A general moodel of crisis intervention

This article presents a general model of crisis intervention designed to be used in most practice settings. The model is a synthesis of what has previously been written about crisis intervention theory and practice along with the author's own contributions. The various definitions of what constitutes a crisis and the stages of a crisis reaction are discussed. In the beginning phases of crisis treatment it is suggested that the clinician should complete six tasks, one of which is identifying with the client and precipitating event that led to the crisis. As the treatment process continues it is suggested that the clinician should complete six tasks, one of which is designing psychological and behavioral tasks that will reduce stress and help the client resolve the crisis. Finally, the termination process is reviewed.     

An industrial application of meta-evaluation

This article describes the efforts of an industrial training organization to increase the number and to improve the quality of “follow-up” evaluations (i.e., evaluations in terms of post-training job performance). Efforts included an analysis of the problems encountered in evaluating training, development and implementation of corrective actions, and an evaluation of the corrective actions. The project illustrates the process of “meta-evaluations.”     

Evaluating the Evaluators: Should Investors Trust Corporate Governance Metrics Ratings?

Companies are under increasing pressure to have their corporate governance rated by an independent corporate governance metrics firm, such as Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS) or Governance Metrics International (GMI). These rating firms claim to be able to determine how effective and responsive a company’s board is. Institutional investors have begun using these board governance ratings when deciding which firms to include in their stock portfolios. This paper considers whether investors, many of whom claim to be socially responsible, should be relying upon board governance metrics. We find that these metrics are not good indicators of either the quality of a firm’s earnings or of its ethics.     

Movement and structure as determinants of spatial representations

It was hypothesized that the cognitive representation of distances between locations in an environment is a function not only of the environment's structure, but also of a person's pattern of travel within the environment. In the present study subjects were exposed to an experimental environment in which some locations were separated either by an opaque or a transparent barrier and other locations were not separated by any barrier. As subjects learned where the locations were, they were required to follow a specific route that allowed travel between some locations in each category but not others. Afterward subjects were asked to reproduce from memory the separation between pairs of locations. The results supported the hypothesis. Recalled distance between locations was significantly affected by both movement patterns of subjects and structural aspects of the environment (type of barrier and actual separation between locations). These results are interpreted in terms of the types of information made available through particular movement patterns and the corresponding salience of that information.