Coaching at the heart of managerial effectiveness: A cross-cultural study of managerial behaviours

This article considers the assessed performances of non-commissioned officers in aprogramme perceived as an important career enhancing activity for British military personnel. We introduce the idea of cognitive style as an important individual difference affecting performance on programmes of training and development and the implications for career progression. The research methodology adopted involved mixed methods as an alternative way of ‘seeing’, ‘researching’ and ‘theorising’ human resources development in this context. The research drew upon a mix of data from course participants and organizers, and it comprised cognitive style testing, within course assessment data and notes recorded during field observation. The results revealed relationships between the factors associated with ‘styles’, ‘assessed learning performance’ and ‘course experience’. Key perspectives on the experiences of training in terms of success and strategic direction were also identified. The study provides a deeper understanding of career-development processes in the military organization, considers the implications in which knowledge of an individual's style may have for the individual and course organizers and imports new theoretical frameworks into the study of human resource development.     

The Best of Both Worlds?

The Disney Channel hit show, Hannah Montana, constructs contemporary US girlhood and notions of femininity in relation to celebrity, such that its primary girl characters, Hannah Montana, Miley Stewart, and Lilly Truscott, as well as star Miley Cyrus, are positioned as particularly post-feminist subjects. In such a context, each of these girls can be understood as having chosen to perform a femininity that finds its locus in the maintenance and control of the body, as an illustration of her power as a girl, though without reference to feminist gains or “empowerment” rhetoric. Via discursive, narrative, and ideological textual analysis, this project explores the circulation of a post-feminist sensibility, as Rosalind Gill refers to it, and its iterations and ramifications for constructions of girlhood in contemporary media foregrounding girls and attracting young female audiences.     

Prevalence of Sexual Trauma History Using Behaviorally Specific Methods of Assessment in First Year College Students

There are several challenges associated with evaluating the prevalence of sexual trauma, including child sexual abuse and adult sexual assault. The aim of this study was to assess sexual trauma prevalence rates among first year college students (N = 954) using behaviorally specific questions and a more representative recruitment sample that did not rely on self-selection. Participants completed a list of sexual trauma questions, including general questions containing labels such as “rape” or “abuse” as well as behaviorally specific questions that describe specific behaviors that qualify as sexual trauma without labels. Results indicated that 6.7% of the sample reported at least one incident of child sexual abuse, with similar rates for men and women. Women were more likely to report a history of adult sexual assault, which was reported by 12.4% of the total sample. Participants were also more likely to endorse a history of sexual trauma when answering behaviorally specific rather than general “label” questions. Women survivors in particular were more likely than men to identify their experiences as abuse/assault (66.7% versus 21.1% for child sexual abuse), which may help explain prevalence differences between men and women in prior research. Men may be less likely than women to label their experiences as abuse and may be underidentified in sexual trauma research without the use of behaviorally specific questions. Overall, the results of this study suggest that the prevalence of sexual trauma is better assessed using behaviorally specific questions and that this is an important topic of study among both men and women.     

Virtual support groups among adoptive parents: Ideal for information seeking?

Abstract

Despite the use of online support groups within areas of child welfare, namely postadoptive services, research in this area has not kept pace. This study examined adoptive parent perceptions of a virtual platform utilized for an online support group, and the impact of these perceptions on information seeking effectiveness. Overall, findings indicate that participants viewed the platform as usable, flexible, and congruent with fostering adequate participant interaction. Perceived group interaction, satisfaction with group membership, and perceived usefulness of the virtual platform were all significant predictors of information seeking effectiveness. Data from this study suggest that ample consideration should be given to the form and function of - virtual platforms use to administer support groups. Implications for practice and apposite area of future research are discussed.     

