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In this chapter, the authors use a model of metacognition to show how the expert fireground commanders kept their thinking on track, and thus avoided errors associated with cognitive overload. It focuses specifically on cognitive responses. The chapter outlines the types of errors and decision tradeoffs that are described by experienced fireground commanders. The commanders also describe making the same types of cognitive errors that they observe with trained novices in the field: fixation errors and fibrillation errors. The chapter illustrates a small number of metacognitive skills and heuristics which they use to regulate their thinking when they are under pressure. It also shows how experienced and expert fireground commanders use metacognitive skills to build up a picture of the situation, make decisions and put those decisions into action. The chapter describes how think-aloud techniques provide insight to 'what the experts were thinking'.

The emergency management operational activity, especially local incident command activity, remains a fundamentally human endeavour. This chapter focuses on identifying the decision processes associated with more versus less effective incident command at fires. Effective incident command obviously requires considerable technical knowledge of fire chemistry and physics, suppression equipment capabilities, and standard operating procedures. The effective incident management involved rapid extraction of the most relevant features from the information array. Effective incident commanders functioned as if they had a good practical understanding of the limitations of their information processing system. Some emergency incidents were too complex for simple recognitional rule-based decision making. The chapter describes that the most important psychological "drivers" of an incident commander's performance involve three aspects of the human information processing system. They are rule-based decision making is appreciably faster than knowledge-based decision making, the limited capacity of working memory, and effective decision making is dependent on regulation of arousal level and negative emotions.

In the past decade official reports into intelligence failures have asserted that analysts are subject to the effects of everyday cognitive limitations. The present study examined the influence of an individual's inclination toward closedmindedness on a computer administered simulated intelligence analysis task. Results indicate that several components of closed-mindedness as measured by the need for cognitive closure scale [NFC] significantly predicted the assessed level of threat posed to and general attitude toward a visiting government delegation by a foreign nation's population. Most significantly higher scores on the NFC subscale ‘need for predictability’ were associated with higher scores on the initial assessed threat level. This effect remained after controlling for the amount of information accessed. The implications of these findings for the conduct of intelligence analysis are discussed.

Investigators have been shown to be prone to accessing information that confirms their preferred hypothesis. This tendency has been termed hypothesis confirmation. Hypothesis confirmation behaviour was explored in two studies using a computer administered simulation of a murder investigation. In Study 1, hypothesis confirmation behaviour did not differentiate successful and unsuccessful participants. However, unsuccessful participants stored more confirmatory information than non-confirmatory information. Successful participants did not show this pattern. In Study 2, unsuccessful participants tended to settle early on a suspect and then acquired information that supported their decision. Successful participants tended to consider a number of suspects for longer and accessed a greater diversity of information. Taken together, these findings are highly suggestive of the role of information acquisition as an important component of hypothesis confirmatory behaviour, which is associated with unsuccessful information processing in the context of a simulated murder investigation. Implications for practice are presented. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Team leaders who facilitate knowledge sharing and engender trust contribute to team effectiveness. While the separate effects of leadership, trust and knowledge sharing on team performance are well documented, few scholars have investigated the specific links between these factors. This study examines the relationship between the leader as the knowledge builder, trust in the leader and in the team, knowledge sharing and team performance. Surveys were collected from 34 engineering project teams ( n=166 team members, 30 team leaders) and 18 managers in a large automotive organization. The results indicate that by building the team’s expertise, leaders enhance team members’ willingness to rely on and disclose information in the team, which in turn increases team knowledge sharing. Team knowledge sharing significantly predicted leaders’ and managers’ ratings of team performance. The theoretical and practical implications of the findings are discussed.

The aims of this paper are to distinguish between effective and ineffective coping strategies for dealing with adverse life events occurring in different domains of a person's environment; to identify persons most at risk for deploying ineffective strategies; and to indicate interventions designed to promote effective strategies and limit the use of ineffective strategies. Recent research has suggested that different strategies may be effective for dealing with different events (stressors) and, in particular, that instrumental strategies are effective for events which present mainly cognitive problems; that affective strategies are effective for emotional problems and that avoidance strategies may be effective for uncontrollable events. Adverse events in three domains are considered in this paper: job and financial events, health events and personal relationship events. The evidence indicates that instrumental strategies are effective for all these events, that affective regulation strategies are ineffective, and that avoidance strategies are harmful. Data come from two waves of an Australian panel study (1983–85; n = 734). Respondents completed a life events inventory and were then shown a list of coping strategies and asked how they had coped with the most serious problem they had faced in the last two years. Effective coping was defined as coping which led to minimal increases in psychological distress (PD). Women, people of higher socio-economic status (SES) and people who rated high on the traits warmth and openness to feelings more frequently used effective instrumental strategies. People who rated high on neuroticism and openness to feelings were more likely to use avoidance strategies.

