Demographic correlates of psychological strain.

Indexes of psychological strain are related to demographic variables in a population of 8,234 industrial employees. The strain indexes refer to: (a) job-related strain, (b) economic strain, and (c) psychosomatic symptoms. The demographic variables are age, sex, and education. It is shown that: (a) each of the demographic variables independently of the others is related to strain rates, (b) the relationships of demographic variables to strain are different for each of the indexes, (c) there are complex interactions among the demographic variables which produce striking deviations in strain rates in some subpopulations. The results are interpreted with reference to the methodological problems in using strain indexes when comparing unmatched populations, and with reference to representative hypotheses drawn from physiology, social psychology, and economics. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Being ethical in organizational research.

Suggests that even a researcher guided by moral intentions and learned in the code of ethics of the American Psychological Association is unprepared for the challenge of being ethical in organizational research. When dealing with persons in situ, in their normal role relations with others, ethical dilemmas arise from the researcher becoming entangled in a network of multiple roles and in the ambiguous and conflicting expectations derived from them. This article describes research with organized Ss and proposes role theory as a means for understanding ethical dilemmas in organizational research and for guiding the creation of research relationships with participants in which to address and moderate these dilemmas. It is proposed that research training and a code of ethics be developed that help researchers establish means for dealing with dilemmas in which there are no ethical solutions except those resting on the ad hoc consent of all parties. (26 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Relationships among criteria of job performance.

Because intercorrelations between 5 criteria of job performance were low, "overall performance" seems to be of less value than previously thought. Ss were 975 individuals in 27 units of a delivery service firm. The 5 measures of job performance were: overall effectiveness, productivity, chargeable accidents, unexcused accidents, and errors. "Measurement and use of job performance criterion variables will remain at a primitive and empirical level until there is created some complex theory of job performance which takes into account systems of causal and conditioning variables." (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Durability of organizational change.

Describes a program by a manufacturing firm to change their organizational system and member attitudes, and motivations from the existing "autocratic" model to a more "participative" one. A follow-up inquiry made 5 yr. later in 1969 assessed the direction and degree of systemic change during a period in which no further change efforts were made. Results indicate that progress continued. Job attitudes became more favorable, task orientation and amount of supervisory leadership increased, control became more dispersed across hierarchical levels, and participation increased in goal-setting, decision making, and communications. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Obituary: Rensis Likert (1903-1981).

The coherence of Rensis Likert's contributions to psychology is not widely known or appreciated. To some he is known as the entrepreneurial leader of a large research institution, to others as one preoccupied with the technology of social inquiry, to others as an exponent of the utility of psychology and an applied psychologist par excellence, and to others as a substantive contributor to social psychological theory and knowledge. All of these images are valid. Their unity derives from his conception of the problems most worth attention and how one could deal with them. He considered the most pressing contemporary problems to be those concerning the relationship of persons to their organized societal contexts. He greatly extended our methodological resources for studying populations in context, created institutions to foster such work, and developed ideas that help not only to understand person-context relationships but also to aid the design of social contexts that optimize the development and humane use of human resources. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Contributions of professional community to exemplary use of ICT

Abstract  In these six case study sites, the commitment to teachers' individual learning about technology as a support to instruction was very strong and was complemented by technology leadership, support staff and professional development programming dedicated towards this end. This paper describes some conclusions about how the presence of this need to learn and the supportive conditions to do so was reciprocal, or mutually supportive, of the development of professional community around technology use. The professional community deepened and refined the shared vision related to the purposes of instructional technology, and the technology support. The supposition is that effective use of technology and professional community are mutually supportive in that increases in one create conditions for increases in the other.     

Pseudomorphic HEMT manufacturing technology for multifunctionalKa-band MMIC applications

We have demonstrated very good performance, high yield Ka-band multifunctional MMIC results using our recently developed 0.25-μm gate length pseudomorphic HEMT (PHEMT) manufacturing technology. Four types of MMIC transceiver components-low noise amplifiers, power amplifiers, mixers, and voltage controlled oscillators-were processed on the same PHEMT wafer, and all were fabricated using a common gate recess process. High performance and high producibility for all four MMIC components was achieved through the optimization of the device epitaxial structure, a process with wide margins for critical process steps and circuit designs that allow for anticipated process variations, resulting in significant performance margins. We obtained excellent results for the Ka-band power amplifier: greater than 26 dBm output power at center frequency with 4.0% standard deviation over the 3-in. wafer, 2-GHz bandwidth, greater than 20 pet-cent power-added efficiency, over 8 dB associated gain, and over 10 dB linear gain. The best performance for the Ka-band LNA was over 17 dB gain and 3.5 dB noise figure at Ka-band. In this paper, we report our device, process, and circuit approach to achieve the state-of-the-art performance and producibility of our MMIC chips     

Plagiarism, credit assignment, and ownership of data.

Many instances of alleged ethical misconduct relating to plagiarism, credit assignment in publications, and ownership of research data involve complexities of kinds not fully envisioned in past years. Cases are described to illustrate (a) new forms of incompatibility among the ethical systems of different professions, (b) diffusion or loss of protective control over confidential research data, and (c) use of credit assignments for purposes other than fair identification of contributors. (1 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)