Increased Focus on the Mouth Among Infants in the First Year of Life: A Longitudinal Eye‐Tracking Study

This study examines face‐scanning behaviors of infants at 6, 9, and 12 months as they watched videos of a woman describing an object in front of her. The videos were created to vary information in the mouth (speaking vs. smiling) and the eyes (gazing into the camera vs. cueing the infant with head turn or gaze direction to an object being described). Infants tended to divide their attention between the eyes and the mouth, looking less at the eyes with age and more at the mouth than the eyes at 9 and 12 months. Attention to the mouth was greater on speaking trials than on smiling trials at all three ages, and this difference increased between 6 and 9 months. Despite consistent results within subjects, there was considerable variation between subjects. This raises the question of whether a developmental “norm” of face scanning in infancy ought to be pursued. Rather, these data add to emerging evidence suggesting that individual differences in face scanning might reliably predict aspects of later development.     

Some differences between neurotic delinquents and other neurotic children 1

The Adoption and Safe Families Act (ASFA) neglects the clinical implications of permanency planning decisions for foster care children. The resulting decisions can undermine children's attachment-based treatment progress. The intersection of policy and practice with foster care children raises issues of ruptured attachments, communications between therapists and the larger macrolevel systems, the role of the therapist in the permanency decision process, and the impact of permanency decisions on treatment. An improved policy would promote greater coordination between clinical and court processes and would expand the criterion for permanency planning decisions to include the clinical needs of families.     

Solving problems in parameter redundancy using computer algebra

A model, involving a particular set of parameters, is said to be parameter redundant when the likelihood can be expressed in terms of a smaller set of parameters. In many important cases, the parameter redundancy of a model can be checked by evaluating the symbolic rank of a derivative matrix. We describe the main results, and show how to construct this matrix using the symbolic algebra package Maple. We apply the theory to examples from the mark-recapture field. General code is given which can be applied to other models.     

Jane's Jealousy: A Narrative Analysis of Emotion Experience in Its Social Context

This article provides a narrative analysis of one written account of jealousy. The analysis assumes the importance of cultural, historical, and social context in making sense of the experience of jealousy. Our analysis was organized around the positioning triad of story line, positioning, and social acts. We were particularly guided by a structural Labovian (1972) approach to the basic story line. The story we examined was chosen for its useful illustration of three subject positions: victim, avenger, and outsider. The analysis highlights the way in which jealousy is constituted through a sequential unfolding of events that are made meaningful within the context of local mores, adolescent romance, and revenge.     

Duration of Accrual and Follow-up for Two-Stage Clinical Trials

Group sequential trialswith time to event end points can be complicated to design. Notonly are there unlimited choices for the number of events requiredat each stage, but for each of these choices, there are unlimitedcombinations of accrual and follow-up at each stage that providethe required events. Methods are presented for determining optimalcombinations of accrual and follow-up for two-stage clinicaltrials with time to event end points. Optimization is based onminimizing the expected total study length as a function of theexpected accrual duration or sample size while providing an appropriateoverall size and power. Optimal values of expected accrual durationand minimum expected total study length are given assuming anexponential proportional hazards model comparing two treatmentgroups. The expected total study length can be substantiallydecreased by including a follow-up period during which accrualis suspended. Conditions that warrant an interim follow-up periodare considered, and the gain in efficiency achieved by includingan interim follow-up period is quantified. The gain in efficiencyshould be weighed against the practical difficulties in implementingsuch designs. An example is given to illustrate the use of thesetechniques in designing a clinical trial to compare two chemotherapyregimens for lung cancer. Practical considerations of includingan interim follow-up period are discussed.     

Understanding political pricing of labor services: The Davis-Bacon Act

Examples of divergence between the intended (stated) and actual consequences of government intervention in the marketplace abound. In this paper, two legislative attempts to specify wage rates on government contracts are analyzed. The Davis-Bacon Act has been successful in forcing government contractors to pay the prevailing union wage rate. In contrast, the Walsh-Healey Act has been ineffective in establishing minimum wage scales on most government contracts. Analysis indicates that the success of one and the failure of the other is due to differences in enforcement costs, special interest group support, the concentration of opposition, and the narrower scope of Davis-Bacon.