Two mail-out survey studies were conducted to investigate the stoicism construct, as operationalised in the Liverpool stoicism scale (LSS). In Study 1, N = 467 participants (57.9% female) completed the LSS and measures of wellbeing, psychological distress and attitudes to seeking psychological help. All participants had previously completed a measure of the five factor model of personality (FFM). The aim of Study 2 (N = 567, 57.5% female) was to replicate the psychometric analyses of the LSS, and permit calculation of test–retest reliability amongst a subsample (n = 278) who also participated in Study 1. The LSS was found to have adequate internal reliability (Cronbach’s alpha = .83), and adequate test–retest reliability (r = .82, p

The aim of this research was to test whether social participation is associated with improvements in mood and well-being, and in particular to test whether social participation might moderate the chronic distress associated with high levels of neuroticism (N). A rural Australian sample of 394 adults (54.3% female) completed questionnaires and participated in follow-up interviews. Social participation was indexed by community group membership, and operationalised for analysis in two forms: extent (number of group memberships) and presence (zero vs. one or more memberships). Mood was measured as Positive Affect (PA) and Negative Affect (NA) as rated on the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule and well-being was measured with Diener’s Satisfaction with Life (SWL) questionnaire. Items from Goldberg’s International Personality Item Pool were used to measure N. The extent of social participation was significantly associated with all three mood/well-being variables in bivariate analyses, and remained as a significant net predictor of PA and NA (β = 0.11, P

The present study investigates how taxation is represented in the minds of Australian taxpayers and tax officers and whether shared beliefs and evaluations are related to taxpayer compliance. Shared tax views are assumed to facilitate positive interaction, and mutual satisfactory interaction to enhance taxpayers’ willingness to cooperate and comply. The sample comprised 292 compliant taxpayers, 547 non-compliant taxpayers identified by the Australian Tax Office (ATO), and 358 ATO officers who had direct contact with taxpayers. Shared perceptions were measured as similarity in beliefs and evaluations of tax law complexity, tax mentality, ethics and social norms, horizontal and vertical distributive fairness and fair exchange with the government, attitudes towards the government, and judgments of tax officers and tax preparers’ support. The ATO reported non-compliance was found to be related to respondents’ willingness to cooperate (i.e., filing timely and correctly) which, in turn, was related to respondents’ beliefs and evaluation of tax issues and their shared views on these issues. Willingness to cooperate appears to function as a mediator between tax compliance and taxpayer’s beliefs and evaluations as well as shared tax officials’ and taxpayers’ views.

During large scale wildfires, suppression activities are carried out under the direction of an Incident Management Team (IMT). The aim of the research was to increase understanding of decision processes potentially related to IMT effectiveness. An IMT comprises four major functions: Command, Operations, Planning, and Logistics. Four methodologies were used to study IMT processes: computer simulation experiments; analyses of wildfire reports; interviews with IMT members; and cognitive ethnographic studies of IMTs. Three processes were important determinants of IMT effectiveness: information management and cognitive overload; matching component function goals to overall goals; and team metacognition to detect and counter task-disruptive developments. These processes appear to be complex multi-person analogues of individual Incident Command processes identified previously. The findings have implications for issues such as: creating IMTs; training IMTs; managing IMTs; and providing decision support to IMTs.

In a multistage investment task the decision maker attempts to increase the capital by committing some part of it over several trials in a risky investment. Despite the richness of experimental results from this task, no decision strategy exists which is able to predict investment behavior. In this paper we formulate three strategies for predicting decisions in the investment task. In the success-expectation strategy (SES), the main factor determining the choice is the expected subjective probability of a success in the coming trial. In the win–loss ratio strategy (WLRS), the main factor is the relation between the possible win and the possible loss in a specific investment situation. In the linear function of capital strategy (LFCS), the available capital is the principal determinant of choice. We tested these strategies with the help of computer simulation, using data from previous experiments. With each strategy we predicted each subject's choices and compared these predictions with the observed decisions. The predictions of WLRS correlated significantly and positively with the observed data for 24 of the 39 subjects (62%), those of LFCS correlated with 14 subjects (36%), and those of SES correlated with nine subjects (23%). The findings reveal previously unsuspected patterns in deploying capital, as well as individual differences in investment behavior. Additional factors influencing strategy use and choices are discussed.

