Clerical Help Research Articles

"What concerns pre-service teachers the most?" A quantitative research for concurrent and consecutive teacher training models

In the Republic of Turkey, as in many other countries, there are primarily two types of teacher preparation. One is the concurrent model, where a student spends four to five years at university in an Education faculty, learning to become a school teacher. The second is the consecutive model, where university seniors and/or graduates of the Arts & Sciences faculty attend a one-year pedagogical formation certification programme to become qualified as a teacher. Only authorized Education faculties are eligible to provide these types of pedagogical formation education. Students attending an Education faculty through the concurrent model, take several pedagogical and practicum courses over a four-year period, while the students in the consecutive model only take a portion of the pedagogical courses and then complete a teaching practicum during the second semester of the year-long programme. This current study is based on the idea that along with professional competencies, psychological readiness for teaching is also affected by teacher education and training. Thus, in this study, the pre-service teachers’ concerns about teaching were analyzed as well as whether their concerns differed according to programme type, gender, and/or field of study. Data from a Teacher Concerns Checklist (TCC) completed by 545 pre-service teachers was analysed through descriptive statistics as well as multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) and one-way analysis of variance (one-way ANOVA). It was revealed in the analysis results that students from the concurrent model of teacher education were most concerned about the lack of public support for schools, insufficient clerical help for teachers, and the large number of administrative interruptions. While, the students from the consecutive teacher education model were most concerned about having too many students in class, lack of public support for schools, and too many standards and regulations for teachers to follow. Overall, the students from the concurrent model had significantly fewer concerns about teaching than students from the consecutive model. The field of study did have a significant effect on the concerns of preservice teachers; whereas, gender had no effect.

Politics, Economic Provisioning, and Suffrage in St. Louis: What Women Said, What Men Heard

Introduction In February of 1919, State Representative Charles P. Comer, a 39-yearold unmarried lawyer from a St. Louis brewery ward, voted against granting presidential suffrage to women. Despite the defiant gesture, expected of a man identified by national suffrage leaders as an especially vehement opponent of woman suffrage (Catt and Shuler 1923: 349), presidential suffrage passed that day in the Missouri House by 123 votes to eight.(1) Only four months later, Missouri joined the rush of state legislatures called to ratify the 19th Amendment, granting women equal suffrage on all electoral levels. On July 2, Representative Comer voted aye, explaining to his fellow (male) legislators that, I've played poker long enough to know when to lay down my hand (Catt and Shuler 1923: 349). The St. Louis women, upper class and progressive, who cheered from the galleries, had been battling the likes of Charles Comer for nine years.(2) One of the enduring questions in history is why any group would choose to share political power with another group, thus diluting its own power. The granting of suffrage to American women in 1919 is one of those events in which we seek answers. I focus here on the diversity of women's visible economic provisioning functions, arguing that the granting of suffrage had political benefits to the men in power; at the same time, the political risks were being lessened because women were starting to look like men economically. Charles Comer decided to join the majority. One would like to ask why he thought the game was lost. Was he suddenly convinced, as some historians have suggested, by the role of women in World War I? (for example, Barck and Blake 1947: 264-266). Was he impressed by the support finally voiced by President Woodrow Wilson or former President Roosevelt? (Catt and Shuler 1923: 258, 177). Did increasing awareness of the consequences of prohibition dry up opposition to suffrage along with the St. Louis breweries? Some states refused the pressure to call sessions to consider ratification. Why not Missouri, which had defeated suffrage in the 1913, 1915, and 1917 General Assemblies and in a 1914 referenda, and that had been considered a black state--nearly hopeless in its opposition--by suffrage leaders only months earlier? (Victory Map 1918). The Missouri case and, in particular, events in St. Louis help illuminate the reasons men in power were willing to grant the vote to women. By looking at a specific locale, we can see more clearly the economic and political workings that led even a black state's legislators to join the band-wagon. Papers and books over the years have often focused on what women said, on their changing strategies, related to the vote. This article uses the matter of economic provisioning to get at what men heard: what they took from women's strategies and what they saw women doing, politically and economically, to back up the talk. I will present background on what women were indeed doing, politically and economically, in St. Louis, as well as look at the political climate in which men operated. I will assess the reasons men might have been willing to grant suffrage in light of what they heard in St. Louis. Charles Comer might have had second thoughts about--or been wary of--denying the growing economic power he would have seen in the women of St. Louis. From his law office near the Old Courthouse, he would note the businesses that depended on their female typists, stenographers, and other clerical help. For that matter, he knew first-hand the inconvenience of the current strike by the girls on both St. Louis telephone companies: the Kinloch telephone exchange was barely working on July 2, 1919, and the Bell exchange was slow. (3) From his bachelor rooms at the Missouri Athletic Club on the northwest corner of Fourth and Washington Avenues, he might have seen a steady stream of immigrant and native women heading to the shirtwaist, shoe, and cigar factories each morning. …

