This literature review addresses the prevalance of drug use and abuse among college athletes and the reasons for such abuse. Among reasons cited are status, peer pressure, boredom, and performance enhancement. Possible interventions that may prevent illegal drug use are also discussed, including educating coaches and trainers to help athletes,…

The U.S. Government Accounting Office (GAO) evaluated how well divisions in the Departments of the Air Force, Army, and Navy and the Veterans Administration have implemented performance appraisal systems for blue-collar employees. The study found that in the four agencies visited, performance appraisal systems were in place; however, problems…

Many handicapped workers fail in competitive employment situations for social reasons rather than for the inability to perform required work tasks. Such individuals are usually those who need to be trained under conditions more closely matching those of the workplace. Thus, work-related social skills should be taught, at least in part, in work…

This document contains validated activities and competencies needed by librarians working in a school library. The activities and competencies are organized according to the functions which school librarians perform: acquisitions; cataloging; circulation and reader services; collection maintenance; interlibrary loan; management; reference; and…

Ways to interpret data from student ratings of teacher performance and approaches to maximize the use of student ratings are considered, based on the experiences of the Center for Instructional Development and Research (CIDR) at the University of Washington (UW). The use of student ratings at UW and other colleges is briefly considered, along with…

This paper presents a model of cognitive development across the life span that is designed to integrate the diverse empirical evidence in the area of cognitive development in childhood and adulthood. Relevant research is reviewed in the relationships between performance and age, and the effects of training on performance. A model is then proposed…

The major steps a college should undertake in contracting for services, including the initial determination as to whether or not contracting is the best way to provide a particular service, are described. Three general activities that apply to decisions about contracting in most circumstances are: investigating service characteristics; identifying…

A national survey sought to identify the competencies that chief school business administrators (CSBAs) in large and small school districts think are important for their job. Seventy-five respondents, out of a random stratified sample comprising 143 members of the Association of School Business Officials, ranked 264 statements in 28 major task…

An investigation examined the use of "preferred speeds" by young children in their response to a timing task. Three groups of boys, 5, 7, and 9 years old, made a simple horizontal arm movement that would end with contacting a microswitch at the same time a light reached the end of the runway. One stimulus traveled at the individual's…

Methodological issues in the use of protocol analysis for research into human problem solving processes are examined through a case study in which two students were videotaped as they worked together to solve mathematical problems "out loud." The students' chosen strategic or executive behavior in examining and solving a problem was…

Consistency theory holds that persons are motivated to behave in ways that maintain a "steady state" cognitively and otherwise; need-fulfillment theory argues that people will act in ways that reinforce their sense of worth and enhance their self-esteem. While consistency theory predicts that low self-esteem persons will exhibit more eye…

Characteristics that seem to separate effective and ineffective teacher evaluation systems provide a framework for viewing existing evaluation systems and determining necessary changes. Nine commonalities represent the best practices: (1) participants share an attitude that the purpose of an evaluation system is to provide assistance in the…

Two experiments tested the idea that the means by which children acquire efficacy information can produce different levels of task motivation and self-perception of competence. In Experiment 1, children periodically received either ability attributional feedback, effort feedback, ability plus effort feedback, or no attributional feedback. Although…

By structuring the manner group members use to reach a decision, managers can affect the processes and outcomes of decision making. Business administration undergraduates (N=78) were randomly assigned to three groups and told to make group decisions based on the process their manager selected, i.e., they were either to seek concurrence, debate…

Those who wish to relate education and assessment to the realities of practice in human services sometimes turn to the field for information about the nature of jobs. To determine competencies in counseling and human service agencies, an instrument was developed to survey attitudes of 502 human service providers and 51 clients from 24 agencies.…