Career Counseling for Longevity: Self-Care and Burnout Prevention Strategies for Counselor Resilience

Balancing self-care and other-care is often a struggle for career counselors and others in the helping professions. The process of caring is made up of a constant series of empathic attachments, active involvements, and felt separations. The ability to continually engage in the caring cycle is important for success. However, the constant need to re-create the cycle of caring can lead to counselor depletion and burnout. This article provides a developmental framework for assisting career counselors to avoid depleted caring while prolonging their professional longevity. The model of self-care includes recognizing the hazards of high touch work, such as limited resources and constant one-way caring. Also addressed are specific means of professional and personal sustenance, such as maximizing experiences of professional success and balancing personal wellness throughout one's career.     

A Methylome‐Wide Association Study of Trajectories of Oppositional Defiant Behaviors and Biological Overlap With Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder

In 671 mother–child (49% male) pairs from an epidemiological birth cohort, we investigated (a) prospective associations between DNA methylation (at birth) and trajectories (ages 7–13) of oppositional defiant disorder (ODD), and the ODD subdimensions of irritable and headstrong; (b) common biological pathways, indexed by DNA methylation, between ODD trajectories and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD); (c) genetic influence on DNA methylation; and (d) prenatal risk exposure associations. Methylome‐wide significant associations were identified for the ODD and headstrong, but not for irritable. Overlap analysis indicated biological correlates between ODD, headstrong, and ADHD. DNA methylation in ODD and headstrong was (to a degree) genetically influenced. DNA methylation associated with prenatal risk exposures of maternal anxiety (headstrong) and cigarette smoking (ODD and headstrong).     

Blood zinc protoporphyrin, serum total protein, and total cholesterol levels in automobile workshop workers in relation to lead toxicity: Our experience

Blood zinc protoporphyrin (ZPP), serum total protein (TP), and total cholesterol (TC) levels in automobile workshop workers in relation to lead toxicity were analysed. In the present study, automobile workshop workers (healthy male workers at an age between 28 and 35 from four major automobile workshops in Kottayam, Kerala State, India) and the control (male healthy adults at an age between 28 and 35 residing at Aymanam, a distant village at Kottayam District, Kerala having reduced or no chance of lead exposure) displayed significant difference in blood lead (BPb) and blood ZZP (BZPP) level. The mean value of BPb in automobile workshop workers was 15.76±0.33 μg/dl, while in the control it was 8.20±0.15 μg/dl. In automobile workshop workers, the mean value of BZPP was 34.2±0.62 μg/dl. The control group exhibited a mean of 11.5±0.22 μg/dl. Automobile workshop workers exhibited significant increase in BZPP was corresponding to the increase in BPb level. The total protein levels estimated in automobile workshop workers showed significant decrease compared to control individuals, but was within the reference range of healthy individuals. The mean value of TP level in automobile workshop workers and control was 6.9±0.13 g/dl and 7.71±0.18 g/dl, respectively. There was no significant difference in blood haemoglobin (BHb) level among the automobile workshop workers and control. The serum TC level in automobile workshop workers showed significant decrease compared to the control individuals, but was with in the reference range of healthy individuals. The mean level of serum TC in automobile workshop workers was 162.00±3.44 mg/dl and the same in control was 172.86±4.32 mg/dl. The present study affirms occupational lead toxicity in automobile workshop workers and its effect on serum protein and cholesterol levels.     

Opportunity knocks

Research on technological opportunity has typically focused on the impact of broad industry characteristics on R&D intensity of firms. This study complements such approaches by examining the impact of a multidimensional vector that measures technological opportunity on independent inventors’ decisions to patent and commercialize inventions. Using data from 559 inventions and controlling for demand, appropriability, and competitive conditions, we found two of four tested dimensions of technological opportunity - technical performance and technical uncertainty - to be significant and important determinants of the likelihood of commercialization. Technical feasibility appears important in affecting patenting but unimportant in affecting commercialization. Technical significance carries a negative, although insignificant, sign conditioning commercialization.     