Economics of clinical nephrology practice

Economics of clinical nephrology practice

Passing as a Pastor: Clerical Imposture in the Colonial Atlantic World

AbstractMany impostors in the eighteenth century tried to pass as pastors in North America's churches. This phenomenon showed how increasing engagement with the broader Atlantic world could carry ominous implications for colonial religious leaders, implications that would become manifest in the itinerancy of the evangelical revivals and, in the early republic, finally crush any hopes of centered American religious authority. Eighteenth-century episodes of clerical imposture help illuminate the increasing loss of cultural mastery faced by religious elites as a result of Atlantic anonymities, itinerant ministries, and democratic sensibilities. This article considers why so many in the eighteenth century attempted to pass as pastors, from British wanderers like the supposed brick-maker Samuel May to notorious criminals like Tom Bell or Stephen Burroughs. Understanding the conditions that led to these cases of clerical imposture leads to greater understanding of the nature of religious and cultural power in colonial North America and in the early American republic. The eighteenth century brought a crisis to America concerning the implications of cultural and demographic fluidity as elites worried more and more about assigning true value and uncovering conspiracy in a world newly dependent on appearances to establish authority. The increasing cosmopolitanism, immigration, and commerce helped make the colonial elites more wealthy and powerful, but they also now had to scramble to resist the potential for deception and imposture that the new engagements created. Such conditions made new room for con men, many of whom posed as pastors to access the power of religious authorities.

Resident Stress Revisited: A Senior Pediatric Resident’s Point of View

It has been 15 years since Dr Abraham Bergman1 wrote his poignant essay for Pediatrics on resident stress. In some ways, it seems little has changed in those 15 years in the area of resident stress. Many of the points raised in Dr Bergman’s article are still relevant today. However, pediatric residents have recently entered a new era in pediatric education and training led by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME).2 The ACGME has established guidelines that limit the number of hours a pediatric resident can work per shift, as well as per week. The guidelines set new standards for “competencies” in which residents should be trained as well as new ways that administrators must track and evaluate residents’ progress. The ACGME expects full compliance with these guidelines beginning July 1, 2003. As residents look forward with anticipation and hope to what changes these new guidelines will bring, it seems an appropriate time to revisit Dr Bergman’s article and evaluate the past and current sources of resident stress. This commentary will consider which sources of stress described by Dr Bergman are still relevant today, and whether the advent of the ACGME guidelines will alleviate any of these stressors for tomorrow’s pediatric house officer. Global causes of resident stress, as Dr Bergman explains, include the developmental milestones that pediatric residents must face as adults learning to balance their personal and professional lives. Dr Bergman lists the development of autonomy, individuation from one’s parents, and wrestling with financial independence as global causes of resident stress. These stressors are much the same today, as every new physician must struggle with his/her new role and new identity of being a physician. The development of financial independence continues to be a large source of stress for today’s debt-laden residents. The Future … Address correspondence to Megan A. Moreno, MD, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 3009 Stevens St, Madison, WI 53705. E-mail: ma.moreno{at}hosp.wisc.edu

A Z specification for employment clerical system

Z has become recognized as a very effective formal specification language in improving the quality of software ware and ensuring the cost-effectiveness of the development process. This paper presents part of a case study of Z notations, ClericalTemps, which is an agency that provides a clerical help to its clients.

