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Summary This study analyzes whether resilience, defined as a process rather than as a static response over time, is associated with social work. The main aim was to determine whether social work increases resilience in students and professionals during training and when practicing the profession. The sample consisted of 613 university students and professionals from Malaga (Spain). Findings The longitudinal study of social work students indicated statistically significant within-subjects differences during their university course in the components of resilience (personal competence, acceptance of self and life, and social support). Regarding professionals, the results show a positive association between years of experience and their acceptance of self and life and coping with workplace adversity. Applications Implications include the need to focus on the development of positive experiences during training and the practice of social work, such as the capacity to be resilient.

In this article, the author summarizes four characteristics of an emerging disability paradigm and discusses a number of policy and practice implications posed by this paradigm. The four characteristics are functional limitations, personal well-being, individualized supports, and personal competence and adaptation. Changes that need to occur in policy and practice are discussed in relation to each of the characteristics. The author concludes with a discussion of potential changes at the individual, service delivery, and societal levels that may be used to evaluate the utility of the paradigm.

This paper discusses the sense of shame in Korean culture. With Taoism, Korean culture began its transformation from a face-saving culture to a modern culture. Self-realization is the most important goal in a Taoist culture; the supreme value in the face-saving culture lay in the preservation of honor in the family. Influenced by western culture, modern Korean culture has come to focus on personal competence, mostly for the acquisition of material wealth. As a result, the crucial factor generating a sense of shame has shifted from failure of self-realization in the Taoist culture and injury of the family in face-saving culture, to personal incompetence in modern Korean society.

Telephone and follow-up in-depth interviews were used to gather information from 25 sponsors (primary contact people or responsible parties) of nursing home residents to learn more about the nursing home search and selection process. Quantitative analyses revealed that sponsors who engaged in anticipatory action prior to the need for nursing home placement had lower personal competence scores than those sponsors who did not anticipate the need for nursing home care. As might be expected, sponsors who were involved in time-pressured searches had the highest stress scores. In-depth analyses of the qualitative data illuminated the diverse ways in which the situational factors (time-pressured versus non-time-pressured searches and antici patory versus nonanticipatory behavior) affected the personal factors (perceived competence and stress) to create idiosyncratic experiences for the sponsors. The findings show the value of offering professional assistance to individuals who are at the stage of seeking information about nursing homes.

Determinants of satisfaction with frame management were investigated among 78 managers representing all 30 upper secondary schools in Nordland county, Norway. The school managers are managed by the central county administration through a frame management system. Frame management or frame budgeting is a system for managing decentralised units in the public sector while trying to meet the needs for accountability and flexibility which should make public service more cost effective and of better quality. Subjects were tested on perceived goal orientation of the management system, their perceived personal coupling to the central county administration and their perceived freedom of action within the frames. The school managers' personal competence, i.e., education and leadership competence, and the cultural climate of cooperation in schools were also assessed. Analyses showed that all these determinants correlated positively and significantly with satisfaction with frame management, and multiple regression analysis showed freedom of action and education to be the major predictors of satisfaction with frame management in this sample.

The purpose of this descriptive study was to determine adaptation by family caregivers of persons with Alzheimer's disease who did not use community services. Previous research has focused on the use of services, highlighting the need for studies examining factors associated with service nonuse. Lawton and Nahemow's ecology model of adaptation and aging served as the foundation for this study; the relationship between personal competence and environmental press depicts a level of adaptation. A mail and telephone survey of 70 caregivers revealed reasons for not using services to which they had been referred, as well as patterns of adaptation to caregiving. Personal competence, measured as perception of caregiving mastery, emerged as a significant factor in service nonuse. Caregiver gender and daily hours of caregiving, an environmental press factor combined with perception of mastery to most often correctly classify respondents' high and low adaptation. Strategies for enhancing caregiver competence should be given highest priority by primary health care professionals.

