Variables Affecting Readiness to Benefit From Career Interventions

This article identifies and briefly describes the broad range of variables that may influence clients’ readiness to benefit from career interventions. The article also discusses consequences of low readiness for effective use of career interventions and addresses implications for practice as well as for future research. Variables contributing to low readiness for effective use of career interventions include personal characteristics and circumstances; knowledge of self, options, and decision making; and prior experience with career interventions. Consequences of low readiness for using career interventions include premature disengagement, negative perception of skills and interests, selective acquisition of incomplete information, premature choice foreclosure, protracted exploration, dependent decision‐making style, and poor evaluation of options.     

Computer‐Assisted Career Guidance Systems: A Part of NCDA History

The first computer‐assisted career planning systems were developed in the late 1960s and were based soundly on the best of career development and decision‐making theory. Over the years, this tradition has continued as the technology that delivers these systems’ content has improved dramatically and as they have been universally accepted as effective tools for career guidance practice. Although their widespread use in the United States is currently affected by financial conditions, the potential for using these systems in developing countries as a part of their implementation of career guidance services is promising.     

Good Effects of Bad Feelings: Negative Affectivity and Group Decision‐making

Extending the growing interest in the relationship between affect and workgroup processes, we propose that groups make better use of their distributed information and therefore make better decisions when group members are higher in negative affectivity. In an experiment, we studied the influence of negative affectivity when information was distributed among group members and when group members had fully shared information. Results indicated that negative affectivity indeed stimulates group information processing and decision quality when information is distributed among group members.     

Takacs–Fiksel Method for Stationary Marked Gibbs Point Processes

Abstract. This article studies a method to estimate the parameters governing the distribution of a stationary marked Gibbs point process. This procedure, known as the Takacs–Fiksel method, is based on the estimation of the left and right hand sides of the Georgii–Nguyen–Zessin formula and leads to a family of estimators due to the possible choices of test functions. We propose several examples illustrating the interest and flexibility of this procedure. We also provide sufficient conditions based on the model and the test functions to derive asymptotic properties (consistency and asymptotic normality) of the resulting estimator. The different assumptions are discussed for exponential family models and for a large class of test functions. A short simulation study is proposed to assess the correctness of the methodology and the asymptotic results.     

Premarital sexual permissiveness of American and Chinese college students: A cross‐cultural comparison

Employing the Reiss scale of premarital permissiveness, the author compared attitudes toward kissing, petting and coitus among American and Chinese college students. The data were composed of self‐administered questionnaires completed in class by 227 students in a state university in Texas, and by 708 students in a national university in Taiwan. As expected, Chinese students were far less permissive than American students. The pattern of less permissiveness for females than for males was preserved across the two cultures. Chinese students tended to follow the traditional code of sexual mores, while their American counterparts tended to follow the code of “permissiveness with affection.” Explanations are proffered and speculations are attempted for the Sino‐American disparities in permissiveness by selected social variables.     

Bayes Estimates for the Price and Income Elasticities of Alcoholic Beverages in Finland From 1955 to 1980

The Lindley–Smith theory of Bayes estimates for multiple regression equations with exchangeability between the regression coefficients of the individual equations is extended to the case in which a first-order autoregressive process generates the regression coefficients. The ensuing formulas are applied to study monthly Finnish consumption of alcohol. The point of this application is that exchangeability between the regression coefficients is less than we can assess beforehand when there is a natural ordering, in this case according to chronological time, of the equations. Still, the general task of the Lindley–Smith estimators, to consider the combined data when estimating individual regression coefficients, is a relevant one.     

Characterizing multidimensional inequality measures which fulfil the Pigou–Dalton bundle principle

The Pigou–Dalton bundle dominance introduced by Fleurbaey and Trannoy (Social Choice and Welfare, 2003) captures the basic idea of the Pigou–Dalton transfer principle, demanding that, in the multidimensional context also, “a transfer from a richer person to a poorer one decreases inequality”. However, up to now, this principle has not been incorporated to derive multidimensional inequality measures. The aim of this article is to characterize measures which fulfil this property, and to identify sub-families of indices from a normative approach. The families we derive share their functional forms with others having already been obtained in the literature, the major difference being the restrictions upon the parameters.     

Staff responses to age‐related health changes in people with an intellectual disability in group homes

The purpose of this study was to explore how supervisors in group homes caring for people with intellectual disability responded to the development of age‐related health changes in their residents. Ten group home supervisors working in the disability sector were interviewed once. Data were analysed using Dimensional Analysis. The study identified several factors related to whether a resident could stay ‘at home’ or would need to be moved to residential aged care (nursing home) including: nature and extent of group home resources, group home staff comfort with residents’ health changes, staff skill at navigating the intersection between the disability and ageing sectors, and the supervisor’s philosophy of care. The ability of older people with an intellectual disability to ‘age in place’ is affected by staff knowledge about and comfort with age‐related illnesses, staff skills at navigating formal services, staffing flexibility, and the philosophy of group home supervisors. Despite the growing international concern for the rights of people with disability, particularly in relation to decision making, questions about the older person’s choice of residence and participation in decision making about what was best for them, were almost nonexistent. Rather, decisions were made based on what was considered to be in ‘the best interest’.