care has become the dominant economic force in health care delivery and has challenged many of professional psychology's training concepts and cherished attitudes. Organized psychology has not kept pace with the rapid industrialization of health care during the past decade and has been overlooked as a participant in health economic decisions. A number of changes need to be made in professional education and training if psychology is to be a major player in the new health systems. Additionally, professional psychologists must reexamine some of their most generally accepted attitudes and beliefs if they are to survive. These are described with a number of recommendations for the survival of an embattled profession. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Personality measurement, faking, and employment selection.

Real job applicants completed a 5-factor model personality measure as part of the job application process. They were rejected; 6 months later they (n = 5,266) reapplied for the same job and completed the same personality measure. Results indicated that 5.2% or fewer improved their scores on any scale on the 2nd occasion; moreover, scale scores were as likely to change in the negative direction as the positive. Only 3 applicants changed scores on all 5 scales beyond a 95% confidence threshold. Construct validity of the personality scales remained intact across the 2 administrations, and the same structural model provided an acceptable fit to the scale score matrix on both occasions. For the small number of applicants whose scores changed beyond the standard error of measurement, the authors found the changes were systematic and predictable using measures of social skill, social desirability, and integrity. Results suggest that faking on personality measures is not a significant problem in real-world selection settings. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Psychology's manpower: Characteristics, employment, and earnings.

Of 17,601 respondents to the Psychology Section of the 1964 National Register of Scientific and Technical Personnel, 95% indicated their field of greatest specialization and competence as psychology; 90% indicated psychology as the major subject of their highest academic degree; 89% regarded themselves professionally as psychologists; and 88% were employed as psychologists at the time of the survey. The Register data described in this summary are based upon those 16,804 respondents who indicated a specialty within the field of psychology as that of their greatest competence. A look at the data pertaining to the characteristics of the respondents shows that 65% of them held a doctorate, 33% an MA or MS, and 2% a BA or BS. Fewer than 1% held less than a bachelor's degree or did not give degree information. Data on employment status indicated that 88% of the respondents in 1964 were employed full time as psychologists (the same percentage found in 1962), about 4% were employed part time, and approximately 3% were studying for advanced degrees (most of these being persons who had obtained a master's and were working on a PhD at the time of the survey). Two percent were not employed, and approximately 3% either did not report their employment status or indicated that although employed they were not working professionally as psychologists. The median salary for psychologists based upon 1964 Register data was $10,300. For those having a doctorate, the median was $11,000; for those with a master's, $8,900. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Turnover, biographical data, and fair employment practice.

Used biographical data to predict the tenure of 160 randomly chosen minority and nonminority female clerical personnel in a medium-sized insurance company. A weighted combination of 10 application blank items yielded cross-validated rs of .58 (minorities) and .56 (nonminorities) on a holdout sample of 100 randomly chosen female clerical personnel hired during the same period. Although personal history items have frequently been used to forecast turnover, recent evidence together with civil rights requirements have questioned the validity and fairness of the method. Results of the present study indicate that even after satisfying the legal requirements for using such information, turnover can still be predicted quite accurately with custom-tailored, cross-validated scoring keys. (19 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Maternity leave, women's employment, and marital incompatibility.

This research investigated the relationship between the length of women's maternity leave and marital incompatibility, in the context of other variables including the woman's employment, her dissatisfaction with the division of household labor, and her sense of role overload. Length of leave, work hours, and family salience were associated with several forms of dissatisfaction, which in turn predicted role overload. Role overload predicted increased marital incompatibility for experienced mothers but did not for first-time mothers, for whom discrepancies between preferred and actual child care were more important. Length of maternity leave showed significant interactions with other variables, supporting the hypothesis that a short leave is a risk factor that, when combined with another risk factor, contributes to personal and marital distress. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Race, employment, and the evaluation of work.

Tested 2 hypotheses derived from need hierarchy theory: (a) black and/or unemployed men will value material job outcomes more highly than white and/or working-class men and (b) Evaluation * Instrumentality of work and material outcomes will correlate more highly with evaluation of work for the black and/or unemployed than for the white and/or working-class samples. The evaluation and instrumentality of 15 job outcomes, working, and being unemployed, were gathered from 52 black working class and white hard-core unemployed men and 48 white working-class and black hard-core unemployed men (18-50 yrs old). Significant race, social class, and interaction effects occurred, but the direction of the differences was not exactly as predicted. Correlational analyses also did not support the hypotheses. Results are discussed in terms of experiential differences in the perception of work and unemployment. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Intelligence: Genetics, Genes, and Genomics.

More is known about the genetics of intelligence than about any other trait, behavioral or biological, which is selectively reviewed in this article. Two of the most interesting genetic findings are that heritability of intelligence increases throughout the life span and that the same genes affect diverse cognitive abilities. The most exciting direction for genetic research on intelligence is to harness the power of the Human Genome Project to identify some of the specific genes responsible for the heritability of intelligence. The next research direction will be functional genomics--for example, understanding the brain pathways between genes and intelligence. Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) will integrate life sciences research on intelligence; bottom-up molecular biological research will meet top-down psychological research in the brain. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Intelligence, Memory, and Handedness in Pedophilia.

