No description available.

No description available.

The major purpose of this study was to assess the relationships between the perceptions of self-efficacy of a school's teachers, the job satisfaction of a school's teachers, the academic achievement of a school's students, and a school's socioeconomic status.;The theoretical base for this study centers around the work of Bandura (1982, 1995) in the area of teacher self efficacy. Additionally, Herzberg, Mausner, and Snyderman's (1959) Motivation/Hygiene Theory and Maslow's (1968) Motivation Theory provide the theoretical base for the area of teacher job satisfaction.;Teacher self-efficacy and job satisfaction data were collected through teacher completion of paper/pencil questionnaires. Student academic achievement was measured using schools' scores on the May 2000 5th grade Virginia Standards of Learning assessments in the areas of math, science, social studies, and English (reading/literature/writing). A school's socioeconomic status was measured by the number of students receiving free or reduced lunch. Data on student academic success on the 5th grade Standards of Learning tests and the schools' socioeconomic status were gathered from the Director of Research and Planning of the targeted county and from the Virginia Department of Education's website. Analysis was made by computing correlation coefficients using the Pearson r, computing several t-tests, and by comparing the means of the subscales on the Teacher Job Satisfaction.;The relationships between teacher efficacy and all other variables were found to be not significant, and there was not a significant difference between at-risk and non at-risk schools in the area of teacher efficacy. Student achievement and socioeconomic status were significantly related. A curvilinear relationship was observed between teacher job satisfaction and socioeconomic status with the subscales of "supervision" and "pay" accounting for this relationship. Further, at-risk and non at-risk schools differed significantly in the area of job satisfaction.

The development of major organizations has led to an increase in the use of different psychological principles. Organizational psychology has many different applications within sports organizations and, if used correctly, these applications can improve overall performance. When the principles of Organizational psychology are implemented properly, the attitude, motivation, and leadership qualities of individual members within the organization are enhanced. This improvement of individual members will have an impact on the performance of the entire organization. A successful organization should be adaptable, committed, goal-orientated, and synchronized. To apply these principles and concepts, the organization needs good leaders who can manage the entire group and make sure that all levels of the organization are working in unison. The results of analysis research suggest that organizational psychology has a major role to play within the sports world. However, it is less clear whether or not these principles can translate in to College organizations as effectively.

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Involuntary psychiatric hospitalization in the Commonwealth of Kentucky has become a salient issue based, in part, on two recent court rulings and a call for legislative reform of the laws governing this procedure. The role cc the mental health professional, who may be directly or indirectly involved in the hospitalization process, requires knowledge and sensitivity of these laws and related legal issues. One hundred and five Kentucky mental health professionals, including physicians, psychologists, and social workers, responded to a questionnaire designed to assess their knowledge and attitudes on seven selected laws and legal issues regarding involuntary hospitalization in Kentucky. The professional groups differed significantly in their knowledge of only one of the seven knowledge items. Neither profession nor any one of seven other demographic and background variables were related to overall knowledge of the laws and issues surveyed, both within and across professional groups. Analysis of the attitude items revealed a significant difference between professional groups on three particular issues. A significant difference between professional groups was also found in their overall attitudes toward due process rights for individuals involved in cases of involuntary hospitalization with social workers exhibiting most concern for these rights followed by Physicians and psychologists. Across professional groups, no other demographic variables were found to be related to overall attitudes. Within professional groups, psychologists who had been in their profession longer and psychologists whose training had not covered the legal rights of mental patients and the legal procedures of involuntary hospitalization exhibited more concern for due process rights. Although the results indicated that respondents had little knowledge of tne laws and issues surveyed, mental health professionals seemed to have a concern for these issues. It was recommended that the educational preparation of mental health professionals should include more comprehensive coverage of the laws and issues regarding involuntary hospitalization. Further, the state should require a demonstration of this knowledge either as a part of certification and licensure examinations or as a separate examination for mental health professionals who plan to practice or work in Kentucky.

The issues of situational specificity and validity generalization have shed new light on employment test validation in personnel psychology. Over the past six years Schmidt, Hunter and colleagues have accumulated an abundance of evidence supporting the use of validity generalization. The present study attempts to further investigate the issues of situational specificity and validity generalization for five nuclear power utilities using the CNS test battery. Using the Bayesian statistical procedure developed by Schmidt and Hunter (1977) the results indicated that neither the rejection of situational specificity or the inference of validity generalization was possible. However, further analyses indicated that the failure to reject situational specificity or infer validity generalization was due to one deviant validity coefficient. The addition of further validity studies will increase the likelihood of rejecting situational specificity and inferring validity generalization to a new nuclear power utility without the necessity of another validity study.

The current study investigated the effects of training, knowledge of results (KR), and goal setting on improving product quality in a field setting. Both practical and theoretical issues were addressed through the experimental design. A practical concern was the improvement of product quality in an organization. The theoretical issue was the increased understanding and utility of goal setting and knowledge of results for motivating workers' quality behavior. Two existing departments (n=60 employees) of an aluminum window manufacturing plant were studied with the use of a multiple-baseline, within-subjects design across four experimental phases: a) baseline, b) training only, c) visual presentation of feedback, c) goal setting. The principal dependent variable was the percentage of inspected products conforming to established quality criteria. A secondary measure was the change in rework costs resulting from nonconforming quality.

Two measures or faculty lob satisfaction and one measure of denartmental morale were correlated with faculty perceptions of leadership style, faculty participation in departmental decision makinr, and faculty personal and demographic variables. Three dimensions of faculty satisfaction emerged: Supervision and Morale, Work and Colleagues, and Hewards and Growth. The two dimensions of department nead leadership style whicn emerged were Consiaeration and Rigid. Faculty satisfaction with Supervision and Morale was positively correlated with the Consideration leadership style and negatively correlated with the Rigid leadership style. Increased faculty participation was desired in promotion, tenure and salary decisions. Generally, participation in departmental decision making was positively correlated with satisfaction with Supervision and Morale. Several faculty demographic variables including academic rank, are, length of service and percent of faculty with terminal degrees were related to the dimensions of faculty satisfaction. The implications of these relationships for departmental and university policies were discussed.

A study was conducted to evaluate the construct validity of four measures of Armor combat performance derived through the Simulation Networking (SIMNET) system. Problems with field testing, such as high cost, low reliability, and lack of realism, has lead the Army to look for alternative methods for soldier evaluation. SIMNET's utility for supplemental training and hardware development has been documented and the device holds promise as a low-cost alternative for soldier evaluation. Performance by 120 M1 tank crews on a SIMNET test was compared to their performance on a field test measuring four critical domains of Armor combat performance: command and control (C2), communications, position location, and combat driving. Acceptable levels of internal consistency were found for the C2 and communications dimensions. Some evidence of convergent and discriminant validity were found for these two dimensions through the multitrait-multimethod matrix and analysis of variance procedures. However, more score variance was attributable to undesirable sources (method bias and error) than to desirable sources (convergent and discriminant validity). Comparing performance on a set of direct-analogue items from the two tests failed to produce greater evidence of convergent and discriminant validity. Soldiers reported performing tasks on SIMNET to be "mostly the same" as performing tasks on the Ml tank. The rank order of soldier's questionnaire responses on the four performance dimensions reflected the rank order of the four correlations of performance on the two tests. The results of this study do not support the construct validity of SIMNET as a performance testing device of critical combat skills. Future research on SIMNET's construct validity should use a SIMNET test and field test with the exact same items and scenarios surrounding the performance of those items. If SIMNET's construct valid:ty still is not supported, better criterion measures should be sought against which SIMNET can be evaluated.