This study examines the case of GH, an 18-year-old Latino male participating in an employment-based delinquency intervention for gang-affiliated youth. Although postintervention measures revealed that GH showed gains on key outcomes (i.e., delinquency, employment), he experienced sporadic treatment setbacks (e.g., work absenteeism, fighting) that disrupted his progress. A comprehensive psychological assessment suggested that his aggressive, illegal behavior and difficulty maintaining employment could have been influenced by previously undiagnosed posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Excerpts from counseling sessions illustrated how reactive aggression, hypervigilance, sleep disruptions, and emotional numbing could have interfered with treatment gains and ultimately contributed to GH's re-arrest. Implications for early, accurate identification of PTSD in delinquency interventions for gang youth are discussed.

PurposeThe construction industry in Australia is characterised by a long work‐hours culture, with conditions that make it difficult for staff to balance their work and non‐work lives. The objective of this paper is to measure the success of a work‐place intervention designed to improve work‐life balance (WLB) in an alliance project in the construction industry, and the role the project manager plays in this success.Design/methodology/approachThe paper focuses on an alliance case study. Interviews were conducted at two points in time, several months apart, after the interventions were implemented.FindingsResults showed that staff on the whole were more satisfied with their work experience after the interventions, and indicated the important role that managers' attitudes and behaviours played.Originality/valueManagerial support for work‐life initiatives is a critical element in achieving WLB and satisfaction with working arrangements. The fact that the manager “talked the talk and walked the walk” was a major contributing success factor, which has not previously been demonstrated.

Purpose – The construction industry in Australia is characterised by a long work-hours culture, with conditions that make it difficult for staff to balance their work and non-work lives. The objective of this paper is to measure the success of a work-place intervention designed to improve work-life balance (WLB) in an alliance project in the construction industry, and the role the project manager plays in this success. Design/methodology/approach – The paper focuses on an alliance case study. Interviews were conducted at two points in time, several months apart, after the interventions were implemented. Findings – Results showed that staff on the whole were more satisfied with their work experience after the interventions, and indicated the important role that managers' attitudes and behaviours played. Originality/value – Managerial support for work-life initiatives is a critical element in achieving WLB and satisfaction with working arrangements. The fact that the manager “talked the talk and walked the walk” was a major contributing success factor, which has not previously been demonstrated.

The purpose of the study was to explore the potential effectiveness of service learning as a pedagogical technique for providing substance abuse education to human services/social work students. Using a quasi-experimental design, the authors assigned 38 human services undergraduate students to experimental and comparison groups on the basis of their availability to attend a service-learning project in substance abuse. The service learning consisted of a 30-min educational presentation followed by a visit to a residential substance abuse treatment facility for women. Results indicated that service learning in substance abuse had a positive effect on the general knowledge, perceptions, and attitudes of human services students toward substance-dependent mothers and their children. The findings from this exploratory study support future research in this area.

Work-life conflict has a damaging effect on job satisfaction, organizational commitment, productivity turnover, and absenteeism. On an individual level, work-life conflict is associated with employee burnout, mental health issues, substance abuse, and diminished family functioning. Thus, work-life balance is an important issue to the construction industry, in terms of both organizational effectiveness and occupational health. Long and inflexible work hours are the most consistent predictor of work-life conflict among construction employees, particularly those working on-site or in a project office. There is considerable resistance to the adoption of new ways of scheduling work within the industry. This paper describes the post hoc evaluation of a compressed work week (reducing the length of the working week, but increasing the length of the working day) in a case study project alliance in Queensland, Australia. Quantitative and qualitative data are presented to demonstrate the beneficial impact of the initiative on employees' work-life balance. The evaluation provides prima facie evidence that alternative work schedules can improve construction employees' work-life balance, creating benefits for construction employees and organizations. The paper concludes that project alliances provide an ideal environment in which work-life balance initiatives can help to create high-performance work systems in the construction sector.

Studies of work and life balance often concentrate on the ways in which employees may require and use flexible work practices to cope with the demands of their other ‘non-work’ activities and responsibilities. This paper adds to our knowledge in this arena through presenting a case study of work-life balance. This case study focuses on managerial and employee issues in implementing organisational work life balance initiatives within the construction industry in Australia. For this case study, the workplace was an ‘alliance’ project, of four collaborating companies undertaking a large infrastructure project. The project management group determined that work-life balance was an important issue within the industry and consequently implemented a five-day instead of the industry standard six-day working week as a balance initiative for the workforce. A range of factors contributed to this five-day week initiative reverting to the original work schedule of a six-day working week. This paper explores these issues and analyses the competing priorities and demands of management in endeavouring to develop alternate strategies to maintain a positive work and life balance for employees. The analysis of this case suggests that management and employees were dedicated to improving work-life balance; however, a range of externalities resulted in not all initiatives being successful. Nevertheless, within the constrained choices, the management group instigated alternate initiatives.

This study compared thought disorder (i.e., impaired use of language to formulate and organize thoughts) in 93 children with complex partial seizures (CPSs) and 56 children with primary generalized epilepsy with absence (PGE) and its relationship to age, seizure, cognitive, and linguistic variables. By the use of psychopathology, social competence, academic achievement, and school problem measures, the functional implications of thought disorder in these two groups were compared. When demographic variables were controlled for, there were no significant differences in thought disorder scores between the CPS and PGE groups. However, the profile of age, gender, seizure, and cognitive variables related to thought disorder differed in the CPS and PGE groups. Within each group, different aspects of thought disorder were associated with different seizure variables. Thought disorder was related to psychopathology, school problems, decreased academic achievement, and poor peer interaction in the CPS group, but with school problems in the PGE group. These findings suggest that CPS and PGE affect the normal maturation of children's discourse skills, albeit through different mechanisms. The relationship of thought disorder to behavioral, academic, and social problems implies that these discourse deficits are one component of the developmental disabilities or comorbidities associated with pediatric CPS and PGE.