A sample of 473 male patients with pedophilia (assessed by the patients' sexual history and penile response in the laboratory to standardized, erotic stimuli) or other problematic sexual interests or behaviors received brief neuropsychological assessments. Neuropsychological measures included a short form of the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale--Revised (D. Wechsler, 1981), the Hopkins Verbal Learning Test--Revised (R. H. B. Benedict, D. Schretlen. L. Groninger. & J. Brandt, 1998), the Brief Visuospatial Memory Test--Revised (R. H. B. Benedict, 1997), and the Edinburgh Handedness Inventory (S. M. Williams, 1986). Pedophilia showed significant negative correlations with IQ and immediate and delayed recall memory. Pedophilia was also related to non-right-handedness even after covarying age and IQ. These results suggest that pedophilia is linked to early neurodevelopmental perturbations. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Negro-white differences in validity of employment and training selection procedures: Summary of research evidence.

Examined 13 research studies dealing with differences between negroes and caucasians in the validity of employment and training selection procedures. It was found that 100 of the 160 validity coefficients computed were not significant for either group, indicating the need for validation prior to operational use. Significant differences in the coefficients between groups were found only in 7 instances. Statistical significance of single group validity occurred in 33 instances. The combination of ethnic groups yielded lower validity than for either group separately on only 3 out of 120 instances. It is concluded that there is very little evidence of differential validity. Single-group validity appears linked to the use of ratings (rather than more objective criterion measures), and small samples. (25 ref.) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Biofeedback, science, and training.

Responds to P. A. Norris's (see record 1987-01962-001) criticism of the present author's (see record 1986-11198-001) article on biofeedback by suggesting that Norris appears to be restating the present author's position—that biofeedback by itself is neither necessary nor sufficient to accomplish anything but is a technique to be used in conjunction with other approaches to meet certain therapeutic goals. (4 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Counseling and public employment.

This is the statement of the author before a house Select Subcommittee on Labor. "With respect to counseling, the public employment service requires well-trained staff. This means, 1st that its salary scales for counselors must be competitive… . 2nd, the shortages of trained counselors are such that adequate training stipends must be made available to qualified individuals who will undertake full-time programs of professional preparation. 3rd, research grants should be made available to qualified investigators who will undertake the kinds of occupational research that will help to answer the many questions about vocational effectiveness and career development which are still unresolved. The wise use of its human resources is a basic test of the effective functioning of a democratic nation. Vocational counseling under the auspices of a public employment service can contribute materially to the achievement of this goal." (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Intelligence and nonentrenchment.

Suggests that intelligence can best be understood through the study of nonentrenched (i.e., novel) tasks that require Ss to use concepts or form strategies that differ from those they are accustomed to. It is suggested that the limited success of the cognitive-correlates and cognitive-components approaches to intelligence are due in part to the use of tasks that are more entrenched (familiar) than would be optimal for the study of intelligence. Two nonentrenched tasks are described, one requiring projection into the future of states of objects, the other requiring complex analogical reasoning where multiple terms of analogies can be replaced by alternative answer options. Research with adult Ss into the 1st task focused on performance components of task solution; research into the 2nd task focused on metacomponents of task solution. Correlations of task and component latencies were generally higher than those obtained in most contemporary information-processing research on the nature of intelligence. Implications for educational theory and practice are discussed. (39 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Culture and Intelligence.

Intelligence cannot be fully or even meaningfully understood outside its cultural context. Work that seeks to study intelligence acontextually risks the imposition of an investigator's view of the world on the rest of the world. Moreover, work on intelligence within a single culture may fail to do justice to the range of skills and knowledge that may constitute intelligence broadly defined and risks drawing false and hasty generalizations. This article considers the relevance of culture to intelligence, as well as its investigation, assessment, and development. Studies that show the importance of understanding intelligence in its cultural context are described; the author concludes that intelligence must be understood in such context. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Parental employment, school climate, and children's academic and social development.

Longitudinal data were used to examine the effects of parental employment status and school climate on children's academic and social development. Hierarchical regression, analyses of covariance, and latent growth modeling were used to assess various aspects of change as a function of work status and school climate with family income and education as control variables. Parental employment was associated with positive changes in social and academic progress even after controlling for prior developmental level, climate, and family income although effects were small and complex. School climate had minimal effect on the outcome variables. Income and education were related to various school outcomes. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Intelligence and inspection time: Achievements, prospects, and problems.

The purpose of this article is to introduce the inspection-time measure to the wider psychological community. Inspection time is, to date, the only single information-processing index that accounts for approximately 20% of intelligence-test variance. We argue that inspection time, because of its much-replicated correlation with IQ and its potential for theoretical tractability, has more potential for our understanding of individual differences in cognitive ability than other indexes of human information processing. The nature of inspection time and its measurement are described, studies correlating inspection time and IQ-type scores are summarized, and the difficulties of explaining this correlation are highlighted. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Maternal employment and child care.

Highlights selected demographic, social, and economic forces related to the increase in employment of women and notes the benefits and stresses experienced by employed mothers. These include difficulties associated with finding and affording good day care, concerns about the effects of maternal employment and day care on children, and the difficulties frequently inherent in managing the 2 full-time jobs of employment and motherhood. Suggestions for mental health professionals who work with employed mothers are presented: (1) focus on the woman's family and community systems that may be the source of problems, (2) assist the woman in identifying and priority-rating her multiple demands, and (3) inform individuals about potential stresses and practical problem-solving techniques. (30 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)