Background. A growing body of empirical evidence suggests that organisational factors are more important than classroom specific issues in determining teacher morale. Accordingly, it is necessary to have available measures that accurately assess morale, as well as the organisational factors that are likely to underpin the experience of morale. Aim. Three studies were conducted with the aim of developing a psychometrically sound questionnaire that could be used to assess teacher morale and various dimensions of school organisational climate. Sample. A total of 1,520 teachers from 18 primary and 26 secondary schools in the Australian state of Victoria agreed to participate in three separate studies (N = 615, 342 and 563 in Studies 1, 2 and 3, respectively) that were used to develop the questionnaire. The demographic profile of the teachers was similar to that found in the Department as a whole. Method. All teaching staff in the participating schools were asked to complete a self-report questionnaire as part of the evaluation of an organisational development programme. Results. A series of exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses were used to establish the questionnaire's factor structure, and correlation analyses were used to examine the questionnaire's convergent and discriminant validity. Conclusions. The three studies resulted in the 54-item School Organisational Health Questionnaire that measures teacher morale and 11 separate dimensions of school organisational climate: appraisal and recognition, curriculum coordination, effective discipline policy, excessive work demands, goal congruence, participative decision-making, professional growth, professional interaction, role clarity, student orientation, and supportive leadership.

This study reports the development of a short measure of transformational leadership: the Global Transformational Leadership scale (GTL). The study sample was 1,440 subordinates who assessed the leader behaviour of 695 branch managers in a large Australian financial organisation. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis showed that the GTL measured a single construct of leadership and had satisfactory reliability. Evidence for the convergent and discriminant validity is presented. We conclude that the GTL has a number of potential uses as an assessment and selection tool and in leadership research.

Le feedback a 360° est devenu une technique d'evaluation courante pour le developpement du management et la mesure des performances. C'est l'exploitation de cotations multiples pour l'evaluation des individus. Notre premier objectif etait l'examen du degre d'accord (correlations) entre differents juges de directeurs d'agence d'une grande banque australienne. Les juges etaient: le superieur du directeur (N = 66), l'interesse lui-meme (N = 249) et deux de ses subordonnes (N = 498). Les juges evaluaient ces cadres sur deux dimensions: le leadership transformationel et la performance au travail. Notre deuxieme objectif etait l'etude de l'impact de trois variables sur le degre de congruence entre les cotations des directeurs et de leurs subordonnes; il s'agissait de l'âge due cadre, de son niveau de performance et de l'etendue de ses relations avec ses subordonnes. Conformement a ce que les recherches anterieures laissaient attendre, les resultats deboucherent sur des correlations mediocres entre les trois ensembles de cotations, aussi bien sur le leadership que sur la performance. L'accord etait cependant moyen dans les paires de subordonnes. Le degre d'accord etait influence par la performance du directeur, mais pas par l'etendue des relations et de facon non evidente par l'âge du cadre.

The sweeping sociopolitical changes in Eastern Europe and the importance of self-related resources in facilitating adolescents' transitions to adulthood motivated this study on the effects of sociocultural context on adolescents' perceived control and well-being (N = 3,844; 7 Western contexts, 7 Eastern). The authors found that the mean levels of well-being and perceived control varied along stable Western vs. unstable Eastern sociohistorical contexts: (a) Eastern adolescents showed lower levels of well-being (perhaps related to economic aspects of change) and (b) higher levels of perceived control (perhaps related to perceived freedoms implied in the direction of change). Notably, however, the individual-difference relations (correlations) among the constructs were very uniform across the 14 settings, suggesting that the adaptive psychological interface between well-being and personal control is relatively robust against sociopolitical influences.

Nurses' representations of their work are defined as their cognitive 'work spaces', a theoretical concept derived from Newell & Simon's (1977) problem-solving model and Lewin's (1935) concept of interacting positive and negative valences. Using a structural equation modelling technique, a network of positive and negative features in nurses' work spaces is described in patterns of response to a questionnaire eliciting nurses' ratings of their professional opportunities and difficulties. The modelling technique revealed the dominance of positive over negative features, and the overall significance of social recognition for encouraging nurses to remain in nursing. Comparative analyses revealed that dominant features of work space representations did not differ for nurses from four city and country hospitals, nor in relation to positions in the nursing hierarchy. The importance of understanding the perceptions of nurses is discussed in relation to changes and development in nursing as a profession.