In the past few years, few human resource practices have received as much attention as multi-source feedback systems (MSFSs). In the US and Canada, it is estimated that over one-third of organizations are using some form of MSFS and recent surveys show that this practice is still gaining popularity. Concurrently, a substantial amount of literature has focused on the effectiveness of this performance management practice. However, while few would dispute the popularity of MSFS, relatively little has been published on the use of these systems outside North America and thus little is known about their form and effectiveness in international contexts. This paper outlines the results of an international survey of MSFS. Interview data from HR managers and consultants from Argentina, Australia, China, Slovakia, Spain and the UK demonstrate that MSFS are being implemented, in slightly different ways, in each of these six countries. The main challenges in the application of MSFS in these various countries are the communication efforts necessary before and after implementation, and the inherent difficulty in giving and receiving feedback. The results of this study also provide data as to the perceived future of MSFS in each of the countries surveyed.

This study identifies organisational factors relating to employees’ work-life balance within a construction project site. From interviews with site workers and office staff at two time points in the project, the study found employees regard the attitudes of management as a key factor contributing to their work-life balance. The extent to which management was open to negotiation with individual workers on work-life balance issues was positively associated with employee well-being, satisfaction and organisational commitment. In addition, management’s acknowledgement of the importance of employees’ non-work activities, willingness to introduce formal work-life balance initiatives (e.g. changes in working hours to a five day week) and adapt ‘traditional’ ways of working were also identified as factors promoting work-life balance. The findings reinforce the important role the project manager has in supporting and promoting team development and challenging standard industry working conditions, traditionally regarded as essential to individual and organisational productivity.

In recent years there has been a groundswell of research that overwhelmingly suggests extended working hours and the difficulty of balancing home and work are highly problematic for many employees. The paper adds to this literature by investigating work-life balance (WLB) issues and takes as its primary focus the time-based demands of jobs in the construction industry in Australia. This paper draws from two construction industry case studies that have experimented with restructuring working time arrangements.

Work conditions in the construction industry are notoriously demanding. In Australia, construction workers are required to work long hours, typically over six days. Project-based workers work significantly longer hours and experience higher levels of work-life conflict, job stress and burnout than their counterparts in the corporate offices of construction firms. Problems of job dissatisfaction increased turnover intention, lack of general well-being, substance abuse and psychological and psychiatric problems have all been associated with a lack of balance between work and non-work life. This paper presents a post-hoc evaluation of a three-pronged employee healthy lifestyle promotion intervention which was introduced at a large Australian infrastructure construction project. The results highlight the benefits associated with the adoption of an integrated approach to the management of employees' work-life balance, health and well-being. The authors argue that construction organisations should broaden the scope of their occupational health and safety (OH&S) management activities to address issues of work-life balance and general employee wellness.

This longitudinal study investigates whether developmental changes following 360 degree feedback are predicted by the favourability of ratings received, and moderated by focal individuals' self‐efficacy and perceived importance of feedback. Five developmental criteria are investigated longitudinally: (i) self‐assessments, (ii) line managers' ratings, (iii) amount of developmental activity, (iv) global self‐efficacy and (iv) self‐efficacy for development. Feedback ratings from certain rater groups predicted changes in ratings, but not changes in self‐efficacy or amount of developmental activity. Self‐efficacy significantly moderated the feedback–performance association for certain rater groups, but feedback importance did not. Contrary to expectations, the focal individual's initial self‐assessment predicted changes in self‐efficacy, over the favourability of ratings received. The implications of these findings for organizations using 360 degree feedback for developmental purposes are discussed.

Development of English‐ and Spanish‐reading skills was explored in a sample of 251 Spanish‐speaking English‐language learners from kindergarten through Grade 2. Word identification and reading comprehension developed at a normal rate based on monolingual norms for Spanish‐ and English‐speaking children, but English oral language lagged significantly behind. Four categories of predictor variables were obtained in Spanish in kindergarten and in English in first grade: print knowledge, expressive language (as measured by vocabulary and sentence repetition tasks), phonological awareness, and rapid automatic naming (RAN). Longitudinal regression analyses indicated a modest amount of cross‐language transfer from Spanish to English. Hierarchical regression analyses indicated that developing English‐language skills (particularly phonological awareness and RAN) mediated the contribution of Spanish‐language variables to later reading. Further analyses revealed stronger within‐ than cross‐language associations of expressive language with later reading, suggesting that some variables function cross‐linguistically, and others within a particular language. Results suggest that some of the cognitive factors underlying reading disabilities in monolingual children (e.g., phonological awareness and RAN) may be important to an understanding of reading difficulties in bilingual children.

Multi‐source processes have been increasingly adopted by organisations in recent years and most projections suggest this trend will continue. As a developmental technique, one underlying rationale to such systems is their potential impact on target managers’ self‐awareness; increasing self awareness is thought to enhance performance. The main theme of this paper relates to the potential of 360‐degree assessment for yielding measures of self‐awareness and the different ways of deriving indices of this variable. The relationship between self‐awareness indices and measures of performance are discussed in light of research findings. It is concluded that different self‐awareness measures used in the research literature are not equivalent, and may have differential relationships to performance. It is argued that self‐awareness should be assessed in selection and other settings using a variety of methods, not necessarily utilizing the kinds of measures typically associated with multi‐source feedback systems.