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The article comments on the paper "A twenty-five year follow-up of an extended interview selection procedure in the Royal Navy," by K. E. Gardner in this issue. One of the interesting results from the study is that the best indicator of operational success is a weighted combination of a number of selection factors and performance indicators from training courses and on-the-job performance. The optimum weights would vary depending on the kind of career. this is consistent with the current civil service policy of Great Britain with regards to choosing administration trainees.

The article investigates the training needs of first line trade union officers in Great Britain. This study arises from a survey commissioned by the Education Committee of the General Council of the Trades Union Congress to investigate the training needs of first line full-time trade union officers. It reveals that a study of training needs must necessarily concern itself with a very large range of influences and activities. The study is concerned with those full-time union officers who are classed as "first-line" by their union. This excludes full-time branch secretaries. It covers those officers employed by their union under a variety of titles to deal directly with trade union members in their day-to-day negotiating and administrative work. A hundred and seventy-five of these officers were interviewed for this survey. Although trade union head offices took part in the selection of the sample, the basic characteristics of the officers in the equivalent unions in this sample were very similar to those of the sample selected for the 1966 Government Social Survey.

Persons in charge of manning organizations have to think of succession to senior posts as a continuous task, with each appointment generating new vacancies below. Each appointment has further implications for the likely future capacity of the staff member: while one type of move may simply require him to exercise a skill he already possesses, another may broaden his experience and provide him with opportunities for development of more skills relevant to the organization. A regular, formal, face-to-face assessment interview is often part of such a scheme. This is intended to provide the occasion for a balanced overview of the performance of the employee, which is communicated to him. Assessment procedures appear to have developed out of interest in the rating of personnel during the first world war, particularly in the U.S. Subsequent industrial interest was at first in the rating of operatives, but, from about 1920 onwards, discussion was linked with concern with the identification and development of executive talent. In Great Britain, during the 1930-1940 period, there was less concern with talent spotting and management development.

The article discusses judgments of merited prestige in Great Britain. Judgments of merited prestige are employed because, unlike conventional prestige ratings, they necessarily reflect the values of the judges. Interviewees were presented with the series of merited prestige choices. The result shows that consistent with the preceding generalization is the observation that occupational class differences are generally smaller in estimates of actual social standing than in judgments of merited prestige. A shift from asking for judgments of merited prestige to soliciting estimates of actual social standing produces convergence of the classes toward description of a fairly uniformly perceived social structure. Established members reiterate the culture to one another explicitly in the guise of folk wisdom and implicitly by making the culture the unspoken premise upon which their judgments and actions are based. The concept of culture further implies that communication of the standard patterns of the group is normative rather than neutral. Thus there is pressure placed on the individual member to take over the patterns of the group.

The article analyzes results obtained when British psychiatrists were interviewed. The author found three axioms of interviewing to be inappropriate. As a result, he discusses some of the problems encountered in a study with them. Those include the study with a controversial sponsoring agency, when observation of some of local mores was relatively impossible and when interviews necessarily produced anxieties in the respondents. Sources of anxiety that are discussed include role reversal, status insecurity and professional ethics. It is stated that anxiety had no major effects on the quality of data nor on the research results. It is added that anxiety that arises from different sources could be dealt with by various interviewing techniques which reduced and eventually liquidated anxiety levels without serious prejudice either to the research or to the professional relations between the unit and participating psychiatrists. It is concluded that three research axioms considered here touched on different aspects of professional relationships which were activated by the interview.