Although concern by elders about personal forgetfulness has been well documented, the elders' experience of forgetfulness has not been studied. Nine elder volunteers participated in this grounded theory study. The resultant beginning of a substantive theory of the personal or subjective experience of forgetfulness describes how elders, when faced with perceived forgetfulness, engage in a three-phase iterative process of self-assessment, coping, and reassessment. The goal of this process is the maintenance of a sense of self, or "continuing to be who I am," through actions aimed at maintaining identity continuity and personal competence. Possible interventions suggested by this theory include activities to (a) assist elders in improving their self-esteem, (b)facilitate the development of new role scripts enabling the maintenance of valued roles, and (c) teach alternative strategies for coping with forgetting.

Research on volunteerism has focused primarily on the recipients of this activity as opposed to the volunteers themselves. We examined the characteristics and experiences of older adults who volunteered with Family Friends, a program designed to assist families who have children with chronic illnesses or disabilities living at home. A profile of volunteers who remained involved in the program after their requested 9-month commitment and those who did not was also developed Results suggested that Family Friends volunteers experienced a mutually beneficial relationship between themselves and families that provided them with a sense of purpose and personal competence. Volunteers who stayed with the program beyond their required commitment were more highly educated, received a higher annual income, were more likely to volunteer with other organizations, and reported higher life satisfaction. Implications for volunteer recruiting and longevity are discussed.

An analysis of the responses of 1,614 subjects from 10 cultures shows that the Leung Bond procedure provides illuminating ways of extracting both strong (Separation From In-Groups, Independence, and Personal Competence) and weak (Task Orientation) eticsrelevant to individualism, and weak etics (Dependence on Others, Sociability) relevant to collectivism. Additional richness in the available information is provided when intracultural factor analyses are carried out in each culture. It appears that the most complete picture is obtained when both etics and emics are examined.

Volunteers' personal goals seem to outweigh their social concerns.

45 undergraduates discussed a moral issue with a confederate who had the same opinion (no controversy) or opposite opinion (controversy). Subjects in the conditions with controversy were induced to have a high level of defensiveness by a disconfirmation of personal competence or a low level of defensiveness by a confirmation. Subjects in no controversy experienced confirmation. Subjects in the condition of confirm controversy indicated mote conceptual conflict (uncertainty) and were more accurate in taking the cognitive perspective of the confederate than were subjects in the condition of confirm no controversy. These results support Piaget's and Kohlberg's views of the role of controversy in perspective-taking and cognitive development and Berlyne's theory of conceptual conflict and epistemic curiosity. Subjects in the condition of disconfirm controversy experienced more uncertainty and were more accurate in cognitive perspective-taking than were subjects in the condition of confirm controversy. Subjects in the condition of disconfirm controversy also experienced more internal distress, derogated the confederate and the confederate's position and arguments to a greater extent, and indicated greater closed-mindedness in responding to the confederate and the confederate's arguments than did subjects in the condition of confirm controversy.

The burnout phenomenon, while widely acknowledged as an important issue among people-helping professionals, has to date been treated chiefly in anecdotal or descriptive reports that lack both precise theoretical foundations and substantial empirical support. Einsiedel and Tully criticize burnout research, maintaining that conceptual and operational definitions vary widely and that little effort has been expended to draw on more established literature to explain burnout. This paper proposes a new model of burnout, largely based on the work of Bandura. Burnout is defined as a state in which individuals expect little reward and considerable punishment from work because of a lack of valued reinforcement, controllable outcomes, or personal competence. The burnout literature is briefly reviewed and grouped according to the categories of the proposed burnout model.

Young children's understanding of the verbal terms 'easy' and 'hard' in describing personal competence at depicted activities was investigated with reference to a developmental sequence suggested by Heckhausen (1982) to describe the child's understanding of concepts concerning personal achievement. The consistency of children's judgments rather than their realism or accuracy was the criterion used for investigating each of two developmental levels of understanding. For the 3-and 4-year-old children in studies 1 and 2, there was consistency between responses to the terms 'can'/'can't' and the terms 'easy'/'hard'. At the higher developmental level, in study 3, both 5-and 7-year-olds were able to make consistent unidimensional orderings of the level of difficulty of activities.

