The college student-athlete: psychological considerations and interventions

This article reviews the literature dealing with problems brought by student-athletes to college counseling and mental health centers. Among the issues discussed are fear of success; identity conflict; social isolation; poor athletic performance; academic problems; and career or vocational concerns. In addition, the authors examine the paradox that although athletes experience as much or more psychological distress as nonathletes, research indicates that athletes use professional services less often than nonathletes. Finally, the authors review approaches to psychological intervention, including short-term psychotherapy, very brief interventions, cognitive behavioral therapy, and career/vocational counseling, and discuss special considerations for conducting therapy with athletes.     

THE POWER OF STUDENT'S t TEST: CAN A NON-SIMILAR TEST DO BETTER?

Lehmann & Stein (1948) proved the existence of non-similar tests which can be more powerful than best similar tests. They used Student's problem of testing for a non-zero mean given a random sample from the normal distribution with unknown variance as an example. This raises the question: should we use a non-similar test instead of Student's t test? Questions like this can be answered by comparing the power of the test with the power envelope. This paper discusses the difficulties involved in computing power envelopes. It reports an empirical comparison of the power of the t test and the power envelope and finds that the two are almost identical especially for sample sizes greater than 20. These findings suggest that, as well as being uniformly most powerful (UMP) within the class of similar tests, Student's t test is approximately UMP within the class of all tests. For practical purposes it might also be regarded as UMP when moderate or large sample sizes are involved.     

The Role of Work in Adolescent Development

This commentary discusses the articles in the special section, “Adolescent Career Development in Social Context.” Initially, common and integrative themes are identified and explicated based on the diverse perspectives of the work role in adolescence that were evident in these five articles. In addition, the theoretical frameworks provided by life-span, career development relational perspectives are discussed as possible means of integrating some of the findings presented by the authors of these articles. This article concludes with an observation on how the findings reported in the special section can inform career development scholarship and practice in the next millennium.     

Conservatism of the Accident Sequence Evaluation Program HRA Procedure

This paper presents a limited assessment of the conservatism of the Accident Sequence Evaluation Program (ASEP) human reliability analysis (HRA) procedure described in NUREG/CR-4772. The data for this study are derived from simulator examination reports from the NRC requalification examination cycle for nuclear power plant operators. The ASEP procedure was used to estimate human error probability (HEP) values for critical tasks, and the HEP results were compared with the failure rates observed in the examinations. The ASEP procedure was applied by PNNL operator license examiners who supplemented the limited information in the examination reports with expert judgment based upon their extensive simulator examination experience. Comparison of the average of the ASEP HEP values with the fraction of the population actually failed and demonstrated that the ASEP HEP values are larger (conservative) by a statistically significant average factor of two. Partitioning of tasks into subgroups based on the ASEP HEP values and comparison of the subgroup average ASEP HEP values with observed subgroup failure rates showed little or no conservatism for small ASEP HEP values, but considerable conservatism for larger ASEP HEP values.     

Some tests for detection of faulty inspection

Some heuristic tests for detection of existence of errors in inspection are proposed. Some of these tests are only effective if the sampling fraction ((sample size)/(lot size)) is rather large, and in all cases their application predicates special experiments to provide the requisite data. Feasibility of these experiments will vary according to specific circumstances.     

The Globalization of Self: Role and Identity Transformation from Above and Below

The process of globalization is transforming society with unprecedented speed and scope. Along the way, social roles are being altered and identities are being transformed. How do the forces of globalization shape the self? How do changes to the self affect social relationships and alter larger social structures? This paper offers a conceptual framework for addressing these questions. The ‘role‐as‐resource’ perspective is employed as a tool for differentiating between two opposing processes. On the one hand, top down forces associated with technocapitalism serve to colonize the self by sustaining roles associated with global consumption and production, while disrupting or erasing traditional roles. On the other hand, bottom‐up forces associated with local grassroots organizations and democratic social movements facilitate resistance by providing resources for a more agentic political self.     

Developing the Sexual Child

The idea that a child should not have sexual interests and experiences is fast being supplanted by the knowledge that he does have them; that they are an expression of perfectly normal, healthy energies, and that while it is necessary to gain control over them, they should not be forcibly suppressed” ( Renz & Renz 1935 : 92).