The Criterial Crisis of the Academic World*

The author analyzes the crisis in standards in the academic world where symptoms of academic fraud and diminished quality are linked to increasing competitive pressure, demographic forces, and defects in the social system of professional control, examples of a criterial system with mechanical assessment technology that generates paradoxical outcomes. The paper addresses such issues as redundancy of publications and defects in the peer review system, drawing examples from the fields of medicine, science and sociology, It is argued that a decline in academic standards is facilitated by the confusion involved in differentiating criteria from standards. Further analysis of criterial systems is suggested, along with the need for an explicit examination of academic values and quality.     

Clinical observations on interferences of early father absence in the achievement of femininity

In clinical work, we have observed that the loss of the father through divorce has a significant effect on the young girl's developing sense of feminity. This paper briefly reviews the research findings from sex-role development theory and psychoanalytic theory, and presents clinical discussions of latency aged girls whose parents divorced during their daughter's early and oedipal years. The most common defensive or coping patterns seen in these child patients during latency are identified, with clinical material presented to illustrate both the existence of these patterns and implications for treatment.     

Arrow's theorem for economic environments and effective social preferences

Arrow's impossibility theorem has been proved for the realm of private goods and economic preferences by Border and by Bordes and Le Breton. However, their proofs require the exclusion of the zero vector from the commodity space. This paper proves the impossibility theorem for the entire allocation space and the classical domain of economic preferences by adding effectiveness to Arrow's hypothesis. Social preference is effective if every nonempty compact set contains at least one socially optimal allocation.Financial support from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (Canada) is gratefully acknowledged. The comments of an anonymous referee were much appreciated. The author assumes responsibility for any errors.     

The effect of probing on deceivers and truthtellers

This study examined the effect of probing for additional information on the accuracy of deception detection. One hundred forty-eight experimental interactions were analyzed to see whether deceivers and truthtellers behave differently when probed and whether probing improved deception detection. Probing produced a number of changes in nonverbal behavior, several of which differed between deceivers and truthtellers. Probing may have communicated suspicion or uncertainty; therefore, deceptive sources were motivated to control their nonverbal demeanor to mask deception-related cues and appear truthful. Probing did not improve detection. Instead, probing receivers considered all sources more truthful. It is suggested that suspiciousness and prior knowledge may affect probing's efficacy.     

Roads and roadblocks to dual commitment: Similar and dissimilar antecedents of union and company commitment

Dual commitment received wide attention during the 1950s and, after a waning of interest during the 1960s and 1970s, interest has grown anew. In this study of dual commitment we used a model of investment and returns, applied referent theory to it, and grounded the investigation in an industrial relations context at an airline carrier in order to examine both company and union commitment. We found that wages were a positive income elastic good with respect to company commitment, but they were a negative good with respect to union commitment. Information obtained from the firm or the union also resulted in divergencies in the commitments. External labor market variables were unrelated to union commitment, but they were related to company commitment. Finally, job influence and perceptions concerning a labor-management program were positive predictors of the two commitments; as such, they have implications for the way firms and unions may want to build dual commitment. We thank Peter Cappelli, Fritz Drasgow, Peter Feuille, Greg Oldham, Lawrence T. Pinfield, and Dean Tjosvold for helpful comments.     

Specifying and facilitating family involvement in services to persons with developmental disabilities

This paper recognizes the important role of family involvement in services to people with developmental disabilities. The paper presents a conceptualization of involvement that was an outcome of a qualitative study of involvement from the perspective of family members themselves. The authors identify a framework of family involvement the composition of which incorporates four system levels (i.e. the individual, program/agency, community, society) and the five role opportunities for family members (i.e. treatment agent, planner, advocate, evaluator, and consultant/educator). Barriers to involvement are then delineated and the authors autline a process for promoting family involvement: 1) contracting for involvement; 2) developing a support system for involvement; and 3) monitoring and evaluating involvement.Presented at the Fourth Annual Conference of The Michigan Chapter, National Association of Social Workers, May 14, 1988. Grand Rapids Michigan.The writing of this paper was supported in part by a research stimulation grant awarded to the authors by Wayne State University. Portions of this article are included in an extensive research report in Epstein, I and Grasso, A. Editors,Research Utilization in Social Work, Wayne State Univesity Press, in Press.