Diane McDermott

Professional burnout and its relation to job characteristics, satisfaction, and control.

Burnout scores for 104 professionals in the fields of college student personnel, health and mental health, administration and miscellaneous other professionals were correlated with ratings on 13 job characteristics, and ratings of satisfaction with, and control over, these characteristics. Results indicate significant positive correlations between the burnout scores and 10 of the 13 job characteristics. Significant positive correlations were found for burnout and all 13 items of job satisfaction. Significant negative correlations were found for 6 of the items where control was rated. Demographic variables of age, sex, marital status, employment status of spouse, dependents, number of hours worked, and being on call showed no significant correlations with burnout. Recommendations are made for continued research and theory building which take into account the concept of control over ones work environment.

Children: Raising Future Hopes

Publisher Summary In the course of measuring hope in several thousand adolescents and children, research studies have found that they report higher hope than most adults. Most children never have to face catastrophes of war and disease but many do face other insidiously debilitating forces. There is ethnic prejudice which, despite legislation to ensure equal rights, continues to affect children. Related to prejudice are poverty, poor living conditions, inadequate medical care, and malnutrition, all of which may lessen the chances of these young people realizing their dreams. On one extreme, there are very high-hope children who are able to cope with daily circumstances, even the extraordinary and difficult ones. At the other extreme, there are children whose hopes are severely diminished because of the insurmountable roadblocks they have encountered. Most children fall somewhere in between these two extremes. Even in the technologically advanced countries, many children live in the conditions that place them at risk for losing hope. The chapter describes several of the interventions that were designed specifically to enhance hope in children from disadvantaged circumstances. In the early phases of research, the schools identified had high proportions of students whose families qualified for financial assistance. These first interventions shaped the development of subsequent techniques described in the chapter. All of the methods are effective in raising the hope of children and adolescents from a wide range of socio-economic and cultural backgrounds.

The Role of the Church in Adolescent Drug Education

Despite drug education and prevention efforts, adolescent substance use is on the rise in the United States. In an exploration of correlates of substance use and components of effective drug education, three dimensions of religiosity—religious proscriptiveness, involvement in church activities, and the importance an individual places on church activities—emerge. Each has previously demonstrated an inverse relationship with adolescent substance use. In the present study, interactions among these three dimensions were evaluated in 238 adolescents. Religious proscriptiveness interacted with church involvement and with church importance in relation to adolescent use of alcohol, cigarettes, marijuana, and other drugs. Additionally, among adolescents who had ever used alcohol, a positive relationship was observed between religious proscriptiveness and binge drinking such that the highest incidence of binge drinking was reported by those affiliated with prescriptive religious groups. The church may be an important vehicle for drug education. Implications for drug education are discussed, and further research is suggested.

Attitudes of counseling students in the United States toward minority clients

One hundred and twenty counseling students representing 10 programs across the United States were administered the Purdue Master Attitude Scale, the Defining Issues Test, the Index of Homophobia and a demographic questionnaire in an effort to identify attitudes of students to ward minority groups. A demographic profile of these counselors in traning presents a picture of the ‘typical’ American. They are fairly young, mostly caucasian, middle class and were raised in traditional two-parent families.The results of the instruments administered indicate that counseling students appear to reflect the dominant culture attitude with respect to homophobia by demonstrating average to high homophobia, while the Purdue Master Attitude Scale reflects a somewhat overall positive attitude toward ethnic minorities.In terms of statistical analyses, level of moral judgment, as measured by the Defining Issues Test, was significantly related to attitude to ward ethnic and sexual preference minorities. Individuals with more favorable attitudes demonstrated higher levels of moral reasoning and vice versa. Higher frequency of experience with minorities was significantly related to lower homophobia scores and demonstrated a trend in the direction of better attitude scores. Quality of experience, while not achieving significance, showed a trend with better quality ratings being related to better attitude toward ethnic minorities and lower homophobia scores.

Hope for the Evolution of Diversity: On Leveling the Field of Dreams

Publisher Summary Hope has existed across time, cultures, and ethnic groups. Stories and monuments serve as enduring symbols, but it is the people finding means to desired ends—translating their wishes into goals, agency, and pathways thoughts—that gives daily evidence of hope in action. Changes in the demography may be accompanied by significant problems when there are large cultural and linguistic differences between people. The problem deepens when these differences become part of the fabric of the society and occur in the context of formal schooling and health care. Educators and health-care workers must be increasingly prepared to work with diverse members of the society—those who speak different languages and who are struggling physically or financially. Hope can help in overcoming barriers to adjustment, health, and happiness. Hope scales have been administered to Caucasians, African Americans, Native Americans, Hispanics, and Asian Americans. Additionally, translations of the Hope Scale have been made in China, Russia, France, Germany, Italy, Norway, Israel, Japan, and Spain. There is a cross-cultural interest in measuring hope in many countries. Results of such efforts have yet to be published, and this is a very important extension of the worldwide applicability of hope.

