This study investigated the effects of a family systems training program on the trainees and their work sites after training. The program evaluated was the Lawrence Family Systems Training Program which operates within the public mental health system in Lawrence, Massachusetts and is modeled after a Milan model of systemic therapy. A questionnaire was distributed to 40 trainees out of which a respondent sample of 22 was obtained. Follow-up telephone interviews were conducted with a supervisor and a colleague of the trainee at each of four work sites to elicit information about the effects of the training on the work context. The Results indicated that, contrary to the predictions in the literature, context disturbing effects were reported in only 2 of 22 cases, whereas 14 of 22 reported some degree of context enhancing effects, as rated by the study's raters. Those effects were corroborated by the interviews with colleagues and supervisors. In addition, 14 of 22 respondents utilized what were termed Reflexive Strategies which were defined as those which evidenced that the trainee had applied a second order cybernetic model of self-in-context awareness in analyzing their interactions with their work sites. The study found a correlation between the trainee's use of these strategies and the degree to which the training was incorporated into the work site in a context enhancing manner. A cybernetic model for training and the evaluation of training was suggested which could be isomorphically consistent with the second order cybernetic approach to the analysis of human systems utilized by the Milan Associates and other systemic theorists. Suggestions for future research on the effects of training on the mental health system were offered.

An in-school suspension program was planned for the target high school, as a viable alternative to the placement of students outside of the school environment for discipline reasons. The urban target high school also has adopted an in-school suspension program in recognition of the need for more effective disciplinary procedures. Although the discipline policy has been very effective in most cases in the past, there are students who are suspended who have serious problems that can only be corrected with counseling, a component present in the in-school suspension program. If discipline is to improve then special attention must be given to these students to meet their emotional and psychological needs not only their academic needs. An in-school suspension program allows a student who has arrived at a point of suspension to remain in school for his/her suspension; to keep up with academic work and receive credit for academic work done during suspension; yet at the same time, to be held responsible for his/her actions and to be given counseling to enable the student to avoid behavior that could account for any further suspension. Students who had participated in the program, their parents and teachers were surveyed during four semesters. The results of the surveys showed that the three constituencies were favorably disposed to the in-school suspension program and that the program was beneficial to the student. Although in-school suspension is not a cure-all, more schools should consider the in-school suspension program as an alternative to their out-of-school suspension. However, there have to be assurances that the counseling which was initiated in in-school suspension will continue after the student leaves the program. Also there has to be a way of actively involving more parents in the program other than their appearance at the time of the student's reinstatement to class.

This study was conducted in 12 high schools in Massachusetts that were funded for dropout prevention. Reports indicated that some of these schools were more successful than others in reducing the dropout rate. The purpose of the study was to identify variables existing in these high school programs that are associated with increases and decreases in the dropout rate. The study sought to test the hypothesis that schools that were strong in student support were successful in reducing the dropout rate. A conceptual map was developed showing hypothesized causal relationships among variables. In the map, interventions were framed as variables (e.g., "the extent to which teachers are expected to attend workshops to develop strategies for communicating, understanding and teaching the at-risk students"), and the impact of changes in such variables was traced to the ultimate variable "willingness to keep trying." Immediately before arriving at this final variable, the paths from each of the intervention variables passed through one of four "proximate" variables: the extent to which at-risk students experience their academic tasks as involving, sense of belonging, the instrumental value of graduation, and the perceived likelihood of school success. The trust of this dissertation was developing this map and testing the extent to which there was a relationship between efforts that appeared to be likely to change these proximal variables (taken one at a time) and a district's dropout rate. A questionnaire was designed that asked questions relating to the four proximal variables, as well as how well each school's dropout-related efforts appeared to be organized, focused and coordinated in a coherent manner. Additional questions sought to see what else might be happening in the school that might impact the dropout rate. The results indicated that two of the key proximal variables correlated positively and all four approached significance on a stepwise regression analysis. During the study "program coherence" emerged as an important variable and also proved significant in impacting the dropout rate.

The purpose of this study was to assess the perceptions of counselors, vocational nursing students, and associate degree nursing students in three community colleges, and baccalaureate degree nursing students at two universities, in relation to a nursing education model. The nursing education model encompassed two areas: (1) characteristics of the vocational nursing, associate degree nursing and baccalaureate degree nursing programs, and (2) occupational functioning of the graduates of these programs. This model was constructed from the established position on nursing education and graduate function, as taken by the American Nursing Association and the California League for Nursing. In addition, the three student groups were compared on certain characteristics.