Competitive benchmarking is a management technique used to compare company performance. The practices and processes of one's own organization are compared with the best performance of other organizations to set targets and learn ways to make improvements. Drawing on Ajzen's (1985) theory of planned behaviour, we examined the effects of attitude, subjective norm and self-efficacy on managers' intentions to undertake benchmarking in their organization. A sample of 49 managers with benchmarking experience was compared with 46 managers with no experience of the practice. Consistent with the theory of planned behaviour, attitude and subjective norm were significant predictors of intention to benchmark. However, contrary to the theory, self-efficacy was not a significant predictor. For managers with benchmarking experience, attitudinal beliefs toward the technique was the strongest predictor of benchmarking intention. For managers with no benchmarking experience, normative beliefs about the views of key groups such as senior management and employees, was the strongest predictor of intention to benchmark. These findings support the possibilities of refinement of the theory of planned behaviour to postulate the primacy of subjective norms in introduction of group behaviour and attitude primacy in continuation of group behaviour. The findings are also discussed in relation to beliefs about benchmarking and for preparing managers who are about to introduce or continue a benchmarking programme.

The nature and degree of the relationship between the choice of coping strategies, personality, situational appraisals and the extent to which these relationships are domain-dependent is open. This study surveyed 330 police officers in order to answer seven specific questions : (1) Is the selection of coping strategies independent of the situational domain ? (2) Is the experience of hassles and uplifts independent of the situational domain ? (3) Is the experience of hassles independent of the experience of uplifts ? (4) Is the selection of problem-focused coping independent of the selection of emotion-focused coping ? (5) Is personality related to the selection of coping strategies ? (6) Is personality related to the reappraisal of the situational events ? (7) Does the selection of the coping strategy relate to the reappraisal of the situational event ? The findings indicate that extraversion (E) and neuroticism (N) are related to the selection of coping strategy, and that personality, domain and coping strategy make independent contributions to the final appraisal of the events. Personality, coping and situational experiences operate as discrete subsystems, with N, emotion-focused coping and hassles correlating together on the one hand, and E, problem-focused coping and uplifts correlating together on the other. This finding of two independent systems also adds support to other results in signalling to stress researchers and practitioners that they need to take account of both negative and positive aspects of the stress-coping process.

Our understanding of lay people's thoughts about the economy relies heavily on interpretations (and sometimes misinterpretations) of responses to specific questions. In this study, one open-ended question was asked, and only simple cues were provided, in each of 95 individual interviews. The dialogue from each interview was measured in terms of how much each person said, how variables were linked and what was said. The outcome was 95 unique cognitive models. Despite the differences between them, there were some broad areas of agreement which were reinforced by questionnaire responses, and in general, individuals described the economy by integrating economic, social, psychological and moral issues. In some respects, previous research findings, suggesting that lay people know very little about fiscal issues, were confirmed; however, the cognitive models showed that lay people did seem to understand the connection between government revenue and expenditure, even though questionnaire responses suggested otherwise.

Computer-simulated microworlds bridge the gap between the complexity of field investigations and the rigor of laboratory studies. The purpose of this paper is to draw attention to the major methodological issues involved in developing and using computer-simulated microworlds for the psychological study of complex decision-making behavior. These issues comprise flexibility and generality in the microworlds that can be created, adequate psychological validity, automatic trial administration and data logging, capacity to interface simulations of psychological processes, and adequate testing and documentation. Each of these issues is illustrated by indicating how it has been addressed in Fire Chief, a microworld generating program specifically designed for creating realistic, yet controllable, decision-making task environments in the psychology laboratory. Fire Chief (Omodei & Wearing, 1993a) is introduced as both fully portable to other research teams and suitable for use in many different contexts requiring a complex task situation.

Perceived control is conceptualized as the agentic representation that persons construct for themselves. Two questions were addressed. First, to what extent is perceived control specific to particular domains? Second, how many dimensions are involved in perceived control, and if there is more than one, are two of these components of perceived control expectation and appraisal? These questions were investigated with the data from the Berne Adolescence Longitudinal Study. 3425 adolescents aged between 14 and 20 years completed questionnaires either once or three times either in 1986, 1988, or 1990. The nine situations representing the adolescents' life context showed two major domains, the personal-social domain, and the societal domain. Confirmatory factor analyses (LISREL) revealed a two-factor structure of perceived control: an expectancy component and an appraisal component. This pattern was replicated over time, with both cross-sectional and longitudinal samples.

