Counselor Trainees' Assessment and Diagnosis of Lesbian Clients with Dysthymic Disorder

SUMMARY

Graduate-level counselor trainees completed an Assessment and Diagnostic Inventory consisting of clinical vignettes and a series of questions pertaining to conceptualization of client problem, diagnosis, and assessment of overall level of psychopathology.We hypothesized that participants would assign different diagnoses to clients with lesbian versus heterosexual sexual orientation. Participants responded to vignettes in which clients were identified as either a lesbian or a heterosexual female, with all other content identical. Participants were significantly more likely to perceive lesbian clients' problems to be related to sexual orientation for the vignette corresponding to dysthymic disorder. However, they were not more likely to assign personality disorder diagnoses, nor did they attribute a greater degree of psychopathology to lesbian clients with dysthymic disorder.     

Ecological Risk Assessment,Prediction, and Assessing Risk Predictions

Ecological risk assessment embodied in an adaptive management framework is becoming the global standard approach for formally assessing and managing the ecological risks of technology and development. Ensuring the continual improvement of ecological risk assessment approaches is partly achieved through the dissemination of not only the types of risk assessment approaches used, but also their efficacy. While there is an increasing body of literature describing the results of general comparisons between alternate risk assessment methods and models, there is a paucity of literature that post hoc assesses the performance of specific predictions based on an assessment of risk and the effectiveness of the particular model used to predict the risk. This is especially the case where risk assessments have been used to grant consent or approval for the construction of major infrastructure projects. While postconstruction environmental monitoring is increasingly commonplace, it is not common for a postconstruction assessment of the accuracy and performance of the ecological risk assessment and underpinning model to be undertaken. Without this “assessment of the assessment,” it is difficult for other practitioners to gain insight into the performance of the approach and models used and therefore, as argued here, this limits the rate of improvement of risk assessment approaches.     

(Mis)understanding Safety Culture and Its Relationship to Safety Management

Although the concept of safety culture was coined in relation to major accidents like Chernobyl and Piper Alpha, it has been embraced by the safety community at large as a cause for unsafe practice. In this article, three approaches to safety culture are discussed in terms of their underlying concepts of culture and organizational culture. Culture is an intangible, fuzzy concept encompassing acquired assumptions that is shared among the members of a group and that provides meaning to their perceptions and actions and those of others. The basic assumptions that form the essence of a culture are shared, yet tacit, convictions, which manifest themselves subtly in the visible world. As applied by safety researchers, the culture concept is deprived of much of its depth and subtlety, and is morphed into a grab bag of behavioral and other visible characteristics, without reference to the meaning these characteristics might actually have, and often infused with normative overtones. By combining the three approaches, we can resurrect the notion of safety culture and strengthen its analytical potential in understanding the development and implementation of safety management systems.     

Reliability analysis of consecutive k-out-of-n systems with non-identical components lifetimes

In recent years, the study of reliability properties of consecutive k-out-of-n systems has attracted a great deal of attention from both theoretical and practical perspectives. In this paper we consider linear and circular consecutive k-out-of-n systems. It is assumed that lifetimes of components of the systems are independent but their probability distributions are non-identical. We study the reliability properties of the residual lifetimes of such systems under the condition that at least (n−r+1), r≤n, components of the system are operating. We also investigate the probability that a specific number of components of the above-mentioned system operate at time t, t>0, under the condition that the system is alive at time t.     

Deconstructing maternal sensitivity: Predictive relations to mother‐child attachment in home and laboratory settings