School nurses' perceptions of and experience with school health research.

This survey examined school nurses' perceptions of and experience with school health research. A random sample of school nurses who were either members of the school nurse section of the American School Health Association (ASHA) or members of the National Association of School Nurses (NASN) comprised the sample (n = 590). The response rate was 81%; the nurses were all females. A plurality held masters degrees (40%) and had worked an average of 12.0 years as a school nurse. Most (67%) were employed at the elementary school level. Slightly more than one-third (37%) had ever been involved in a research study as a school nurse. Perceived barriers to engaging in research were lack of time, clerical help, and money. Perceived benefits of school nurses engaging in research were: adds new knowledge on school nursing issues (97%), benefits the health care of children at school (93%), and helps peers do their job better (86%). School nurses also indicated they would become involved in research if someone would assist them (78%).

The E. J. Wylie Traveling Fellowship

In 1987 a Traveling Fellowship named after Dr. E. Jack Wylie was established by the Society (Fig. 1). Dr. Edwin Jack Wylie was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, into a medical family on October 13, 1918. His father was a general practitioner who later specialized in pediatrics and practiced in San Bernardino, Calif. Dr. Wylie went to Pomona College where he became Phi Beta Kappa and, at graduation in 1939, received the Kneeland Prize in debate. He followed in his father's footsteps and studied medicine. He graduated from Harvard Medical School in the Class of 1943-A. Dr. Wylie completed his internship in surgery at New York/Cornell Medical Center and was accepted into the General Surgery Residency at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), where he trained under H. Glenn Bell, MD, professor and chairman, between June 1944 and September 1948. During his residency he studied with Dr. Norman Freeman, "the country's first vascular surgeon to confine his professional life to vascular surgery," who was the chief of the Vascular Surgery Clinic. Dr. Wylie was stimulated by Dr. Freeman's teachings, and, because there were no formal training opportunities available at the end of his residency, he practiced vascular surgery briefly with Dr. Freeman. Dr. Wylie then established an independent private vascular surgery practice in San Francisco, with a medical school affiliation at UCSF. Dr. Wylie's pioneering and perhaps most significant contribution was performing the first aortoiliac endarterectomy in the United States in 1951. He returned to UCSF after his discharge from the army and spent his career as an academic surgeon, rising to the rank of full professor in 1967 and vice-chairman of the department, titles that he held until his death in 1982. Dr. Wylie died after a full operating day on September 2, 1982. He was 6 weeks short of his sixty-fourth birthday. At his memorial service, his

Managing temporary workers: A permanent HRM challenge

T hese recent quotes, the first from the president of the world’s largest temporary agency, the second from the country’s most vocal advocate of temporary-employees’ rights, highlight how entrenched temporary work has become in our economy. Indeed, 10 years ago, only 100 temporaryemployment agencies existed in this country, and only about 250,000 workers were temps; today, there are close to 1,500 temporary-help services and over 1.5 million temporary workers. Moreover, temporary employment is now a $20 billion a year business. In fact, between 1991 and 1993, more than 20 percent of all the new positions created in the U.S. economy were temporary jobs. Manpower, Inc. currently has a whopping 560,000 employees, deploying more than 100,000 of them each day. And, where the temporary workforce was once largely dominated by clerical help, today it includes large numbers of technical workers, nurses and medical personnel, hotel and restaurant workers, industrial laborers, and business executives and consultants as well.

Pharmacy-based investigational drug services: a national survey.

