Measuring Change and Persistence in Human Affairs: Types of Change Generated by OD Designs

Abstract

There is a truism about applied research that an inadequate concept of change leads to diminished or misguided applied research. Hence this paper urges distinguishing kinds of change, distinctions which are suggested by experience and also are supported with evidence generated by exotic statistical and computational techniques in which we have been engaged. An immediate pay-off of making such distinctions is more definite reliance on existing research findings, whose interpretation is necessarily related to their underlying concept of change. More central still, the goal is to facilitate the design and evaluation of efforts to improve the human condition and the quality of life, especially in organizations. Initially, conceptual clarification of "change" will show that at least three kinds seem distinguishable. Later, data from a study of a "successful" Flexi-Time intervention will be used to test these conceptual clarifications. Detailed statistical analysis will support the broad position that a unitary concept of change is inappropriate and may be seriously misleading.

Is utilitarian sacrifice becoming more morally permissible?

“…Third, scale ratings of IRI items may suffer from recalibration over time (Golembiewski, Billingsley, & Yeager, 1976). In contrast to our outcome measure, anchored by terms like "obligation" and "prohibition", which may be expected to maintain relatively stable meaning over time, the self-assessment of dispositional affect may be anchored by comparison to one's peers, confounding the test of differences between administrations.…”

Explaining quality of life with crisis theory

“…In addition to crisis theory, a number of other theoretical frameworks may be useful in explaining adaptation processes, including judgment theories such as Helson's adaptation level theory (Helson, 1964;De Haes and Van Knippenberg, 1985;Brickman et al, 1978;Parducci, 1995) and social comparison theories (Festinger, 1954;Taylor and Lobel, 1989;Van der Zee et al, 1995); control theories (Powers, 1978) such as the self-regulation theory (Carver and Scheier, 1982;Leventhal and Nerenz, 1983); discrepancy theories (Calman, 1984;Michalos, 1985); uncertainty in illness theory (Mishel 1988;Padilla et al, 1992); stresscoping theories (Lazarus and Folkman, 1984;Folkman, 1997); and response shift theories (Breetvelt and Van Dam, 1991;Howard et al, 1979;Golembiewski et al, 1976;Sprangers and Schwartz, 1999). While these theories vary widely in level of abstraction and breadth of coverage, they make important and convincing attempts to explain changes in perceived QL.…”

Enhancing a Sense of Competence at Work by Engaging in Proactive Behavior: The Role of Proactive Personality

“…We also examined measurement invariance of competence items to ensure that our used measure detected changes in the targets construct rather than changes due to scale recalibration (i.e., beta change) and construct reconceptualization (i.e., gamma change) (Golembiewski, Billingsley, & Yeager, 1976;Sprangers & Schwartz, 1999). In the first model, we estimate a two-factor model for competence items at Times 1 (three items) and 2 (three items) without any constraints.…”