Factors affecting journal submission numbers: Impact factor and peer review reputation

Previous research has found that researchers rank journal reputation and impact factor (IF) amongst the key selection criteria when choosing where to submit. We explored the actual effect upon submission numbers of several possible factors. We retrieved 10 years of submission data from over a thousand journals, as well as data on IF, retractions, and other factors. We performed statistical analysis and identified correlations. We also undertook case study research on the 55 most significant submission decreases. We found a statistically significant correlation between changes in IF, ISI percentage ranking, and changes in submissions numbers in subsequent years. We also found a statistically significant effect on submission numbers in the year following the publication of a retraction. Our case studies identified other factors, including negative feedback on the peer review process. Our findings regarding IF confirm previous indications about the significance of IF on submissions. We explain the correlation with retractions through the concept of ‘peer review reputation’. These results indicate that editors and publishers need to focus on a journal's peer review practices, as well as a journal's IF, if they are to maintain and grow submissions.     

Childhood neglect and adulthood involvement in HIV-related risk behaviors

OBJECTIVE: Much research has been done to examine the long-term effects of being victimized by sexual, physical, and/or emotional abuse in childhood, but much less research has focused on the impact of childhood neglect experiences. This study examines the role that childhood neglect has on adult women's involvement in HIV-related risky behaviors. METHODS: The data come from a study of 250 "at risk" women living in the Atlanta, GA metropolitan area, most of whom were African American. Data were collected in face-to-face interviews between 1997 and 2000. Multiple regression was used to explore the relationship between childhood neglect experiences, self-esteem, attitudes toward condom use, and involvement in HIV-related risky behaviors. RESULTS: Overall, the model tested received strong support by the study data. Childhood neglect led to reduced self-esteem. Neglect was associated with worsened attitudes toward condom use and women who experienced childhood neglect also reported more involvement in HIV risk behaviors. CONCLUSIONS: HIV intervention programs ought to target women who have experienced childhood neglect, as neglect experiences have adverse impacts upon their self-esteem, condom-related attitudes, and HIV risk behavior practices in adulthood.     

Scoring Stability in a Large‐Scale Assessment Program: A Longitudinal Analysis of Leniency/Severity Effects

Although much attention has been given to rater effects in rater‐mediated assessment contexts, little research has examined the overall stability of leniency and severity effects over time. This study examined longitudinal scoring data collected during three consecutive administrations of a large‐scale, multi‐state summative assessment program. Multilevel models were used to assess the overall extent of rater leniency/severity during scoring and examine the extent to which leniency/severity effects were stable across the three administrations. Model results were then applied to scaled scores to estimate the impact of the stability of leniency/severity effects on students’ scores. Results showed relative scoring stability across administrations in mathematics. In English language arts, short constructed response items showed evidence of slightly increasing severity across administrations, while essays showed mixed results: evidence of both slightly increasing severity and moderately increasing leniency over time, depending on trait. However, when model results were applied to scaled scores, results revealed rater effects had minimal impact on students’ scores.     

Time for inclusion?

This article examines the constraints of modern temporality which are antithetical to the careful consideration that working with diverse learners requires for the development of inclusive, democratic education. We take up the conceptual construct of time to explore how it mediates systemic practices that impact policy positions of inclusion in initial teacher education and schooling. Our analysis demonstrates that temporality shapes the possibilities of inclusive practice within which a dominant agenda of compliance frames classroom complexities – both in schooling and higher education environments – into fragmented and preconceived responses to challenging situations. Education systems position educators in risk discourses concentrated on compliance and performance, in part through an emphasis that is placed on the diagnosis of learner differences and subsequent compartmentalised responses. Through schisms in modern time, we demonstrate the ways in which inclusion, like other educational demands, may be supported through a diffraction in time rather than subjugated to it.