What are the personal and work related factors which contribute to a police officer's psychological well-being? This question was examined within a Perceived Quality of Life (PQOL) framework that integrates personality, coping processes and a police officer's positive (beneficial to well-being) and negative (harmful to well-being) work experiences. Structural equation analyses were conducted on questionnaire data obtained from 527 police officers during two related studies. Two structural equation models showed that positive and negative work experiences independently contributed to an officer's PQOL, and that organizational rather than operational experiences were more important. A third model supported these findings, but showed that the personality dimensions of neuroticism and extraversion were the strongest predictors of an officer's PQOL. It was also shown that problem-focused coping resulted in positive work experiences, whereas emotion-focused coping contributed to negative work experiences. Comparisons with other community and occupational groups suggested that police reported relatively favourably levels of psychological well-being. Collectively, these results indicate that policing is not highly stressful, and demonstrate the need for a systemic view in order to understand police officers' psychological responses to their work.

In order to understand analytic processes in organisations, better tools are required to trace decision processes. An impediment to progress in this area has been the tendency to over-simplify inherently complex information environments or the data that they produce. We address this issue by providing worked examples from the Analysis Simulation Project (ASP). ASP methodology consists of a computer-administered information grid of 64 cells of 50-130 words each. The information accessing activity of participants is recorded. Our results present novel approaches to maintaining optimal complexity in environmental representation and data analysis. Specifically we demonstrate how computer-mediated process tracing methods can simulate the cognitive experience of complexity and how the data can be used to examine behaviour at increasing levels of complexity. We conclude that computer-mediated process-tracing tools provide an opportunity to comprehensively model complex information processing behaviour and therefore allow improved insight into phenomena with similar outcomes but distinct processes.

This study investigated the relative contribution made by personality and work-related experiences to a police officer's perceived quality of life (PQOL). The construct validity of the Police Daily Hassles and Uplifts Scales also was examined. Data were provided by 404 police officers drawn from all ranks and work sections within an Australian police department. A series of factor analyses supported the construct validity of the scales, which can be grouped into organizational and operational domains. Hassles and uplifts were shown to be independent. Correlational and regression analyses indicated that organizational, rather than operational, experiences were most important in determining PQOL. The results showed that neuroticism, as well as organizational hassles and uplifts, were significant predictors of PQOL. These findings both challenge the stereotype of policing that suggests operational experiences are most distressing and demonstrate that PQOL is determined by police officers' personality and work-related experiences.

Two studies ( ns 28 and 55) were conducted to investigate the extent to which proposed relationships between perceived difficulty and motivated cognitive effort generalise to realistic, complex, ill-defined, ongoing situations. A computerised microworld generator, Fire Chief, was used to create an appropriate cognitive task. Using complementary research designs, no significant relationships were obtained between either perceived difficulty or proximity to preferred difficulty and on-task motivated cognitive effort assessed by self-referent importance, intended effort, and subjectively felt arousal. The implications of these findings for expectancy-value approaches to motivation are discussed. Attention is drawn to the extent to which the two studies illustrate the use of the Fire Chief microworld generator for the investigation of psychological phenomena.

The present study examined aspects of the conflict model of decision making (Janis and Mann, 1977) in the context of attending for a screening test for cervical cancer. In addition, the ability of decision coping styles as measured by Mann's (1982) Decision Making Questionnaire II (DMQ II) to predict screening status was examined. Three hundred and two women answered a questionnaire operationalizing the constructs in the conflict model about their beliefs and knowledge of cervical cancer and the Pap smear test. Four screening categories were identified: never screened, not screened in the last two years (overdue), screened in last two years and initiated the test, and screened in last two years and recruited to have the test. Differences in the decision processes of these groups were examined. Women who were overdue for their Pap test showed greater decisional conflict and were more likely to adopt a defensive avoidance coping pattern than those who had been screened in the last two years. Regression analyses exploring predictors of decisional stress and defensive avoidance for each group, except the never screen, showed that the model's suggested pathways were evidenced among the Overdue Group. Results failed to find any association between coping styles as measured by the DMQ II and screening status. Implications of these findings are discussed.

