Cultural Fit of Assessments to Detect Curiosity for Weak Signals Among Employees

To remain competitive, organizations must make sense of antecedent weak signals that might yield information on opportunities or threats. However, perceiving those signals requires psychological capabilities which are not evenly distributed over their workforce. Identifying who might effectively sense weak antecedent signals is the necessary first step in the staff selection and management process. To this effect, Human Resources Management processes at organizations rely on assessments. However, this study suggests that some self-assessments might be too context-sensitive to fit their purpose across cultures. In particular, the CEI-II evaluation applied to a small and convenience sample of Brazilian executives did not satisfy Brazilian respondents’ selection for curiosity. The authors briefly discuss how the Brazilian context may differ, not least because of a considerably lower generalized trust level, and suggest relying alternatively on projective instruments.

Conflit armé et trauma: une étude clinique chez des enfants réfugiés latino-américains

This exploratory research on psychic consequences of armed conflicts has been carried out in Montreal on 30 latin-americans, eight to 12 year-old refugees. The principal objective was to assert the importance of traumas intensity, accumulation and age of occurence on the level and type of symptomatology (introversion-extroversion). Using two types of methodologies, clinical scales and in a more exploratory way, projective instruments to study the intra-psychic dynamic underlying the symptomatology observed. The children were classified according to trauma intensity and for this purpose, a trauma scale was defined with latin-american informants. ACHENBACH and DOMINIQUE clinical evaluation scales were appplied to the measure of clinical symptomatology. These instruments were analysed as a function of the symptoms intensity and type. Among results, the accumulation and intensity of traumas were found to be in significant correlation with anxio-depressive symptoms, as reported by the children with interiorization symptoms in ACHENBACH. The predominance of interiorization is discussed. The analysis of the TAT, based on objective indicators, brought out a light frequency of violent themes in relations with the clinical symptomatology. This research indicates the relevance of projective instruments to the study of traumatic response.

Inter-Scorer Reliability of Davids' Three Projective Measures of Alienation

Inter-scorer reliability of 3 projective measures of alienation was determined by computing the percentages agreement and Pearsonian correlations between 2 independent scorers. A random sample of high school seniors' protocols of Davids' Word Association and Sentence Completion Tests, and the TAT were rated in accord with Davids' scoring schemes for these measures. For the 3 instruments percentages agreement between scorers ranged from 72% to 92% and Pearsonian correlations ranged from .84 to .91 ( p < .01). These results compare favorably with levels of agreement previously repotted and indicate the utility of appropriately delineated scoring schemes for projective instruments.