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The purpose of this paper is to establish a link between communication apprehension and communication self‐efficacy in accounting students.

This is achieved by the use of two questionnaires jointly distributed to the students involved. The Personal Report of Communication Apprehension (PRCA‐24) developed by McCroskey to measure oral communication apprehension[1] (OCA) and the instrument for written communication apprehension (WCA) developed by Daly and Miller and a questionnaire to measure communication self‐efficacy. This had been developed using the guidelines set out by Bandura and was designed to measure two constructs: oral communication self‐efficacy, and written communication self‐efficacy.

The two separate statistical tests to identify the connection between the two concepts both indicated the existence of a strong relationship between the two. This was shown not only in the overall relationship between communication apprehension and self‐efficacy but also equally strongly in their constituent components.

The existence of this relationship is important because it provides a possible development in terms of understanding the barrier to the development of communication skills and also indicates a possible redirection to alleviate and remove the barrier. In order for accountants to meet future challenges, there is substantial evidence that the development of communication skills will be vital.

This paper draws the conclusion that in the future consideration needs to be given to incorporating into the pedagogy of accounting education, especially in those areas involving the development of communication skills, approaches that increase self‐efficacy.

IN The verdict of you all, Rupert Croft‐Cooke has some uncomplimentary things to say about novel readers as a class, which is at least an unusual look at his public by a practitioner whose income for many years was provided by those he denigrates.

At the commencement of this decade, leaving behind the “striking seventies”, we christened it the “anxious eighties”, for there was a profound disquiet and uncertainty among most of the population, a fear that things were going to get worse, but they could have hardly expected the catastrophic events of the year 1981. The criteria of quality of life are its richness, grace, elegance; by the promise it contains; inspiration and purpose, hope, determination (to survive, to make certain that the evildoer is not permitted to succeed), love of one's country — pro patria, of other days.

Aarhus Kommunes Biblioteker (Teknisk Bibliotek), Ingerslevs Plads 7, Aarhus, Denmark. Representative: V. NEDERGAARD PEDERSEN (Librarian).

That ice‐creams prepared with dirty materials and under dirty conditions will themselves be dirty is a proposition which, to the merely ordinary mind, appears to be sufficiently obvious without the institution of a series of elaborate and highly “scientific” experiments to attempt to prove it. But, to the mind of the bacteriological medicine‐man, it is by microbic culture alone that anything that is dirty can be scientifically proved to be so. Not long ago, it having been observed that the itinerant vendor of ice‐creams was in the habit of rinsing his glasses, and, some say, of washing himself—although this is doubtful—in a pail of water attached to his barrow, samples of the liquor contained by such pails were duly obtained, and were solemnly submitted to a well‐known bacteriologist for bacteriological examination. After the interval necessary for the carrying out of the bacterial rites required, the eminent expert's report was published, and it may be admitted that after a cautious study of the same the conclusion seems justifiable that the pail waters were dirty, although it may well be doubted that an allegation to this effect, based on the report, would have stood the test of cross‐examination. It is true that our old and valued friend the Bacillus coli communis was reported as present, but his reputation as an awful example and as a producer of evil has been so much damaged that no one but a dangerous bacteriologist would think of hanging a dog—or even an ice‐cream vendor—on the evidence afforded by his presence. A further illustration of bacteriological trop de zèle is afforded by the recent prosecutions of some vendors of ice‐cream, whose commodities were reported to contain “millions of microbes,” including, of course, the in‐evitable and ubiquitous Bacillus coli very “communis.” To institute a prosecution under the Sale of Food and Drugs Act upon the evidence yielded by a bacteriological examination of ice‐cream is a proceeding which is foredoomed, and rightly foredoomed, to failure. The only conceivable ground upon which such a prosecution could be undertaken is the allegation that the “millions of microbes ” make the ice‐cream injurious to health. Inas‐much as not one of these millions can be proved beyond the possibility of doubt to be injurious, in the present state of knowledge; and as millions of microbes exist in everything everywhere, the breakdown of such a case must be a foregone conclusion. Moreover, a glance at the Act will show that, under existing circumstances at any rate, samples cannot be submitted to public analysts for bacteriological examination—with which, in fact, the Act has nothing to do—even if such examinations yielded results upon which it would be possible to found action. In order to prevent the sale of foul and unwholesome or actual disease‐creating ice‐cream, the proper course is to control the premises where such articles are prepared; while, at the same time, the sale of such materials should also be checked by the methods employed under the Public Health Act in dealing with decomposed and polluted articles of food. In this, no doubt, the aid of the public analyst may sometimes be sought as one of the scientific advisers of the authority taking action, but not officially in his capacity as public analyst under the Adulteration Act. And in those cases in which such advice is sought it may be hoped that it will be based, as indeed it can be based, upon something more practical, tangible and certain than the nebulous results of a bacteriological test.