This project had two goals: to explain variation in residential water consumption and to evaluate methods of encouraging residents to reduce their consumption. Survey data for both studies were collected by mail questionnaire in early 1991, and water consumption figures were recorded between June and August of that year. In Study 1 (n = 264) a three-variable regression model (number of residents, clothes washing machine loads, and property value) accounted for 60% of the variance. Attitudes, habits and values were very poor predictors of water consumption. In Study 2 (n =226) households were divided into three treatment groups: feedback only, feedback and dissonance, and a control group. Repeated-measures ANOVA revealed that high consumers receiving dissonance and feedback or feedback alone had significantly reduced their water consumption in the treatment period. The implications of these findings are discussed.

Psychological well-being and psychological distress are often regarded as distinct, if not orthogonal dimensions of mental health. Based on analyses in this paper, we consider the distinction misleading. Four dimensions seem worth measuring in general population surveys: life satisfaction, positive affect, anxiety and depression. Furthermore, one of the well-being dimensions, life satisfaction, is quite strongly correlated with a distress dimension, depression. A person is unlikely to be both satisfied with life and depressed, but may be satisfied and anxious. The paper is based on convergent validity (exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses) and divergent validity assessments of a range of widely used measures, which were included in the Victorian Quality of Life Panel Survey, 1987.

The development of two self-report scales that measure police daily hassles and uplifts is reported These scales reflect the positive and negative work experiences common to police officers. Self-report questionnaire data were provided by 330 police officers drawn from a systematic sample of all ranks and work sections within an Australian police department. Results showed that 19 dimensions of police hassles and 12 dimensions of police uplifts could be grouped into two broad domains of organizational and operational experiences. Correlations with job satisfaction and perceived quality of life (PQOL) indicators supported the construct validity of the scales and suggested that organizational hassles and uplifts were more important than operational experiences in determining a police officer's PQOL. When compared to population norms, police officers reported more favorable levels of PQOL. These results raise questions about the assertion that policing is highly stresful, and they demonstrate the need for a more systemic view of police work that takes into account experiences that are beneficial as well as experiences that are harmful to an officer's well-being.

This paper reports a study of nurses' perceptions of the positive and negative features of the work environment and their contribution to satisfaction with nursing. The concept of a 'work space' was developed to describe nurses' mental images of the features of their work environment. Eighty-four final-year student nurses and 75 registered nurses rated questionnaire items designed to examine perceptions of opportunities for professional development, sources of satisfaction, difficulties, time constraints and problematic interactions with other hospital personnel. There was general agreement among nurses about the aspects of their work that they found satisfying, but student nurses were more pessimistic than registered nurses that nursing would give them opportunities for recognition of their worth. Students returning from practica in critical care wards reported more stressful interactions with other personnel than students returning from general ward practica. Structural equation modelling of the causal relations between sources of satisfaction with nursing revealed that recognition and self-perceptions of work as a nurse were the strongest predictors of overall satisfaction with nursing. Caring for patients contributed only indirectly through its influence on nurses' feelings about themselves. The data indicate the significance of personal and social implications of nursing careers.

This paper is concerned with identifying coping strategies which are effective in minimising the impact of adverse life events on subjective well-being and, in particular, on negative affect. Data are drawn from the 1983 and 1985 waves of the Victorian (Australian) Quality of Life Panel Study (N=734). Respondents completed a life events inventory (Henderson et al., 1981) and were then asked to identify the most adverse event they had dealt with in the last two years. They responded to a coping strategies inventory (Moos et al., 1984), indicating how they had dealt with this event. Instrumental, problem-solving strategies proved most effective in dealing with adversity related to work and finances, health, and personal relationships. Contrary to expectation, affective regulation strategies were ineffective, while avoidance and denial strategies were harmful.

This paper addresses issues of causal direction in research on subjective well being (SWB). Previous researchers have generally assumed that such variables as domain satisfactions, social support, life events, and levels of expectation and aspiration are causes of SWB. Critics have pointed out that they could just as well be consequences (Costa and McCrae, 1980, Veenhoven, 1988). In some contexts this has been referred to as the top-down versus bottom-up controversy (Diener, 1984). The main purpose is to propose a general statistical model which holds promise of resolving this controversy. The model can be used when three or more waves of panel data are available. It is used here to assess causal direction between six domain satisfactions (marriage, work, leisure, standard of living, friendship and health) and SWB. Data are drawn from four waves of an Australian Quality of Life panel survey (1981-1987) with an initial sample size of 942.

