Culture and Assessment: Nomothetic and Idiographic Considerations

This article summarizes presentations on career assessment delivered at the 2007 joint symposium of the International Association for Educational and Vocational Guidance, Society for Vocational Psychology, and National Career Development Association. Notable among the many themes that emerged from this discussion group were the concepts of culture and assessment and the mutually beneficial outcomes of idiographic and nomothetic approaches to career assessment. Brief reviews of each presentation highlight these recurring themes.     

Evaluating retailer behavior in preventing youth access to harmful legal products a feasibility test

This article reports results from a feasibility study of a community effort to reduce the availability of legal products that youth can use to get high. The study evaluated the potential of youth purchase attempts to detect actual changes in retail availability of harmful legal products. These results were triangulated with self-reports from retailers about their own policies and practices. Before the intervention, less than half of retailers reported using any of six possible strategies identified as ways to reduce youth access to harmful products, and less than 8% of baseline youth attempts to purchase potentially harmful legal products were refused or questioned. After the low-dosage intervention, retailers reported increased use of three strategies and a statistically significant increase in the percentage of purchase attempts that were either questioned or refused by retail clerks. These findings (a) demonstrate the potential feasibility of retailer-focused environmental strategies and (b) support continued use of youth purchase attempts as a measure of actual retailer behavior.     

Designing for identity in game-based learning

Games for learning often aim to change players’ identities (e.g., helping students be more like scientists, urban planners, or empowered problem solvers). An alternative approach to changing player identity is to design games that better account for the nested identities of students as players. We use a “nexus of identification” framework to interpret student gameplay and suggest an alternative approach to educational game design that accounts for identity, rather than transforms it.     

Exploring communicative functions of humor: the development and assessment of a new functions of humor scale

This work develops and assesses a new Functions of Humor Scale, a scale that measures purposes (identification, clarification, enforcement, and differentiation) for which individuals enact humor. Two studies were conducted using undergraduate students (N = 210, N = 233) from different regions of the United States. Construct and criterion validity were established via factor analysis and the concurrent assessment of the new scale with previously published measures of humor. In addition, the scale produced good internal consistency coefficients for each factor. The researchers suggest continued testing and assessments for the new measure.     

Access to social protection among people with disabilities: Evidence from Viet Nam

Although people with disabilities are frequently targeted as key beneficiaries of social protection, little is known on their access to existing programmes. This study uses mixed methods to explore participation in disability‐targeted and non‐targeted social protection programmes in Viet Nam, particularly in the district of Cam Le. In this district, social assistance and health insurance coverage among people with disabilities was 53 per cent and 96 per cent respectively. However, few accessed employment‐linked social insurance and other disability‐targeted benefits (e.g. vocational training, transportation discounts). Factors affecting access included the accessibility of the application process, disability assessment procedures, awareness and the perceived utility of programmes, and attitudes on disability and social protection.     

Ethnographic insights into competing forms of co‐production: A case study of the politics of street trees in a northern English city

The aim of this article is to explore the link between different notions of co‐production. It seeks to emphasise the underlying politics of co‐production in the sense of who defines co‐production, especially in relation to initial decisions concerning which specific policy areas are deemed suitable for codesigning, cocreating, or codelivering with services users or local communities. We argue that the rejection of co‐production by government may inflame political resentment and reconfirm negative pre‐existing attitudes about “the establishment.” This is particularly problematic when politicians have promoted the rhetoric of “inclusive governance,” “sharing power,” or “delegating power” but then reject the co‐productive claims emerging from such statements. The study contributes to existing work by analysing what happens when co‐productive structures are terminated or when public protests demand the reinstitutionalisation of those relationships. We make this contribution by presenting findings from an ethnographic case study involving street trees in a large English city. We suggest these specific findings have a broader relevance.