ANYBODY whoses daily work involves the planning and spending of money must at all times be concerned by efforts to ensure that value is being obtained for the money spent. Those of us who, as librarians, are spending the money of fellow tax‐payers, are naturally doubly concerned about this problem. In addition, the very phrase “value for money” to a Yorkshireman is a continual challenge, and a point on which he instinctively feels, rightly or wrongly, that he has some secret inborn knowledge.

SO much controversy has raged around the subject of newsrooms in the past two years, that librarians are, as a rule, utterly tired of it, and the appearance of still another article upon the subject is not calculated to tone down the general spirit of vexation. It requires no little courage to appear in the arena in this year of Grace, openly championing those departments of our institutions which were originally intended to convey the news of the day in the broadest manner.

The Milk and Cream Standards Committee, of which Lord WENLOCK is Chairman, have commenced to take evidence, and at the outset have been met by the difficulty which must necessarily attach to the fixing of a legal standard for most food products. The problem, which is applicable also to other food materials, is to fix a standard for milk, cream and butter which shall be fair and just both to the producer and the consumer. The variation in the composition of these and other food products is well known to be such that, while standards may be arrived at which will make for the protection of the public against the supply of grossly‐adulterated articles, standards which shall insure the supply of articles of good quality cannot possibly be established by legal enactments. If the Committee has not yet arrived at this conclusion we can safely predict that they will be compelled to do so. A legal standard must necessarily be the lowest which can possibly be established, in order to avoid doing injustice to producers and vendors. The labours of the Committee will no doubt have a good effect in certain directions, but they cannot result in affording protection and support to the vendor of superior products as against the vendor of inferior ones and as against the vendor of products which are brought down by adulteration to the lowest legal limits. Neither the labours of this committee nor of any similar committee appointed in the future can result in the establishment of standards which will give a guarantee to the consumer that he is receiving a product which has not been tampered with and which is of high, or even of fair, quality.

The purpose of this paper is to establish the key predictors of Master of Business Administration (MBA) students' performance, considering the interaction between personality type, learning approaches and educational achievement. A structural equation model is formulated to check out the relationship perfection between the construct variables.

The study subjects were 208 MBA students at Zhejiang University. A questionnaire encompassing three sections was presented to the respondents. The first section is the revised two‐factor version of the study process questionnaire (R‐SPQ‐2F) developed by Biggs et al. The second section consists of 20 items developed based on a review of the International Personality Item Pool (IPIP) Five‐Factor Personality Inventory (Buchanan, 2001). The third section is about the respondents' background and personal information such as age, gender and their performance represented by their scores in the National Admission Examination System and their major course grade achieved during the first term of their academic year. A structural equation model was designed to examine the relationship between the study variables. Then covariance structural analyses of collected data were conducted for testing the model.

The main findings are significant correlations between the three personality traits, namely, extraversion, conscientiousness and openness to experience with the deep approach (DA) to learning predicting high MBA students' performance.

Personality type and students' approaches to learning constitute determinant factors impacting upon the education of management graduate students. Thus, institutions providing MBA programs must allocate more interest to examine their students' characteristics, in correlation with their performance rating. In this regard, the present study is designed to provide business education stakeholders with a modest model to depict the key predictors of MBA students' performance, particularly, part‐time MBA program whose participants are, in most cases, fully employed students, struggling to cope with their professional, educational and social duties.

This study empirically investigates the relationship between personality type and students' approaches to learning to find out their influence on MBA students' performance. The model results evidently demonstrate, on the one hand a significant correlation between these factors, and on the other hand their influence on the participants' performance reflecting high rating in pertinence with personality traits of extraversion, conscientiousness and openness to experience and the DA to learning.

It has often been said that a great part of the strength of Aslib lies in the fact that it brings together those whose experience has been gained in many widely differing fields but who have a common interest in the means by which information may be collected and disseminated to the greatest advantage. Lists of its members have, therefore, a more than ordinary value since they present, in miniature, a cross‐section of institutions and individuals who share this special interest.