Personal competence, or an individual's sense of mastery over the environment, is a primary motivator of human behavior. The special education enterprise thrives on the discovery of personal incompetence in children so this incompetence can be remediated. This article suggests that mainstreaming efforts have been largely unsuccessful because of the faulty assumptions underlying such efforts, the focus on academic attainment for handicapped children, and the failure to reasonably consider the social development of handicapped children. Self-efficacy theory is used as a basis to support the above argument, as a basis for the refocusing of the mainstreaming process, and as a basis for teaching positive social behaviors to mainstreamed handicapped children.

There is difficulty in developing conceptual models that apply through-out the adult years. For example, that of Campbell et al. (1976) accounts for the behavior of people aged 18-54, but not those older. Their findings of positive response bias in satisfaction with conditions of everyday living, not only in the old but also in the poorly educated and those with low incomes, suggests that concepts of deprivation and sense of personal competence are needed in a model that will include the elderly. The inadequacy of the Campbell et al. model for older persons may derive from age-related differences in these variables. In this study of four samples of people 60 and older (the group whose data most poorly fit the Campbell et al. model), sense of personal competence and situational deprivation accounted for statistically significant and meaningful amounts of variance in domain satisfactions and in overall well-being, supporting the need to include them in explanatory models relevant to older people.

The assessment of competence in the elderly is an assessment of functional ability and not merely the act of establishing a diagnosis. The recommendations outlined above offer a model for such an assessment. In most cases, the decision is straightforward and the assessment not unduly time consuming. In a small number of cases, the circumstances and clinical features will make intensive and extensive study necessary to form a well considered opinion. The psychiatrist is wise to recognize those cases in which, for whatever reason he/she is not able to offer a considered certain opinion. To be a credible witness before the court, a physician must have a good mastery of the necessary data and present it clearly in a fashion which allows the court to consider criteria. The clinician must be familiar with the relevant provincial legislation with respect to appeals, change in status, etc. An opinion with respect to competence must reflect consideration of functioning in the present and in the recent past, as well as, the future implications implicit in the diagnosis. However, it remains an assessment of the ability to function at the time of the examination. The clinical state of competence or incompetence is of course subject to change and this may or may not come to be reflected in the legal status of the person.

Summary.-Male faculty of a large southeastern university were surveyed to determine the satisfaction each individual felt with his life in general (lifesatisfaction) and with 15 specific life areas. Perceptions of satisfaction have been used as indicators of morale, with satisfied persons experiencing high self-esteem and feelings of personal competence. Respondents were satisfied to some degree with their lives as a whole and with mosc specific areas. A relatively large proportion of faculty experienced dissatisfaction with their financial situation but were satisfied with their chosen profession. Compared to representative samples of the population a relatively large proportion of male faculty reported satisfaction with their lives as a whole. Suggestions for additional research are provided. As colleges and universities are confronted by critics demanding higher qualiry education and increased accountabiliry and tightening of financial constraints, faculty morale might be relatively low. The present study was a preliminary assessment of male university faculty morale as measured by subjective impressions of satisfaction with life in general (life-satisfaction) and 15 specific areas. Of 1554 male faculty surveyed at a large southeastern university 1,028 (66.2%) responded to a satisfaction questionnaire.' Only males were sampled because previous research (3) suggests sex differences in satisfaction and mosc faculty were male. Respondents were compared with the whole population with respect to proportions with tenure, academic rank, degree, and age; no differences were found. Life satisfaction and 15 other specific areas were measured by a modified version of a self-anchoring attitude assessment (1) which allows the respondent to place himself at the most appropriate place between two extremes. Cantril's 11-point option format was reduced to 10 points, the center being the satisfaction-dissatisfaction point of demarcation. Table 1 lists the areas, the median rating of each, semi-interquartile ranges, and the number who replied to each. The table also presents similar data for the lifesatisfaction item and the percentage of respondents who expressed some satisfaction and dissatisfaction for each of the 16 items. Most respondents were married and have children, however. 151 persons were not married and reported having no children. Computations for the marriage item and children item reflect only those persons for whom these specific satisfactions were appropriate.