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The study reported here aimed to evaluate the impact on parenting and the home environment of community volunteer home visiting offered during or soon after pregnancy to potentially vulnerable mothers. A cluster‐randomised study allocated Home‐Start schemes to intervention or comparison (existing services) conditions. Mothers were screened at routine health checks. Families in intervention and comparison areas were assessed at two and 12 months. The results showed that comparing families receiving support and those in comparison areas, there were few differences. There was a greater reduction in parent‐child relationship difficulties for supported families, but they offered their children fewer healthy foods. There was no evidence of enhanced parenting, organisation of the home environment or more appropriate use of health services. Comparing families receiving support with a second comparison group, living in intervention areas but not receiving support, no differences were found. The article concludes that a more structured approach may be required to make changes in parenting behaviour and the home environment.

In this chapter, we develop a model of envy and unethical decision making. We postulate that unfavorable comparisons will induce envy in outperformed coworkers, who are subsequently motivated to engage in unethical acts to harm the envied target. In particular, we consider the differential effects of unfavorable individual-level and unfavorable group-level social comparisons on attitudes and norms for engaging in social undermining behaviors. Envy is a self-sanctioned emotion and often difficult to detect. Even so, envy is likely to be both prevalent in and harmful to organizations. Organizational culture may play an important role in moderating the prevalence and consequences of envy within organizations. For example, managerial actions designed to boost organizational identity may significantly curtail envy within their organization.

In the evaluation of most interventions in criminal justice settings, evaluators have no control over assignment to treatment and control/comparison conditions, which means that the treated and comparison groups may have differences that lead to biased conclusions regarding treatment effectiveness. Propensity score analysis can be used to balance the differences in the groups, which can be used in a number of ways to reduce biased conclusions regarding effectiveness. A review of propensity scoring studies was conducted for this chapter, where the limited number of evaluations of criminal justice interventions using these methods was identified. Due to the small number of these studies, research was also reviewed if propensity scoring had been employed to evaluate interventions that are similar to those in criminal justice systems. These studies are used as examples to demonstrate how the methods can be used to evaluate criminal justice interventions, the different ways propensity scores can be used to analyse treatment and comparison group differences, and the strengths and limitations of this approach. It is concluded that, while not appropriate for all interventions/settings, propensity score analysis can be useful in criminal justice arenas, at least to investigate the comparability of treatment and comparison groups, with suspected non-comparability being a common weakness of traditional quasi-experimental studies and frequently cited limitation in terms of drawing efficacy conclusions from such evaluations.

This paper aims to examine the impact of vocational training on unemployed workers not typically studied: women enrolled in engineering or computer programming training and high school dropouts.

Using data from New Jersey's Individual Training Grant (ITG) program and a quasi‐experimental design, the study compares the ITG groups' re‐employment and wage recovery rates with a matched comparison group.

The article finds that women enrolled in the male‐dominated fields of engineering or computer programming experience re‐employment rates that are lower than or similar to those in the comparison group, but they experience higher wage recovery in 8th and 12th quarters after claiming unemployment insurance (UI). Hispanic high school dropouts experience both higher re‐employment and wage recovery rates than their comparison group, but the wage recovery advantage disappears when those enrolled in truck driving training are removed from the sample. Further, white and black high school dropouts experience no re‐employment or wage recovery advantage. For all participants, the study finds participants experience a higher re‐employment rate than the comparison group beginning in the fifth quarter and experience no wage recovery advantage.

To address the concern of selection bias, a difference‐in‐difference wage model controls for time‐variant differences in unobservables and an employment regression model controls for remaining differences in the matching variables.

These results suggest that training improves re‐employment chances and that type of training matters with respect to wage recovery. In this sample, those enrolled in truck driving training, engineering, and computer programming tended to experience higher wage recovery than their comparison group.

This paper examines the impact of vocational training on unemployed workers not typically studied.

This study evaluated the effectiveness of prison‐based cognitive skills programmes in England and Wales in reducing reconviction. Two‐year reconviction rates were compared for adult male offenders who had participated in a cognitive skills programme between 1996 and 1998 (N = 649) and matched adult male offenders who had not participated (N = 1,947). There were no significant differences in the rates of reconviction between the treatment and matched comparisons. This contrasts with a previous study of prison‐based cognitive skills programmes. Possible explanations for the current finding are discussed. For example, these results may merely reflect expected variation; international experience mirrors the variable reductions in reconviction rates found so far in the evaluation of prison‐based programmes. This evaluation relates to a period when programmes were expanded rapidly, and this may have affected the quality of programme delivery.

