Informed Consent and Dual Purpose Research

The ethical treatment of human participants in psychological research is regulated by both federal guidelines and the ethical standards of the American Psychological Association (APA). Under certain circumstances, however, both APA standards and federal regulations allow for exceptions for informed consent. In spite of the possibility of exception, a number of factors have made it difficult to conduct and publish research that does not incorporate informed consent. The authors consider these factors and propose 2 approaches that may reduce reluctance to consider exceptions to informed consent under appropriate circumstances. First, journals should not rely on informed consent as the only method of screening research for the ethical treatment of human participants. Second, efforts must be made to work with institutional review boards and other units that review psychological research to ensure that their members are aware of the conditions under which informed consent is considered reasonable. Failure to consider ethical research without informed consent may have serious ethical consequences for research

Conducting Industrial and Organizational Psychological Research: Institutional Review of Research in Work Organizations

Although informed consent is a primary mechanism for insuring the ethical treatment of human participants in research, both federal guidelines and APA ethical standards recognize that exceptions to it are reasonable under certain conditions. But agreement about what constitutes reasonable exceptions to informed consent sometimes is lacking. The research presented the same protocols to samples of respondents drawn from four populations –Institutional Reviewer Board (IRBs) members, managers, employees, and university faculty who were not members of IRBs. Differences in perceptions of IRB members from the other samples with respect to the risks of the protocols without informed consent and on the feasibility of conducting the research in employment organizations are discussed in terms of implications for industrial and organizational psychology research

ILR Impact Brief - Knowledge, Skills, and Performance: Getting the Most From Team Training

Teams are an integral feature of the American workplace; indeed, more than 80% of the Fortune 500 companies make extensive use of work teams. Action teams, pulled together to carry out a particular time-limited function that requires the specialized expertise of its members, are becoming increasingly common. Researchers have noted that the success of these teams is often thwarted by their lack of information about teamwork in general and their insufficient mastery of basic team competencies. Most organizations train team members for the particular job at hand, so the question arises as to the utility of generic team training. In other words, would imparting knowledge and skills that could be applied in, and adapted to, any number of situations improve outcomes, and if so, what is the mechanism that facilitates this result

The Impact of Task- and Team-Generic Teamwork Skills Training on Team Effectiveness

This study examined the effects of training team members in three task- and teamgeneric teamwork skills: planning and task coordination, collaborative problem solving, and communication. We first examined the degree to which task- and team-generic teamwork skills training impacted team performance on a task unrelated to the content of the training program.We then examined whether the effects of task- and team-generic teamwork skills training on team performance were due to the transfer of skills directly related to planning and task coordination, collaborative problem solving, and communication. Results from 65 four-person project teams indicated that task- and team-generic teamwork skills training led to significantly higher levels of team performance. Results also indicated that the effects of task- and teamgeneric teamwork skills training on team performance were mediated by planning and task coordination and collaborative problem solving behavior. Although communication was positively affected by the task- and team-generic teamwork skills training, it did not mediate the relationship between task- and team-generic teamwork skills training and team performance.Theoretical and practical implications of these results are discussed, as well as possible limitations and directions for future research

When Can Employees Have a Family Life? The Effects of Daily Workload and Affect on Work-Family Conflict and Social Behaviors at Home

This article presents a longitudinal examination of antecedents and outcomes of work-to-family conflict. A total of 106 employees participating in an experience-sampling study were asked to respond to daily surveys both at work and at home, and their spouses were interviewed daily via telephone for a period of 2 weeks. Intraindividual analyses revealed that employees ’ perceptions of workload predicted work-to-family conflict over time, even when controlling for the number of hours spent at work. Workload also influenced affect at work, which in turn influenced affect at home. Finally, perhaps the most interesting finding in this study was that employees ’ behaviors in the family domain (reported by spouses) were predicted by the employees ’ perceptions of work-to-family conflict and their positive affect at home

Reduction of Low-Thrust Continuous Controls for Trajectory Dynamics

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/76670/1/AIAA-40619-128.pd

Facing differences with an open mind: Openness to Experience, salience of intra-group differences, and performance of diverse groups.

This study examined how the performance of diverse teams is affected by member openness to experience and the extent to which team reward structure emphasizes intragroup differences. Fifty-eight heterogeneous four-person teams engaged in an interactive task. Teams in which reward structure converged with diversity (i.e., "faultline" teams) performed more poorly than teams in which reward structure cut across differences between group members or pointed to a "superordinate identity." High openness to experience positively influenced teams in which differences were salient (i.e., faultline and "cross-categorized" teams) but not teams with a superordinate identity. This effect was mediated by information elaboration