This study investigated the relationship between two therapist personality characteristics and client locus of control expectancy (I-E) in a psychotherapy setting. The two therapist personality characteristics identified and studied were: a) therapist locus of control; and b) therapist self-disclosure level.

It was the purpose of this research project to develop a method which could be used by college and university personnel to obtain students' perceptions of and convictions concerning advising programs on their campuses. Included in the procedure was a demonstration of how it can be determined where the greatest needs are and whether or not there are any significant differences in the perceptions of, or expressed needs for, counseling and advising by different categories of students within the school. For this demonstration, seven different categories of students to be tested were chosen from the student: population and hypotheses about these groups were constructed. An important basic assumption for this study is that most small colleges and universities have counseling and advising programs that are enough alike to readily adapt the method used in this study for their use. Because it was developed for and tested on a campus of less than 5,000 students, it is not claimed that this procedure is useable on campuses of larger enrollment. First, a questionnaire was constructed and administered and tested, and the results were analyzed and reported to the University; after a lapse of two years the questionnaire was revised and re-tested, The main body of this study is an interpretation and a comparative analysis of the results of the two questionnaires. The analysis consists primarily of a comparison of the various groups of students over the two year period. The chi square test of statistical significance was used to determine differences and likenesses. The findings of the study are briefly as follows: With respect to the two-fold purpose of this project as stated above, claims can be made that the project has been successful. Administrators should be able to determine by using the data where the strengths and weaknesses of their programs are. With respect to the hypotheses, despite evidence in the literature to lead the researcher to expect something else, not one hypothesis was wholly supported by, the data. Brieffly stated, the findings of the hypothese are as follows: (1.) Men do not indicate less need for counseling and advising than do women, (2) Professional school students do not indicate any less need for counseling and advising than do liberal arts school students, ( 3) Upper classmen do not indicate any less need for counseling and advising than do lower classmen, (4) Upper G.P.A. students do not indicate any less need for counseling and advising than do lower G .P .A. students, (5) Students living on campus do not indicate any less need for counseling and advising than do students living off campus, (6) Students who come from academically-oriented families do not indicate less need for counseling and advising than do students from non-academically oriented families, and (7) Students who have had what they considered to be helpful high school counseling do not indicate more need for counseling and advising than do students who have not had good counseling.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the association between counselor learning styles and counseling goal preferences. Learning styles were measured by the Learning Style Inventory (Kolb, 1986) and counseling goal preferences were identified by the Counseling Preference Questionnaire. The subjects for this study included 113 graduate level students enrolled in counselor education programs at several universities in the Northern California region. A letter explaining the nature of the study was sent to administrators and instructors and permission to survey their students was obtained. During the administration of the survey, each subject was given a test packet including the Learning Style Inventory (LSI) and the Counseling Preference Questionnaire (CPQ). Statistical analyses to explore the relationships in question incorporated the SPSSx computer program at the Computer Center of the University of the Pacific, Stockton, California. The statistical analyses included the Chi square test of association, Chi square goodness-of-fit, and the Analyses of Variance procedure. The findings of this study indicated that only one of the four learning style types (Divergers) was significantly associated with a counseling goal that reflected similar orientations. Also found was a significant but tenuous relationship between the dimensional scores of the LSI and counseling goal preference. It is suggested that although there were tentative indications of relationships between learning styles and counseling goal preferences, the findings of this study were too tenuous to be considered of practical value.

