Perceived income adequacy and selected financial management practices among families in Chile and Mexico

The purpose of this study was to explore the perceived adequacy of families' incomes and selected financial management practices (food budgetin debt, saving) in two Latin American countries. An interview survey was used to gather socioeconomic and demographic information from 537 families in Chile and Mexico. There were major differences between Chile and Mexico in the income adequacy responses and also major differences within countries between income levels. Implications of the findings for policy makers and curriculum planners who work in developing countries with inflationary conditions and income inadequacies are discussed.     

The use of constructive-developmental theory to advance the understanding of leadership

Constructive-developmental theory is a stage theory of adult development that focuses on the growth and elaboration of a person's ways of understanding the self and the world. In this article we review how the constructive-developmental frameworks of Kegan [Kegan, R. (1982). The evolving self: Problem and process in human development. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press], Torbert [Torbert, W. R. (1987). Managing the corporate dream: Restructuring for long-term success. Homewood, IL: Dow Jones-Irwin.], and Kohlberg [Kohlberg, L. (1969). Stage and sequence: The cognitive developmental approach to socialization. In D. Goslin (Ed.), Handbook of socialization: Theory and research. New York: Rand McNally] have been applied in the theoretical and empirical literature on leadership and management. Although the literature has produced a number of propositions, the notion that a leader's order of development should impact his or her leadership effectiveness or managerial performance has generated the most research. We found mixed support for this proposition as well as a number of limitations in the research in general. To have a greater impact on the leadership field, constructive-developmental theory needs to generate more robust research, to link more clearly with on-going streams of leadership research, and to explore the contribution of aspects of the theory beyond individual order of development.     

The changing sociological construct of the family

Recent attempts to announce the death of the family as a useful analytical category for sociologists are rebutted as being premature. The tendency to view household relations as family relations or, indeed, couple or gender relations as family relations seems to have arisen in the early 1970s. Earlier attempts to construct an empirically grounded analysis of family relationships have been curiously neglected. An account of one family on the Isle of Sheppey in Kent provides some illustrative ethnography on both the positive uses of family members-particularly siblings - and on the way the social boundaries of this family are constructed by its members. It is argued that the family is best understood as a system of relationships that change over time. There is a curious lack of systematic ethnography of contemporary family relationships so that what is taught to students as the sociology of the family may be widely at variance with their own personal experience. This may be partly a result of relying too much on random surveys of households at the expense of detailed explorations of existing patterns of social relationships and social meanings. Developing theoretical arguments on the basis of inadequate or inappropriate ethnography is evidently a dangerous and misleading exercise.     

The role of the family therapist in supportive services to families with handicapped children

The family therapist can play a critical role in assisting families of handicapped children develop positive functioning patterns. In this paper the author identifies a number of typical interactional difficulties found in these families together with the unique challenges they place before the family therapist and strategies that she has found to be effective in working with them on their relationship problems.     

Self Actualization in Marital Enrichment

The study attempted to evaluate the effectiveness of the Pairing Enrichment Program (PEP), a marriage enrichment program, in enhancing self-actualization. Shostrom's Personal Orientation Inventory (POI) was administered to an experimental group of married couples immediately prior to participating in PEP. A waiting list control group completed the POI at the same time. Three weeks later, following the completion of PEP for the experimental group, the POI was again administered to both groups. An analysis of co-variance was performed to test the effects of gender, group, and the interaction of these two factors on change in self-actualization (Post-POI minus Pre-POI), adjusting for six co-variables: Education of each, age of each, number of years married, and number of children. The results indicated that 1) being husband or wife had no significant effect on one's level of self-actualization, and that 2) the change in level of self-actualization was significantly greater (Positive Direction) for PEP participants than for non-PEP participants on the "I" and "C" scales of the POI     

To be or not to be: Control and balancing of type I and type II errors

The various costs of Type I and Type II errors of inference from data are discussed. Unfortunately, other things equal, Types I and II errors are inversely related. Six methods of minimizing Type I error in studies are presented, each of which may be employed even after data are collected. Type II errors may also be minimized by a combination of study design and analytic means. Although some of these techniques must be built into the study others can be undertaken when beginning work on a data set. Only one of these techniques will increase Type I error, and those involving data reduction may decrease both types of error.     

Some theoretical considerations on confidential adoption part IV: Countertransference

Psychological self-awareness is as essential to the maturation of one's professional self as is the development of theoretical and clinical expertise in child placement. This paper represents a first published attempt at examining countertransference in adoption. The focus is within the context of confidential adoptions, which the authors believe is more child-focused and intrapsychically based than the current experimentation with open adoptions. A distinction is made between countertransference and non-countertransference issues. Countertransference responses are divided into Racker's three categories: the concordant; the complementary; and the disjunctive. Clinical data illustrates these responses in actual practice from the perspective of confidential adoptions.This paper was presented in 1985 before the Illinois Infant Mental Health Association, National Society of Clinical Social Workers, and the National Association of Social Workers National Professional Symposium.This is the last of a series. Parts I, II, and III were published in Vol. 2, Nos. 1, 2, and 3.