High school and college students are inundated by indicators and rankings supposedly designed to help them decide where to go to college and what to study once they arrive. In "Metrics That Matter," coauthors Zachary Bleemer, Mukul Kumar, Aashish Mehta, Chris Muellerleile, and Christopher Newfield take a critical look at these metrics…

The National Technical Assistance Center on Transition: the Collaborative (NTACT:C) Collaborative Assessment Guide for Transition Planning (CAG) is intended to help students, family members, educators, vocational rehabilitation counselors, human services and health agency staff, and other partners develop a coordinated assessment approach for…

Schizophrenia is a severe and persistent mental illness that is typically associated with distress and severe functional impairment. Individuals presenting with schizophrenia have symptoms that markedly impair their ability to perceive, think, engage, or express themselves clearly. Because the diagnostic criteria for schizophrenia articulated in…

Despite increasing requirements for counselor proficiency in crisis response, there is an absence in the standards for counselor preparation, certification, and supervision of consistent criteria on which best practice in crisis prevention and intervention, and postcrisis recovery can be gauged. The authors present a conceptual framework that…

It is important that counsellors provide evidence regarding the efficacy of their services. Although there has been an increased focus on generic outcome measurement of counselling programs and services, little attention has been paid to accountability issues for meeting the needs of diverse populations. This article highlights the increasing…

Addresses the issues of why theory is practical and what makes a particular theory good. Theory serves a number of important functions (saves energy, mobilizes energy, and so on) in applied fields, such as social work. A good theory is dynamic, parsimonious, capable of resolving paradoxes, realistic, and comprehensive. (BB)

This article examines recent literature related to the diagnosis of Attention-deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (AD/HD) in childhood. First, the article discusses diagnostic criteria presented in the "Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders" (American Psychiatric Association, 2000). Next, it explores the diagnostic procedures for AD/HD…

This digest identifies the issues which must be addressed to make instruments and procedures for assessing school counselor performance efficient, fair, valid, and useful. (BH)

Presents a reprint of an article proposing professional preparation guidelines which first appeared in the October 1983 "Measurement and Evaluation in Guidance." Seven response articles offer additional perspectives on the proposed standards. (JAC)

This counselor assessment instrument begins by listing 11 competencies for Mississippi school counselors. They should be able to: (1) organize and administer the guidance program; (2) provide counseling interviews for students during the school year; (3) provide group guidance and counseling with students during the school year; (4) coordinate…

Because diagnostic capability of the WISC-R has remained in doubt, its diagnostic suitability was assessed by applying Kelley's method of estimating the proportion of score differences in excess of chance to the original subscales, Bannatyne clusters, and Kaufman's three factor groupings. Caution should be used when applying WISC-R diagnostically.…

This study examined diagnostic efficiency of Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, fourth edition (DSM-IV), criteria for borderline personality disorder (BPD). One hundred thirty monolingual Hispanic adults (90 men, 40 women) at an outpatient psychiatric and substance abuse clinic were assessed with the Spanish-Language Version of…

The purpose of this study was to identify the factors that contributed to vocational rehabilitation assessment of earning capacity. Rehabilitation professionals who attended a national forensic rehabilitation conference were asked to rate the importance of 26 variables in development of opinions of earning capacity. Exploratory factor analysis…

Over the past 25 years, there has been a gradual recognition that counseling children and adolescents is much different than counseling adults. Because of this difference, numerous books, games, and articles have focused on what assessment and intervention strategies work with the child and adolescent population. However, many of these…

Evaluating the effectiveness of career guidance programs is a complex process, and few comprehensive models for evaluating such programs exist. Evaluation of career guidance programs has been hampered by the myth that program outcomes are uniform and monolithic. Findings from studies of attribute treatment interactions have revealed only a few…