The American School Counselor Association developed a comprehensive set of school counseling guidelines to enhance the school counselor's role within schools in the United States. This study looks at counselors’ and principals’ perceptions of the school counselor's role in a Midwestern, regional rural educational environment. Results suggest that the perceptions of school counselors, counselors-in-training, and principals are, for the most part, similar. Differences occur in relation to addressing student (i.e., special education program versus student guidance) and administrative (i.e., clerical, secretarial, disciplinary duties) needs given limited personnel and economic resources. Limitations are discussed and suggestions for future research and advocacy are presented.

Public perceptions of crime as the most important problem (MIP) facing the country jumped tenfold, from 5% in March of 1992 to an unprecedented 52% in August of 1994. This study analyzed the effects of three network television news predictor variables and two FBI predictor variables to determine what statistically accounted for this “big scare”. Based upon data from 1978 through 1998, results suggest that the 1994 “big scare” was more a network TV news scare than a scare based upon the real world of crime. The television news variables alone accounted for almost four times more variance in public perceptions of crime as the MIP than did actual crime rates.

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To assess gender differences in performance in three graduate level courses in educational statistics, responses from students to a question concerning gender, mathematics pre- and posttests, cloze pre- and posttests, and final exams in statistics were analyzed. Males performed slightly better on the mathematics pretest. When gender and mathematics and cloze pretests were used in multiple regression analyses to predict final examination performance, gender was not a significant predictor for any course. However, the interaction between gender and cloze pretest performance was significant for the Ph.D. level course on multiple regression. Mathematics pretest performance was the primary predictor for performance in the Master's level statistics course; both cloze test and mathematics test performance influenced scores on posttest measure in the Ph.D. level courses. Apparently the influence of entering mathematics ability, comprehension of statistical terminology, and gender varies by the primary emphasis of the course taken. While mathematical ability is most important in basic statistics, it is less important in higher level courses in which an adequate mathematics background is assumed by instructors. In consequence, the importance of comprehension of concepts increases from the Master's level to the advanced Ph.D. level in the educational statistics courses analyzed in this study.