To incorporate a psychosocial model of tobacco smoking into a behaviour genetic design to examine genetic and environmental influences on variation in smoking involvement.Longitudinal twin study.Twins initially aged between 13 and 18 years and registered with the Australian Twin Registry were surveyed three times between 1988 and 1996. A total of 414 pairs of identical and same-sex fraternal twin pairs participated in all three surveys, aged between 20 and 25 at wave 3. Biometric modelling estimated the influence of genetic and environmental factors in determining variation in smoking at each wave, both before and after adjusting for perceived smoking behaviours of peers and parents.Twins answered a questionnaire on their own smoking status and reported on the use of tobacco by parents and friends as they perceived it, at each survey wave.At all three surveys, current smokers were more likely to have parents who smoked and to have smokers among their peers. Genes and environmental factors, both common and unique, contributed to variation in smoking behaviours. However, after controlling for the smoking behaviours of peers and parents, the role of genes in determining variation in smoking involvement was reduced by 100% at wave 1 and by 30% at wave 2. Friends' smoking reduced the magnitude of the common environment variance by 11%, 30% and 40% at waves 1, 2 and 3, respectively. Parents' smoking behaviours explained part of the common environment. Biometric modelling of the covariation between smoking involvement and peer smoking suggested that genes might influence smoking involvement at wave 1 by influencing choice of peers.Environmental factors play the greatest role in determining variation in tobacco smoking among adolescents and young adults. Among adolescents, genes may influence variation in smoking behaviours indirectly by influencing choice of peers. However, genes seem to have a direct influence on variations in the smoking behaviours of young adults.

Will an effective discipline policy improve student misbehaviour and result in a reduction of teacher stress? It is commonly believed that student misbehaviour is a major cause of teacher stress, and that the degree of student misbehaviour is reflected in student suspension rates. Moreover, it is believed that student misbehaviour can be reduced by improving a school's discipline policy through the collaborative efforts of whole school communities. As a result of growing concern about student misbehaviour and teacher stress, a Whole School Approach to Discipline and Student Welfare programme was implemented throughout the Australian state of Victoria. This paper reports on the evaluation studies that were conducted to assess the effectiveness of the programme and examine the assumptions which underpinned its implementation. Data were obtained from 4,072 primary and secondary school teachers. Although longitudinal analyses suggested that the programme was effective in reducing teacher stress, there was no mean change in student misbehaviour. Structural equation analyses showed that there was little relationship between a school's discipline policy and the perceived level of student misbehaviour. It was also found that student suspension rates were not related to student misbehaviour, but could be predicted on the basis of a school's discipline policy and the self-esteem of teachers. Two and three wave causal analyses also demonstrated the problems associated with using cross-sectional research to support major policy decisions. Overall, these studies showed that there is little point in trying to reduce teacher stress by reducing student misbehaviour. Rather, it is more appropriate to develop a supportive organisational climate that enables teachers to cope with the student misbehaviour that confronts them.

That religion in some form is important for many people is shown by information from the Australian Values Study (1984) summarized in Table 5.1.

The application of systems dynamic modeling techniques to the problem of analyzing the effects of telecommunication developments on society is discussed. Initial attempts to develop a social interaction model with the telecommunication system have produced four possible social reactions to growth of the system. These four reactions can be summarized as invasion of privacy, information pressures, social dependence, and social tension. Although the model is presently very simple and does not contain many interconnections between these four variables, it is providing useful insight into the interactions between telecommunication systems growth and social response. The causal diagrams are presented with the computer model in its present state of development. Several computer runs are shown indicating some counter-intuitive results from the basic model, and an explanation of these results is presented.

Summary A highly educated sample of 63 politically elite people rated 60 items concerned with political matters on several bipolar scales and also sorted the items into groups according to their similarity to one another. An analysis of the subjects' agreement ratings of the 60 items (on one of the bipolar scales) yielded two “point of view” groups: liberal and moderately conservative. A multidimensional scaling analysis of the items, based on the similarity sorting data, yielded only one dimension: Left-Right.

