A Study of the Effects of Group Sensitivity Training with Student Counselor-Consultants

The use of group sensitivity training within a counselor education program was studied. It was hypothesized that participation would have a positive effect on participant self-concept, would increase the effectiveness of the participants in emitting the core dimensions of empathy, warmth, and genuineness during counseling, and would make the participants more effective in offering the core dimensions in counseling than would be members of a control group who did not receive such training. Members of a National Defense Education Act Institute for Counselor-Consultants were randomly assigned to the treatment and control groups. Measurements consisted of a self-report on self-concept and independent ratings of audiotapes based upon the core dimensions. Analysis of the data did not reveal significant findings, thus the hypotheses were not supported.     

Administrator,Director, Supervisor—Would You Accept Chief?

There is confusion in pupil services about the duties and the titles of those individuals given systemwide responsibilities. Regardless of the size of the organization, leadership responsibility in a program of pupil personnel services is basically a task of administration. This article proposes a system consisting of titles and duties for various levels of organization. In conclusion, a six-step outline of suggestions for clarifying the confusion is offered.     

Affirmative Action Efforts of Counselor Education Programs

An affirmative action questionnaire was sent to randomly selected counselor education programs listed in the 1977 Counselor Education Drectory. The questionnaire asked respondents to identify the activities used by their programs to recruit, admit, and support members of four minority groups. This article reports the results of the survey which indicate that in the absence of federal mandates, counselor education programs engage in a limited number of affirmative action activities.     

Training Counselors to Work with Disabled Clients: Cognitive and Affective Components

This study examines the relationship of cognitive complexity, counselor anxiety, and client disability condition to accurate empathy on the part of students in training. A sample (n = 28) of students in a graduate counseling program observed a series of eight vignettes of counseling interviews (four clients with disabilities and four without disabilities) and reported a verbal counseling response to a client statement. A significant main effect was found for the cognitive complexity variable only (p < .05). A significant interaction among cognitive complexity, anxiety, and client disability condition (p < .01) indicated that all three factors interact to influence empathy. Implications for research and the training of counselors are discussed.     

EFFECTS OF COACHING ON GRE APTITUDE TEST SCORES

Test preparation activities were determined for a large representative sample of Graduate Record Examination (GRE) Aptitude Test takers. About 3% of these examinees had attended formal coaching programs for one or more sections of the test.
After adjusting for differences in the background characteristics of coached and uncoached students, effects on test scores were related to the length and the type of programs offered. The effects on GRE verbal ability scores were not significantly related to the amount of coaching examinees received, and quantitative coaching effects increased slightly but not significantly with additional coaching. Effects on analytical ability scores, on the other hand, were related significantly to the length of coaching programs, through improved performance on two analytical item types, which have since been deleted from the test.
Overall, the data suggest that, when compared with the two highly susceptible item types that have been removed from the GRE Aptitude Test, the test item types in the current version of the test (now called the GRE General Test) appear to show relatively little susceptibility to formal coaching experiences of the kinds considered here.     

A MULTIPLE MODERATOR APPROACH TO THE IDENTIFICATION OF OVER- AND UNDERACHIEVERS1

Reported is a study of over- and underachievement of college students, utilizing an iterative multiple moderator technique. The subjects were students at a large southwestern university, the predictors were high school rank and short forms of the Scholastic Aptitude Test, and the criterion was first year grade average. Selected background variables were the potential moderators. The overachievers were characterized as having average aptitude, yet coming from backgrounds where the father was highly educated; the underachievers were observed as having small town origins and high interest in extracurricular activities.     

PREDICTING MULTIPLE CRITERIA OF CREATIVE ACHIEVEMENTS WITH MODERATOR VARIABLES1

A moderated regression technique was applied to two samples, one of males and one of females, each of which had multiple predictor, moderator, and criterion information. One moderator was found that consistently identified a group of predictable individuals regardless of both sex and the three creative achievement criteria. This moderator was a modification of the Drews sociability scale and it indicated that those individuals who had little or no inclination towards social functions tended to be considerably more predictable than the remainder of the sample or when the group was taken as a whole. Within the low social groups, girls appeared to be somewhat more predictable than boys on two of the three creative achievement criteria, however the greatest discrepancy appeared in the writing criterion where the girls were substantially more predictable. Finally, the low sociability groups were characterized by greater predictive accuracy regardless of whether subgroup or overall prediction equations were used.