Despite the well‐documented importance of parental sensitivity for child development, there is a lack of consensus regarding how best to assess it. We investigated the factor structure of maternal caregiving behavior as assessed at 12 months by the Maternal Behavior Q‐Sort (Pederson & Moran) with 274 mother‐infant dyads. Subsequently, we examined associations between these empirically‐derived dimensions and child attachment, assessed in the home and laboratory (final N = 157). Three dimensions of maternal behavior were identified, corresponding fairly closely to Ainsworth's original scales. They were labeled Cooperation/Attunement, Positivity, and Accessibility/Availability. Only Cooperation/Attunement consistently predicted home‐based attachment at 15 months and 2 years, and at comparable strength to the overall sensitivity score, suggesting that this construct may be central to sensitivity. At 18 months, compared to their primarily secure counterparts, different types of laboratory‐assessed insecure attachment were associated with different patterns of maternal behavior. Mothers in avoidant relationships (n = 18) were low on Cooperation/Attunement and Accessibility/Availability, but fairly high on Positivity. Mothers of disorganized infants (n = 11) were Cooperative/Attuned but somewhat less Positive toward, and less Accessible/Available to, their infants. A multidimensional approach to parental behavior may facilitate the identification of parenting precursors of insecure parent‐child relationships.     

Assessing student learning in the context of evaluating a chance course

This paper describes the use of different assessment methods to evaluate Chance courses in the NSF-funded Chance project. Multiple methods were used to measure changes in students' attitudes and beliefs about statistics, reasoning about probability and statistics, and ability to critique a newspaper article that reports statistical results. Samples of assessment materials and scoring rubrics used in the evaluation are included.     

Standards of Care for the Treatment of Adult Sex Offenders

Summary

A proposed version of these standards was first produced and published in the Journal of Offender Rehabilitation through input from professional meetings (Coleman and Dwyer, 1990). Since that time, The Standards of Care were reviewed and revised by a group of professionals and unanimously endorsed by voice vote by the participants in the Third International Congress on the Treatment of Sex Offenders held in Minneapolis, Minnesota, September 20–22, 1994. These Standards were again published in the Journal of Offender Rehabilitation (Coleman, Dwyer, Abel, Berner, Breiling, Hindman, Honey-Knopp, Langevin, and Pfäfflin, 1996). Those Standards have been subsequently reviewed by the current authors at the Fifth International Conference on the Treatment of Sex Offenders held in Caracas, Venezuela, March 22–27, 1998 and minor modifications and changes were incorporated into this version. The authors invite feedback from readers. Further revisions are anticipated and will be reviewed by current committee members and at future International Conferences on the Treatment of Sexual Offenders.     

Practical Considerations in the Interview and Evaluation of Sexual Offenders

SUMMARY

The evaluation and assessment of sexual offenders is different than any other type of evaluation, and most clinicians are not properly trained to interview this population. This article addresses the clinical and ethical issues particular to the interview, assessment, and evaluation of these types of offenders. It offers both practical information regarding the interview itself, along with an overview of classification systems, paraphilias, and assessment techniques used with this population. In addition, issues related to risk assessment and risk management are also addressed, and an introduction to the use of actuarial risk assessment instruments is provided.     

Current Practices in Residential Treatment for Adolescent Sex Offenders: A Survey

SUMMARY

A list of all treatment facilities for adolescent sex offenders that described themselves as inpatient or residential was requested from the Safer Society Foundation in Brandon, Vermont. A total of 203 such facilities were identified in this manner. Each was sent a questionnaire regarding their policies and practices. Of the 50 questionnaires that were returned, 49 were usable. Items on the questionnaire dealt with major phases of operating a residential program, including number of beds, average daily census, number of males and females in treatment, testing and assessment procedures, most frequent diagnoses, average IQ of patients, abuse history, therapeutic approaches used, number and types of individual/group treatment sessions per week, qualifications of therapists, average length of treatment, and follow-up research on treatment.     

Decision Making in Child Protective Services: A Risky Business?

Child Protective Services (CPS) in the United States has received a torrent of criticism from politicians, the media, child advocate groups, and the general public for a perceived propensity to make decisions that are detrimental to children and families. This perception has resulted in numerous lawsuits and court takeovers of CPS in 35 states, and calls for profound restructuring in other states. A widely prescribed remedy for decision errors and faulty judgments is an improvement of risk assessment strategies that enhance hazard evaluation through an improved understanding of threat potentials and exposure likelihoods. We examine the reliability and validity problems that continue to plague current CPS risk assessment and discuss actions that can be taken in the field, including the use of receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve technology to improve the predictive validity of risk assessment strategies.