At the end of the survey, respondents were asked whether their departments planned to make changes affecting the IDS within the next one to two years. Fifty-nine percent had made plans, and most of these plans included an expansion or streamlining of investigational services. Thirty-five percent planned to increase the scope of services offered, or extend present services to cover areas previously not reached, such as a specific medical service, or an outpatient clinic. More than 39 percent planned to begin using computers in the operation of the IDS, or expand their present use of computers. Twenty-six percent planned to increase staffing in some way; these plans included designating a staff pharmacist to handle study drugs and budgeting a few hours per week, hiring a pharmacist, nurse, technician, or student, or adding clerical help. Five institutions (less than 2%) planned to scale back services; this was due to budgetary cuts in three hospitals and one hospital closure, but in one case, plans were to limit enrollment of new patients to hours when a pharmacist is available. Clearly, many factors are involved in the operation of an IDS. The information obtained from this survey is by no means a complete list of the services that may be provided; however, the information and ideas gathered from this survey were useful in planning for service expansion at St. John's Hospital. It is hoped that this information might be useful to other pharmacists and pharmacy administrators as well.

Determining the required nurse staffing of an emergency department.

D-G GpR#wM ST-G To analyze the number of nurses required for each shift, the nursing management of the Emergency Department of Kapiolani Medical Center for Women and Children, Honolulu, Hawaii, undertook a 6-month staffing study. The emergency department averages 16,381 visits per year (or 50 per 24-hour period), with an average of 9.8% patients admitted. Patient population included all types of pediatric emergencies and obstetric/gynegologic problems of women. Women with head and spinal cord injuries, and cardiac, respiratory, and orthopedic traumas are usually transported to other medical centers within a radius of three miles. At the time of the study, the following staffing pattern was in use: two RNs on Monday through Friday day shifts, three RNs on evenings, and three RNs on nights; for weekend staffing there were three RNs on the day shift, four RNs on evenings, and three RNs on nights. The unique environment of this hospital allows for ED coverage from both the pediatric intensive care unit (PICU) and the labor and delivery department (L&D) to cover short (1 to 2 hours) crisis periods. Clerical help was available on all shifts. Preliminary observation of the unit indicated that patient arrival patterns were not consistent with the scheduled work shifts of 7 to 3 o’clock, 3 to 11 o’clock, and 11 to 7 o’clock. Conceptually adjustments to staffing might result in a more efficient operation that matched scheduled work load with patient demands for service. In addition, it was not clear whether the unit had the optimum number of scheduled staff members for each shift per day.

The Future of Sociology

A review of changes in sociology since World War II is provided from the author's perspective. Major shifts include the growth in sociology and social science in general of technical expertise, but also of challenges to sociology as a science that can do work. Some aspects have been facilitated, such as the availability of clerical help (machines) and typing (machines), but the basic problems of the science have not changed. A major limitation is that funding is rarely available for research of the scope required to describe behavior adequately, and the science is at a descriptive stage. Optimism is appropriate, however, as, with a knowledge of limitations, the potential for future achievement exists.

Sex and acknowledgments: A nonreactive study

Two studies investigated the effect of author(s)' sex on acknowledgments. Study 1 compared 70 female authors of books in psychology with 300 males. While men acknowledged mainly other males' professional advice, women acknowledged advice by both sexes. The rate of mixed-sex advisors increased over time. No such effects were obtained in acknowledgments of clerical help: Over time and across the sexes predominantly female assistance was acknowledged. Separate analyses of acknowledgments of spouses showed women acknowledging their husbands' advice, and men thanking their wives mostly for manuscript typing. Study 2 surveyed acknowledgments in the 1959 and 1979 issues of eight psychological journals. Male acknowledgees outnumbered females, especially among male authors. The latter had also the lowest proportion of mixed-sex acknowledgments. Over time, the proportion of female and mixed-sex authors increased; so did the proportion of acknowledgments for mixed-sex professional advice. Each group tended to acknowledge clerical help by own-sex individuals. The proportion of both mixed-sex and all-female acknowledgments increased over time. The discussion deals with female advisors' availability and with authors' tendency to seek out same-sex colleagues.