We examine the influence of the self-assessment and self-enhancement motives on the choice of comparison organizations in two experimental studies. Study 1 shows that: (1) self-assessment generally prevailed over self-enhancement, guiding decision makers to choose organizations that were more similar and had better performance; (2) self-enhancement was more pronounced under conditions of low performance, leading participants to more frequently choose organizations that were less similar and had lower performance; and (3) self-enhancing comparisons inhibited perceptions of failure and the propensity to make changes. Study 2 extends the results of Study 1 by showing that participants were more likely to choose comparison organizations that had lower performance and were less similar when they were in a self-enhancement mindset than when they were in a self-assessment mindset. The combined effects of self-assessment and self-enhancement on the choice of comparison organizations are discussed in relation to the broader organizational literature on learning from performance feedback.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the effects of gender and strength of gender identification on employees’ perception of gender discrimination. It also explores whether gender comparison and perceived gender bias against women act as mediators in the above relationships. It aims to advance the understanding of the processes leading to individual’s perception of gender discrimination in the Chinese workplace.

Data were collected from 362 workers via an employee survey in three large companies in China. The human resource staff helped us to distribute a self-administered questionnaire to the employees, and the authors assured them of confidentiality and protected their anonymity. To test the hypotheses, the authors employed structural equation modeling. The authors first conducted confirmatory factor analysis on the measurement model, and then the authors estimated three nested structural models to test the mediating hypotheses.

The results reveal that gender and strength of gender identification are related to perceived gender discrimination. The authors further found that gender comparison and perceived gender bias against women partially mediated the relationship between gender and perceived gender discrimination, while gender comparison fully mediated the relationship between strength of gender identification and perceived gender discrimination.

The study helps managers understand why and how their subordinates form perceptions of gender discrimination. Given the findings, they should be aware of the importance of gender identity, gender comparison, and gender bias in organizational practices in affecting such perceptions.

This study is the first exploration of the complex relationships among gender, gender identification, gender comparison, perceived gender bias against women, and perceived gender discrimination. It shows the salient role of gender comparison and gender bias against women in shaping employees’ perceptions of gender discrimination, apart from the direct effects of gender and strength of gender identification.

There is growing evidence of the efficacy and effectiveness of targeted parenting programmes but the evidence for universal parenting programmes is much less developed. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the effectiveness of Parent Gym, a parenting programme delivered in schools.

In this paper a quasi-experimental design was utilised. Parents were recruited to the Parent Gym programme comprising six two-hour weekly sessions. Parents completed measures of their parenting efficacy, parenting satisfaction, interest in parenting and mental well-being at pre- and post-course. Comparative data were derived from a retrospectively-defined randomly selected group of non-participant parents at two time points, equivalent to the length of the Parent Gym course.

Changes in the Parent Gym group were compared with the comparison group using repeated measures mixed 2×2 ANOVAs, which accounted for the potential effect of demographic characteristics (parent gender, ethnicity, parent age, parent education level and single parent status), and their potential interaction with group membership. Parenting satisfaction showed a significantly greater increase for the Parent Gym group with a large effect size (d=0.80). Regarding parenting efficacy, there was a significant time × group interaction indicating efficacy scores increased in the Parent Gym group but decreased in the comparison group (d=1.93). Mental well-being also improved for the Parent Gym group from below the national norm before the course (d=−0.26) to significantly greater than the national norm at post-course (d=0.29).

A limitation of the present study is the absence of data on outcomes for children. Second, the administration of the research at local level, primarily the distribution and collection of the measures and return to the research team for analysis, is a potential source of data loss: both pre- and post-programme data were available on 55 per cent of Parent Gym parents, similar to other community studies. Third, the present study did not include a longer term follow-up after the programme ended. Future research is required to examine the sustainability of effects produced from community implemented programmes.

Findings from the present study indicate that a universal programme, Parent Gym, was effective in aiding the positive development of aspects of parenting behaviour, namely parents’ self-efficacy, parenting satisfaction and mental well-being, when delivered in community settings. This demonstrates its potential as part of a regular service delivery option of evidence-based support for parents.