Decisions regarding careers, marriage, children and the care of children are sufficiently complex to warrant a genuine dilemma for some college students. The purpose of this study was to investigate the birth intentions of male and female college freshmen and the relationships of those intentions to sex roles, career aspirations and preferences for various child care options. Relevant demographic and personal data were obtained from a questionnaire which also included the set of items from Dr. John Scanzoni's sex role scale. The questionnaire was administered to a total of 715 randomly selected college freshmen from three California institutions: a community college, a state college, and a private university. The total response rate was approximately 90%. The collected data were analyzed using a computer program which produced descriptive information, several analyses of variance and a multiple regression. Where tests of hypotheses were performed, the level of rejection was set at .05. Most college freshmen intended to have two natural born children; women tended to desire slightly more children than men. Approximately 10% of the respondents intended to have no children and 17% intended to adopt one or more children. No differences in birth intentions based on kind of college attended, ethnic group, religion, parents' educational or occupational background, or students' career aspiration or child care expectation were found. The variables accounting for the most variance in the total size of intended family were the sex role score and the sex of the respondent. Those students who earned the least traditional sex role scores and those students who expected women to work continuously during adulthood intended smaller families. Sex differences were revealed in sex role scores, child care preferences, and expectations for women to work. Men earned more traditional sex role scores and were more likely to prefer that their children be cared for by a non-working mother. More women intended to work more often than men intended for their wives to work. It was also true that women were more likely to prefer that their children be cared for equally by fathers and mothers, and sometimes supplemented by child care. These results confirmed the trend toward smaller families and supported recent findings that sex roles are related to those intentions. The importance of sex roles was further demonstrated by the significant relationship between sex roles and students' sex, child care preferences and expectations that women would work. The interpretation of these results suggested some potential difficulties for college students. Male and female expectations differed on most variables. Even women's own expectations appeared to be contradictory in that they expected to work continuously, have children, and not use child care services to any great extent. At the very least, the implementation of those preferences would require considerable guidance from teachers and counselors and, most of all, substantial institutional changes. Further research in the identification, measurement and influence of sex roles was cited as necessary. The availability and implementation of child care preferences was also described as an area in need of further clarification. A final recommendation was that there is a need for longitudinal studies which identify college freshmen's career and family intentions and the extent to which they put those intentions into practice during their early and middle adult years.

Problem. The Strong-Campbell Interest Inventory (SCII), an inventory with some validity, was directed at the professionally oriented client. The Career Assessment Inventory (CAI) appeared in 1976 as an inventory normed on the non-professional, blue-collar worker, directed at the non-baccalaureate student. There had been little research on minority, non-college oriented youth. Purpose. The purpose of this study was to compare the predictive and concurrent validity of these two inventories for a drop-out, non-college oriented population. These inventories were compared for predictive validity to short-term occupational outcome, and for concurrent validity to Expressed Interest. Also, the distribution of interests across the six RIASEC themes was compared. Procedure. For the years 1977-1981, participants in the High School Equivalency Program, University of the Pacific, Stockton, CA, were interviewed to ascertain their Expressed Interests and were given either the SCII or the CAI during the first three weeks of program attendance. Following graduation, short-term occupational outcome data, or college major (if there was no occupation) were recorded. Chi-square was used to compare the inventories on hit-rates for short-term occupational outcome. Findings. No significant differences were found in the predictive validity of the CAI and the SCII to short-term occupational outcome, using inventory scale scores, expressed interest, consistency, differentiation, and cross-scale congruence, with this specific population. The distribution of interests across the six RIASEC themes of the inventories showed significant differences at the .05 level. The distributions of RIASEC categories were significantly different (.01 level) for men versus women. On the CAI, a greater proportion fell in the Conventional theme for males; the Social and Enterprising themes for females. For the SCII, a greater proportion fell in the Artistic theme for males; the Realistic and Conventional themes for females. Recommendations. This study should be replicated using long-term follow-up data with minority, non-professionally oriented populations.

The focus of this study was to test certain gender-related hypotheses regarding the relationships among personality traits as identified on the Personality Research Form (PRF) and self-esteem as measured by the Tennessee Self-Concept Scale (TSCS). The subjects who voluntarily participated in this research were 29 male and 96 female college students. The subjects were students in an Introductory Psychology course at a local community college and state university. A packet containing a short biographical questionnaire, the TSCS, the PRF, and an introductory letter was administered to and completed by each subject. A stastistical analysis of the data was accomplished with the use of the following treatments: a series of one-way analyses of variance, the Z test for independent correlation coefficients, and a two-way analysis of variance. In addition a multiple regression analysis was performed as a supplementary analysis. The following results were obtained: (a) self-esteem scores for men and women were not shown to differ; (b) college women had significantly higher mean scores than college men on the PRF subscales of Harmavoidance, Nurturance and Sentience; (c) PRF subscales of Desirability and Succorance were significant predictors of the total TSCS score for men; (d) PRF subscales of Desirability, Order, Abasement and Dominance were significant predictors of the total TSCS score for women: (e) college women scoring below the 16th percentile in self-esteem scored significantly lower on the PRF subscale of Dominance than college men in the same self-esteem group; (f) age and marital status did affect self-esteem scores significantly for both men and women. Some tentative conclusions may be drawn from this study. While college women scored significantly higher on the personality traits of harmavoidance, nurturance and sentience, it was not established that these or any of the traits measured by the PRF correlated differently with the TSCS self-esteem score for men and women. In fact, the study suggests that while there were some differences in moderate predictors of the self-esteem score from the multiple regression, there are no statistically significant differences between genders with regard to personality traits as measured by the PRF and self-esteem as measured by the TSCS.