An aspect of an undergraduate psychology course on adult development was the preparation of case records on adults who consented to be studied. Participants (1) developed their abilities to observe and accurately record adult behavior across a variety of ages and contexts; (2) withheld judgments about behavior when evidence was lacking; (3)…

This paper describes the activities of a course on adult development. The course intended to sensitize participants to the theories and reality of adulthood and aging by introducing them to selected literature on adult development and to the preparation of case records and mastery of activities that permit an analysis of the adult's world. The…

The purpose of this study was to determine in what ways the quality of individualized family service plans (IFSPs) would be affected by adding written prompts to an IFSP form and instruction manual. Two IFSPs were collected from 94 service coordinators before and after adding written prompts to the IFSP form and manual targeting three areas: (a)…

Case records and recording practices are an important but ignored part of social casework. Social work recordkeeping methods have coincided with machine technology. At the Benjamin Rose Institute, recording in social work has gone through four clearly differentiated phases: (1) registered-typed records; (2) abbreviated diary; (3) process…

The ESEA Title I evaluation Technical Assistance Centers (TACs) assist state and local education agencies to implement the Title I Evaluation and Reporting System (TIERS), to improve the quality of evaluation information, and to use evaluation results for local decision making. This paper reports on the results of one method of assessing the…

The rush to do qualitative enquiry in education in the past decade has spawned a variety of methodologies and non-methodologies. The desire for absolute rules and lawlike procedures lingers and the current search is for certain rather than good judgments about educational phenomena. A methodology described as "quasi-historical" is…

Stressing the value of documents and records as information sources for the educational evaluation community, this report explores the differences between the two, their utility for inquirers, and methods and procedures for dealing with them. Three forms of documentary analysis are described: (1) simple tracking, which involves documenting both…

The circumstances which give rise to or "trigger" an abuse incident have been given relatively little systematic attention. In analyzing the case records of all families (N=328) charged with child abuse over a ten-year period in a two-county area of Pennsylvania, all instances of family conflict were identified and the circumstances surrounding…

The ethical problems of the therapist who sees couples or families, who are in conflict and who may wind up in legal battles later, are reviewed. Special problems of confidentiality and the therapist's obligations to each and all are discussed. The background of the development of concepts of confidentiality is discussed and applied to the…

The author outlines the advantages of illuminative, or descriptive, research in education and points out the need in this field for verification and cumulation, proposing a national depository for descriptive case records. (SJL)

Schofield (1964) described the young attractive, verbal, intelligent, and successful person (YAVIS) as the client preferred by therapists. To determine the relationship between the sex of client the variables often associated with the preferred client, and selection as client by male and female therapists, doctoral candidates in Clinical…

This paper describes the implementation of a computer-based approach to scoring open-ended problem lists constructed to evaluate student and practitioner clinical judgment from real or simulated records. Based on 62 previously administered and scored problem lists, the program was written in BASIC for a Heathkit H11A computer (equivalent to DEC…

This technical report describes the computerized information management system used at the Community Care Organization for Dependent Adults (CCODA) of the On Lok Senior Health Services in San Francisco's Chinatown (California). A background perspective on information systems in business, government, hospitals, and local community service agencies…

School district personnel files were traditionally considered private. Since the advent of federal and state open record acts, the private nature of personnel records has come into question. All court cases since 1966, in which a member of the public wanted access to public employee information and a personal privacy exemption was raised as a…

This study assesses the usefulness of case records in significantly expanding the base of knowledge in education administration. Forty-six school personnel case records were examined in regard to: how respondents perceive and describe problem situations; whether or not alternative strategies are reported and, if so, what types; and what kind of…