Previous research has shown that QOL measures are reasonably reliable and valid for static analysis. This article is concerned with the validity of the measures for use in panel studies/dynamic analysis. Are they sensitive enough to register changes (i.e., enhanced satisfaction and well-being) of the kind one would expect to follow favourable life events, and also changes (i.e., reduced satisfaction and well-being) due to adverse life events? Also, do changes in satisfaction with specific domains of life produce concomitant changes in the general sense of well-being?

This paper presents evidence for regarding well-being and ill-being as distinct, although not orthogonal dimensions. It is suggested that well-being and ill-being may be like measures of quantitative and verbal ability in intelligence tests. For some purposes (e.g. for admitting students to particular courses of study) it may be sensible to use only one of the measures. For other purposes a combined measure-I.Q.-is appropriate. In this study we employ Indices of Well-Being and Ill-Being and a combined measure, Balance of Well-Being and Ill-Being.

An experiment was carried out to resolve an apparent disagreement in the literature about the importance of the role of the verb in sentence processing. Previous results were confirmed in that the verb was found to be important in judgments of sentence meaning but less significant in sentence storage. However, form class differences in storage held only for high potency terms. Some implications of these findings are discussed.

This pilot study illustrates the value of consumer research in the public sector. It focuses on use, evaluation and desired improvements to human services in Victoria. The study is based on a survey of 942 respondents in five Local Government Areas, four of which are in the Melbourne metropolitan area. The paper concludes with a discussion of the policy implications of our findings and with suggestions for improved methods of conducting consumer research for Government.

This paper reports the results of a survey of 261 psychologists registered in the State of Victoria. A mail questionnaire was sent to 400 psychologists listed on the Victorian Psychological Council Register. The response rate was 65.4%. The respondents were asked to provide information concerning the following: their primary place of employment, membership status of the Australian Psychological Society and if they were involved in human service provision, the number of clients they saw in a typical week, the frequency with which they saw different classes of clients and the contexts in which they provided these services. In addition, all respondents were asked to provide details of the time spent in various activities in a typical week, their perceptions of career development opportunities for psychologists in the health system, their satisfaction with present psychological training and their academic qualifications. Frequency tables of these data are presented and the implications for profession...

Almost all previous research on PQOL has examined static relationships. This paper, based on two waves of an Australian panel study (N=677), investigates change. We estimate a model in which changes in PQOL are seen as depending directly on changes in satisfaction with particular domains of life (marriage, job, etc.), which in turn are affected by life events occurring within these domains. This model accords with a “bottom-up” rather than a “top-down” theory of PQOL or well-being (Diener, 1984).

This article applies to decision making at the level of the individual human organism. Observations of real-world systems and simulations of them have suggested that many decision-making environments are extremely complex. Indeed, given the limitations on human information processing capacity derived from laboratory experiments, we should not be able to operate in them at all. The methodology developed allowed the controlled investigation of the interaction of the individuals with dynamic systems. The effect of three complexifying factors on a subject's ability to optimize total welfare in a series of computer models of a welfare administration project over time was studied. The factors of (i) number of elements in the system, (ii) connections between them and (iii) the presence or absence of random variation were realized in a 2 × 2 × 2 analysis of variance research design in which two male and two female undergraduates served as subjects in each cell. Multivariate analyses of variance performed on derived measures of performance and system control demonstrated either insignificant differences, or significant differences in the direction opposite to that predicted. The more complex systems did not always attain poorer levels of performance than simpler systems. The results suggest that revision of theories of complexity within the social sciences may be necessary.

Joint effects of leader esteem for least preferred coworker (leader LPC), mean LPC of members, and intergroup competition on adjustment, interpersonal relations, and task performance effectiveness ...

The purpose of this paper is to present models of well-being and ill-being which integrate the effects of different types of independent variables. Using the more powerful techniques provided by the LISREL software, the paper replicates and extends analysis previously reported in SIR (Headey, Holmstrom and Wearing, 1984a).

Previous research in dynamic decision making has failed to produce a unified approach to the area This has result in a collection of experiments whose results are difficult to generalise from the specific task systems used. It is argued that an approach focusing on the structure of the task system and employing well-known methods of systems analysis can overcome this difficulty. In addition, this technique can order research and assist in the psychological interpretation of system parameters. The use of systems analysis in this role is demonstrated in an experiment using first order feedback system. subjects were required to stabilise the system at a level other than its equilibrium. The results show that subjects quickly adapt to different values of parameters in the system boundary. However performance was consistently better in more inertial systems. This suggests that subjects rely on the task system to integrate over-and underadjustments of their decision inputs.