The Effects of Specialized Training in Alcohol Information for Counseling Students

The alcoholism problem in the United States has reached proportions impossible to ignore. It follows that we need trained professionals in significant numbers to deal with the alcoholic population. Graduate programs, however, provide little or no course offerings in the area of specific training for dealing with alcoholics. In academia some attempts have been made to address this situation. However, budget restrictions, limited marketability of counselors with specialized training, and the superiority of the generalist training model are some of the main arguments that have compromised adequate chemical dependence training. The research literature, however, is replete with studies indicating the need for specialized training to prepare mental health professionals to work as competent alcohol counselors. The focus of this research was to examine the effect of specific training for counseling students in preparing them to work with alcoholic clients. The results of the analyses indicated that a training session specifically designed for working with alcoholic populations significantly increased the objective knowledge base of counseling students, although the single training session was not enough to significantly improve subjective judgment and response scores. This research emphasizes a need for specialized training in counseling programs for alcohol counselors. Further, it is implied that training programs should include at least one semester-long course on alcohol remediation for counseling students.

Social dysfunctionality and community drug use: A regional anthropological investigation

Stepwise multiple regression was used to determine extent of association between drug use and 8 social dysfunctionality indices for a heterogeneous population of 488 drug users. Data presented indicate a moderate relationship between drug use and social dysfunctionality indices, the strongest association being with an “arrest” variable. An innovative approach to the gathering of drug use information, based on the ethnographic refinements of anthropology, was also described and suggestions given for facilitating community drug use research.

Associations between the repressive adaptive style and self-reported hope in Mexican American and Euro-American children.

A large literature has examined the associations between Weinberger, Schwartz, and Davidsons (1979) repressive adaptive style (RAS) construct and various self-report measures of distress or unpleasant emotional states in adults and children. Fewer investigations have examined the role of RAS in self-reported positive psychology constructs. In this investigation, we used Weinberger et al.s (1979) categorical typology to examine the associations between adaptive style and hope in Euro-American (n = 60) and Mexican American (n = 49) children (M age = 11.4 years) who were students at 1 of 3 parochial schools in a large Midwestern city. Partially supporting the hypotheses, a univariate 2 (ethnic group) × 2 (repressor group) analysis of variance indicated a significant main effect for adaptive style group but no significant main effect for ethnic group and no significant interaction effect. Results extend the literature on the associations between adaptive style and self-report instruments and indicate that (similar to self-reported measures of distress) self-reported hope may be subject to social desirability bias.

Hope for the Evolution of Diversity

Publisher Summary Hope has existed across time, cultures, and ethnic groups. Stories and monuments serve as enduring symbols, but it is the people finding means to desired ends—translating their wishes into goals, agency, and pathways thoughts—that gives daily evidence of hope in action. Changes in the demography may be accompanied by significant problems when there are large cultural and linguistic differences between people. The problem deepens when these differences become part of the fabric of the society and occur in the context of formal schooling and health care. Educators and health-care workers must be increasingly prepared to work with diverse members of the society—those who speak different languages and who are struggling physically or financially. Hope can help in overcoming barriers to adjustment, health, and happiness. Hope scales have been administered to Caucasians, African Americans, Native Americans, Hispanics, and Asian Americans. Additionally, translations of the Hope Scale have been made in China, Russia, France, Germany, Italy, Norway, Israel, Japan, and Spain. There is a cross-cultural interest in measuring hope in many countries. Results of such efforts have yet to be published, and this is a very important extension of the worldwide applicability of hope.

Chapter 12 – Hope for the Evolution of Diversity: On Leveling the Field of Dreams

Publisher Summary Hope has existed across time, cultures, and ethnic groups. Stories and monuments serve as enduring symbols, but it is the people finding means to desired ends—translating their wishes into goals, agency, and pathways thoughts—that gives daily evidence of hope in action. Changes in the demography may be accompanied by significant problems when there are large cultural and linguistic differences between people. The problem deepens when these differences become part of the fabric of the society and occur in the context of formal schooling and health care. Educators and health-care workers must be increasingly prepared to work with diverse members of the society—those who speak different languages and who are struggling physically or financially. Hope can help in overcoming barriers to adjustment, health, and happiness. Hope scales have been administered to Caucasians, African Americans, Native Americans, Hispanics, and Asian Americans. Additionally, translations of the Hope Scale have been made in China, Russia, France, Germany, Italy, Norway, Israel, Japan, and Spain. There is a cross-cultural interest in measuring hope in many countries. Results of such efforts have yet to be published, and this is a very important extension of the worldwide applicability of hope.