Charles H. Thompson: A Bibliography

Charles H. Thompson's accomplishments as an educator and as an administrator at Howard University, from 1926 until his retirement in 1966, have been given attention elsewhere,-including recent issues of the Journal of Negro Education. Therefore, background information on his life and career will not be discussed here. Rather, this article will focus on Dr. Thompson's accomplishments as a writer of numerous articles on social issues that affected the lives of Black people internationally, but particularly Black Americans. With the pen as his sword, Dr. Thompson was relentless in his efforts to expose inequities in the treatment of minority groups and to bring about equality of opportunities. Although his main interests were in the field of education, he was also concerned about problems in race relations, civil rights, employment, and so on. To our knowledge, a complete compilation of Dr. Thompson's works has not been published. bibliography included in this article not only lists his editorials and articles in the Journal of Negro Education but his thesis, dissertation, articles in other publications, books, books that mention him, as well as manuscript collections that allude to him. Many of the titles appear to be as appropriate today as they were when written. Although several books have made references to Charles H. Thompson, the two works that devoted most attention to him are Richard Kluger, Simple Justice: History of Brown v. Board of Education and Black America's Struggle for Equality (1976) and Richard Bardolph, Negro Vanguard (1950). Bardolph declares that the Journal of Negro Education, edited by Charles H. Thompson at Howard University, earned its reputation as one of the finest publications of its kind. Kluger points out that though Thompson had almost no money except to pay the printing bills and postage, he launched in 1932, the Journal as a means of fully documenting the conditions of Negro schools and exploring the implications of segregated education. Thompson's magazine seized the torch, according to Kluger, that had been let fall when Crisis lost its founder. He argues: The Journal was, to be sure, far less polemical than Crisis had ever been, but it served a similar purpose: to inform, to arouse, to inspire (p. 168). Howard University contributed office space, clerical help, and about one-third of Thompson's salary. In 1928, three years after he received his doctorate and four years prior to the establishment of the Journal, Dr. Thompson wrote a major article that was published in the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science. This particular issue was devoted to Negro Education and included articles by some of the leading Negro spokesmen of that era: W. E. B. Du Bois, E. Franklin Frazier, James Weldon Johnson, Charles J. Johnson, Alain Locke, and Kelly Miller. Dr. Thompson's article, The Educational Achievement of Negro Children, declared: A critical examination of the fact presented in this study shows that when Negroes are given equal environmental and school opportunities their educational achievements are equal to or better than that of the whites. (In fact, it is surprising to note that Negroes achieve as much as they do in consideration of the poor environmental and school opportunities they are afforded.) In other words, the educational achievement of Negro children, as with white children, is, in the main, a direct function of their environmental and school opportunities rather than a function of some special inherent difference in mental ability. In conclusion he stated, A critical appraisal of the facts with reference to the educational achievement of Negro children forces one to conclude: 1. That the doctrine of an inherent mental inferiority of the Negro is a myth unfounded by the most logical interpretation of the scientific facts on the subject produced to date. 2. That the mental and scholastic achievements of Negro children, as with white children, are, in the main, a direct function of their environmental and school opportunities rather than a function of some inherent differences in mental'ability. …

Low Power: Small Enterprises in Shanghai, 1949–67

Small firms in Chinese cities, which before 1949 were private, have in the communist era gradually come under more government authority. The stages of this slow process can be treated as a case study in the political socialization of small units. They tell a tale of tensions between different levels of economic power, high, medium and low. Research into the kinds of power that promoted this step-by-step centralization, and also into those that resisted it, may suggest a more comprehensive approach to power in China generally.* The author expresses great thanks to the Joint Committee on Contemporary China of the Social Science Research Council and the American Council of Learned Societies for support related to this article. The Center of International Studies and the Woodrow Wilson School, Princeton University, supplied some clerical help, and the Foreign Area Fellowship Program supported the author's first researches on Shanghai. Very useful comments were received from James Nickum, Gordon Bennett, Bruce Reynolds, Thomas Rawski, Carl Riskin, Dick Wilson, and an anonymous reader for The China Quarterly. All opinions here are the author's solely.

