Working with Parents of Exceptional Children: The Need for More Careful Thought and More Positive Action

The majority of studies relating to families of handicapped children emphasise the negative emotions of the parents, particularly initial shock followed by guilt, chronic sorrow and anxiety. Rarely have these studies relied on the parents' assessments of their own reactions. As a consequence of this, there is little recognition in the relevant literature of either the wide range of parental reaction or the successful and satisfying adjustments which many parents make. A second important limitation in these studies is the absence of a theoretical framework either to test the occasional contradictions that can occur or arising out of the findings themselves.

As an alternative approach, it is suggested that a theoretical position could be developed from the concept of need recognising that the needs of the parents are distinct from those of their handicapped child, although usually consistent with them. An analysis of the research literature (Burden, 1981) has already identified five areas of need-the need for information, support, advice, access to resources and opportunities for social interaction.

It is recognised that the concept of need is a necessary but insufficient basis for an adequate theory. The notion of support coinciding with the parents' reaction to transitions in the child's life is offered as an additional factor in the family's successful adjustment. Three other variables are cited as affecting parental adjustment-individual differences in resistance to stress; the extent and nature of the child's disability and the tolerance of the community to that particular disability. In developing this theoretical framework, reference is made to some of the practical problems associated with the implementation of professional services.     

The compensation of national union presidents: Moderating effects of union size

Over the last forty years numerous reseachers from the fields of economics, finance, and human resources management have proposed and empirically evaluated a number of models in efforts to identify determinants of executive compensation. Recently, similar research efforts have been undertaken to identify compensation determinants for union officers, both at the local and national levels. As an extension of these works, this study found measures of union financial strength, job complexity, performance and tenure in office to be directly related to national union presidents’ compensation. Although union income and relative union member earnings were the strongest determinants of officer compensation for the sample of unions as a whole, analyses of three subgroups of unions based on size revealed very different findings for large as opposed to small and medium-sized unions.     

PROPERTY RIGHTS and DECISION MAKING IN THE SOVIET UNION: INTERPRETING SOVIET ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY

Soviet history consists of two periods which differ according to degree of environmental concern. The difference is explainable in the context of a property-rights analysis of the Soviet hierarchy. In a model in which membership in the hierarchy is understood as a quasi-transferable property right, the degree of Soviet environmental conservation is directly related to the degree of stability of the hierarchy. Democratic institutions within the hierarchy serve to mitigate the informational problems that accompany collective decision making.     

What Parents Think—A Commentary

The previous article on child rearing is discussed, with particular reference to sampling limitations and the validity of the Hereford Parent Attitude Survey. Some explanations for the reported attitude differences between socioeconomic groups are advanced.     

Issues in Qualitative and Quantitative Risk Analysis for Developmental Toxicology1

The qualitative and quantitative evaluation of risk in developmental toxicology has been discussed in several recent publications.(^1–3) A number of issues still are to be resolved in this area. The qualitative evaluation and interpretation of end points in developmental toxicology depends on an understanding of the biological events leading to the end points observed, the relationships among end points, and their relationship to dose and to maternal toxicity. The interpretation of these end points is also affected by the statistical power of the experiments used for detecting the various end points observed. The quantitative risk assessment attempts to estimate human risk for developmental toxicity as a function of dose. The current approach is to apply safety (uncertainty) factors to die no observed effect level (NOEL). An alternative presented and discussed here is to model the experimental data and apply a safety factor to an estimated risk level to achieve an “acceptable” level of risk. In cases where the dose-response curves upward, this approach provides a conservative estimate of risk. This procedure does not preclude the existence of a threshold dose. More research is needed to develop appropriate dose-response models that can provide better estimates for low-dose extrapolation of developmental effects.     

The benefits of a nap during prolonged work and wakefulness

Prolonged work scenarios with demands for sustained performance are increasingly common. Because sleep loss inevitably compromises functioning in such situations, napping has been proposed as a countermeasure. The optimal timing of the nap relative to its benefits for performance and mood is not known, however. To address this issue, 41 healthy adults were permitted a two-hour nap at one of five times during a 56-hour period of intermittent work, with no other sleep. Naps were placed 12 hours apart, near the circadian peak (P) or trough (T), and were preceded by 6(P), 18(T), 30(P), 42(T), or 54(P) hours of wakefulness. Work test bouts occurred every few hours and consisted of a variety of psychomotor and cognitive tasks as well as mood scales completed at the beginning, middle and end of each bout. A total of eight performance and 24 mood parameters were derived from the bouts and compared between groups at all test points prior to and following the naps. An estimate of the extent to which each nap condition differed from the control (P54) condition was derived by totalling the proportion of test points that yielded statistically significant results relative to the total number of tests conducted both before and after naps.

Although all performance and most mood parameters displayed a circadian-modulated deterioration as the protocol progressed, a nap appeared to attentuate the extent of this change in all performance parameters but not in mood parameters. Overall, the timing of the nap across days and within the circadian cycle was irrelevant to its effect on performance, suggesting that it diminished the intrusion of sleepiness into behavioural functioning, even though subjects were phenomenally unaware of this benefit.