Successful parenting requires both the development of parenting skills and a positive relationship between parent and child. Parents vary in the resources (e.g. family) available to develop positively. Evidence-based parenting programmes have an important role in aiding parenting development, both those targeted at parents with most challenges and those (universal) aimed across the population. This study demonstrated that the universal Parent Gym programme is effective across a wide range of parents and has the potential to be a positive social resource for community delivery.

This is the first rigorous study of Parent Gym. It adds to the limited evidence about parenting programmes delivered outside of trials, as part of normal service delivery. With this evidence, parent choice of a suitable evidence-based programme is increased.

Relative to the randomized controlled trial (RCT), the basic regression discontinuity (RD) design suffers from lower statistical power and lesser ability to generalize causal estimates away from the treatment eligibility cutoff. This chapter seeks to mitigate these limitations by adding an untreated outcome comparison function that is measured along all or most of the assignment variable. When added to the usual treated and untreated outcomes observed in the basic RD, a comparative RD (CRD) design results. One version of CRD adds a pretest measure of the study outcome (CRD-Pre); another adds posttest outcomes from a nonequivalent comparison group (CRD-CG). We describe how these designs can be used to identify unbiased causal effects away from the cutoff under the assumption that a common, stable functional form describes how untreated outcomes vary with the assignment variable, both in the basic RD and in the added outcomes data (pretests or a comparison group’s posttest). We then create the two CRD designs using data from the National Head Start Impact Study, a large-scale RCT. For both designs, we find that all untreated outcome functions are parallel, which lends support to CRD’s identifying assumptions. Our results also indicate that CRD-Pre and CRD-CG both yield impact estimates at the cutoff that have a similarly small bias as, but are more precise than, the basic RD’s impact estimates. In addition, both CRD designs produce estimates of impacts away from the cutoff that have relatively little bias compared to estimates of the same parameter from the RCT design. This common finding appears to be driven by two different mechanisms. In this instance of CRD-CG, potential untreated outcomes were likely independent of the assignment variable from the start. This was not the case with CRD-Pre. However, fitting a model using the observed pretests and untreated posttests to account for the initial dependence generated an accurate prediction of the missing counterfactual. The result was an unbiased causal estimate away from the cutoff, conditional on this successful prediction of the untreated outcomes of the treated.

In this paper, the authors examine the role of idiocentric and allocentric cultural orientations in employees’ preference for relationship help and for emotional help from third parties in two cross-cultural samples. The purpose of this paper is to clarify the psychological dynamics of cultural dimensions in relation to cross-cultural conflict intervention.

The authors tested the theoretical assumptions by using questionnaire survey in two cross-cultural samples. Study 1 is a cross-cultural comparison within a country, including 83 Dutch employees and 106 Turkish immigrants in the Netherlands. Study 2 is a comparison between countries, including 123 Germany-based German employees and 101 Pakistan-based Pakistani employees.

The results show that employees’ allocentric orientation, but not idiocentric orientation, explains the differences in preference for relationship help in both the within-country comparison (Study 1: individualistic Dutch culture vs collectivistic Turkish culture) and the between-country comparison (Study 2: individualistic German culture vs collectivistic Pakistani culture). However, only in the between-country comparison (Study 2), the findings reveal that the difference in preference for emotional help between individualistic German culture and collectivistic Pakistani culture is mediated by idiocentric orientation (not by allocentric orientation).

The study confirms that the extent to which disputants’ preference for third-party help regarding social and personal aspects does differ across national cultures, and supports that the argument that social relationship is one of the paramount concerns in conflict handling in the collectivistic cultures. In addition, the study signals an alternative way of conducting two culture comparisons and expands our view on the cultural dimension of individualism-collectivism.

The findings have practical implications both for third-party intervention and for managing cultural diversity in the workplace.

In general, this study contributes to our understanding on how culture influences conflict handling and provides suggestions for third parties to be culturally adaptive.

The research demonstrates that culture plays an important role in determining the extent to which disputants favour relationship help and emotional help from third parties. The research is also valuable in terms of reliability. The authors tested the hypotheses in two cross-cultural samples both within a country and between countries.