Externalities and Open Field Burning: A Case Study

G RASS SEED GROWERS in the Willamette Valley contribute $35 million in gross sales annually to Oregon's economy. In 1972, 260,000 acres of grass seed crops were grown in the Willamette Valley. An estimated 148,000 acres are devoted to the production of both annual and perennial ryegrass, accounting for all ryegrass grown in the United States. The remaining 102,000 acres include the production of bentgrass, red fescue, chewings fescue, tall fescue, and Merion-Kentucky bluegrass grown for seed. The Willamette Valley produces approximately 50 percent of U. S.-grown bentgrass, 70 percent of the red fescue, and 95 percent of the chewings fescue [3, p. 4]. The Willamette Valley extends southward from Portland to a range of foothills south of Eugene-a total of 130 miles. It is bounded on the east by the Cascade Mountain range, and on the west by the Coastal range. Within these confines are found the major industrial centers of the state with 70 percent of the state's population of 2.1 million people, but only 14 percent of the state's land base. The geographic and demographic characteristics of the Willamette Valley add to the valley's major environmental quality problem--open field burning. The practice of open field has been used by the grass seed growers since the early 1940's. Field has proven to be an effective economic means for destroying blind-seed and ergot fungus, nematode, rusts, smut, and for eliminating grass seed residues (1.5 to 7 tons per acre) in annual and perennial crops grown in the Willamette Valley. On the other hand, the practice of field has become a burning issue in the Willamette Valley within the last four years. Heavy smoke emissions from field create serious problems for all metropolitan areas in the valley, but especially in the Eugene-Springfield area. In the summer, when is done, winds from the northwest force much of the valley's smoke into the Eugene area. Therefore, temperature inversion layers that prevent upper-atmospheric mixing and dispersion assure that smoke-filled air is retained in the Eugene area. The reduced visibility, due to the smoke, has increased traffic accident rates on highways, raised the ire level of property owners who complain of soiling problems and nuisance ef ects resulting in decreased property values, a d which may have increased the incidence of respiratory ailments, particularly from patients having previous respiratory illness [3, p. 5]. To bring open field under governmental control, Governor Tom McCall signed Act No. 563 into law on June 29, 1971. It contains major legislative changes, in both policy and direction, on the field problem. The stated purpose of the Act is to phase out open field in the Willamette Valley as soon as a feasible alternative method of field sanitation is available. At the present, the Oregon State University Agricultural Engineering Department is conducting research on a pollutionfree mobile field sanitizer, but the development is still in the experimental stage. The Act also provides that, in any case, . . after January 1, 1975, no person shall open burn grass or cereal grain fields in the Willamette Valley. This law gave authority for the Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) to manage field until 1975. The issuance of permits is determined by the DEQ weighing the economic consequences, the feasibility of alternative actions, and considering weather conditions and other factors necessary to protect the public health and welfare [4]. The Act also created a $0.50 per acre service cost to the grass seed growers. That is, the $0.50 covers the cost of clerical help related to regulating field burning, covers the cost of monitoring field by an airplane (operated by the Oregon Seed C uncil), and supports the development of a feasible alternative to field burning.

Legislative Party Cohesion: A Model of the Bargaining Process in State Legislatures

* The author thanks Arthur Goldberg, William H. Riker, Alvin Rabushka, Richard Fenno, and Richard McKelvey of the University of Rochester; Joseph Schlesinger, Paul Conn, and Nicolas Bloom of Michigan State University; and Peter C. Ordeshook of Camegie-Mellon University and Peter Aranson of the Georgia Institute of Technology for reading and commenting on an earlier draft of this paper. The author wishes to thank the Department of Political Science at Michigan State University for its clerical help.

