The patient's failure to cooperate effectively in the patient/physician (patient and physician) interaction has been shown to be a problem of significant magnitude. In the present study, an attempt was made to identify specific, patient behaviors which might be related to physician judgment of a good patient and progress of treatment. A checklist of 37 behaviors was compiled. A series of 100 patients was observed during their interaction with physicians and occurrences of behaviors from the checklist were noted by an experimenter. Physicians also indicated whether the patient was considered to be a good patient and whether treatment was progressing as expected. For every third patient, physicians noted the occurrence of behaviors from the checklist. An association was found between some behaviors from the checklist and the physicians' judgment. There was also shown to be a difference in the ability of the experimenter and the physicians involved to detect these behaviors.

The proposed interaction between race and sex on achievement orientation has not been adequately demonstrated when cognitive measures are used. Therefore, the present study examined the effects of sex and race on attributions for achievement., Elementary level students made attributions to ability, effort, task-difficulty, or luck for 16 academic successes or failures described in a questionnaire. Girls made significantly (p < .001) fewer ability and significantly (p < .001) more effort attributions on success items than boys, regardless of their race. Six success items that had been sex-typed (3 girl, 3 boy) provided similar results. Sex-typing data indicated these subjects exhibited strong sex-role stereotypy. Results were discussed in terms of sex-typing of the individual and not the task.

Research has demonstrated the efficacy of attitudinal-motivational counseling in conjunction with study skills training. However, it has not been clear whether group or individual counseling was most beneficial. This research attempted to evaluate the usefulness of peer counselors in group and individual counseling sessions. Using students voluntarily enrolled in a study skills program, it was demonstrated that all students improved in study habit scores. However, only individual-peer counseling was effective in changing academic attitudes (p < . 05), as compared to group-peer counseling, no-counseling, and no-treatment conditions. Grade-point-average change scores were not differentially effected by the treatment conditions.