Pediatric Nurse Practitioners: Issues in Training

PEDIATRIC NURSE practitioners can perform routine medical services in a manner which is not only safe for the patient but satisfactory to the child, his mother, and his physician, according to a growing body of literature (1,2). While the evaluation of these services will undoubtedly continue, the question for some health planners now has shifted from one of whether we should train nurse practitioners to how we can best prepare them. The experimental training course described here was developed to provide additional insight regarding the academic preparation for pediatric nurse practitioners. In the fall of 1970, representatives from various Los Angeles health care agencies met to explore the possibility of developing a course to train nurses for expanded roles in the health management of well children and children with minor illness. This group included representatives from the Los Angeles County Health Department, several hospital outpatient departments, Head Start, and two Los Angeles comprehensive health clinics. Consultants from the Schools of Medicine and Nursing, University of California at Los Angeles, also helped with planning the course. Despite efforts to locate adequate funding, substantial financial support was unavailable. Although the Area IV Regional Medical Planning official supplied a classroom, clerical help, a part-time nurse coordinator, and a small cash grant, no money was available to employ an instructional staff. The steering committee, nonetheless, decided to proceed with the course and volunteered to teach. It was important to analyze the problems of curriculum design and to obtain experimental data to facilitate future training programs when money might become available. The course began in May 1971 with 17 nurses enrolled. One issue discussed by the planning committee was length of the course. The original pediatric nurse practitioner curriculum developed by Henry Silver and Loretta Ford at the University of Colorado was a 4-month intensive course with approximately 20 hours of didactic work and 20 hours of clinical practice each week. This course was followed by an unspecified amount of practice in the field (3). Since this was the first and most well-known formal course of its type, it was used as a model, and 4 months became the norm for training nurse practitioners. The joint statement of the American Nurses' Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics (4) also suggested a minimum of 4 months for a course; however, it recommended only 4 hours of lecture and 8 to 12 hours of supervised clinical practice per week and the remaining time for on-the-job experience. Although both courses were 4 months, the ANA-AAP course seemed less intensive than the Colorado one. As patterns other than the familiar 4-month course were studied, it became apparent that the range of possibilities was wide. St. Geme had begun an experimental course in 1967 that was modeled on the medical curriculum. This 21A ll the authors are with the University of California at Los A ngeles. Dr. Bullough is an associate professor in the School of Nursing, Dr. St. Geme is in the Department of Pediatrics, School of Medicine, Harbor General Hospital, and Dr. Neumann is in the Department of Pediatrics, Ambulatory Services, at the School of Medicine. The project was sponsored by pilot grant funds from the Regional Medical Program, Area IV, State of California. Tearsheets requests to Dr. Bonnie Bullough, associate professor, School of Nursing, University of California, Los A ngeles, Calif. 90024.

Ten Years Experience with a Cumulative Psychiatric Patient Register

This paper describes the information system for a cumulative psychiatric patient case register which has been in operation for ten years in a community with a population of 700,000 persons. The structure of the data files and the general philosophy behind them are explained. The problems of accuracy and of intra-file and inter-file record linkage by name and matching are discussed. It is concluded that well-trained, careful clerical help are as important as elaborate computer editing programs for maintaining the highest possible level of accuracy.

An Evaluation of the Existing College Norms for the MLA‐Cooperative Russian Test and Its Efficacy as a Placement Examination

THREE years ago, the Russian staff at the University of California at Davis (UCD) adopted the Modern Language Association (MLA) cooperative listening and reading comprehension tests as a placement examination for matriculating undergraduates. The use of a multiple-choice proficiency examination that could be scored quickly by non-Russian clerical help was especially desirable because the Russian placement examination was to be administered repeatedly throughout the summer Orientation Program for incoming freshmen. In order to establish norms for placement, listening and reading comprehension tests (Form LA) were administered at the end of each quarter of the firstyear, elementary Russian sequence in 1967-1968 (courses 1, 2, and 3). The results were processed in a manner similar to that described by Aleamoni and Spencer at the University of Illinois, that is, the listening and reading scores were weighted equally and the mid-point of the average listening and reading score distribution for each of the one-quarter courses was designated as the cutoff point for determining placement.? However, in comparing the scores of tests administered to students who had completed the three-quarter sequence to the established First-Year College General Norms,2 it was rather surprising that on the listening test 52 per cent of the Davis students had scored in the upper quartile and only 8 per cent in the lower quartile, while on the reading test 71 per cent had scored in the upper quartile, 25 per cent in the second quartile, and only 4 per cent below the established median. A threeyear project (September 1967-June 1970) was set up to examine and evaluate the established MLA Russian norms with respect to the first year courses at Davis.