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Professional Identity and Interaction : The Case of a Juvenile Court

John McKeon, James Gillham and Carl Bersani Work and Occupations 1981 8: 353 DOI: 10.1177/073088848100800304 The online version of this article can be found at: http://wox.sagepub.com/content/8/3/353

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professionals have different patterns of interpersonal different settings. Verbal defining constitutes one unstudied aspect ofsuch contacts. This article uses certam attributes of a juvenile court setting to formulate hypotheses on the relative importance of 6 measures of professional identity and 10 kinds of defining. Pearson and canonical correlations support 14 of the 16 hypotheses in that juvenile court. These results point to the utility of a situational approach to professional identity and defining .
Past work has shown that
contacts in

Professional Identity and Interaction

THE CASE OF A JUVENILE COURT

JOHN McKEON Walsh College JAMES GILLHAM State University College

at

Buffalo

CARL BERSANI The University of Akron

fessionalism

literature uch of the scholarly has concentrated

and proon whether certain occupations should be considered professions and on the criteria that distinguish professional and nonprofessional occupations. Recently, however, Kerr and his colleagues (1977) called for studying occupations through a method that gives recognition to the importance of individual differences among members of the same profession and does not require that individuals be classed as &dquo;professionals&dquo; or &dquo;nonprofessionals&dquo;-merely on the basis of their occupation.
on

professionals

SOCIOLOGY OF WORK AND OCCUPATIONS, Vol 8 No. 3, @ 1981 Sage Publications, Inc

August
353

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354

Ritzer, approach:
In every

among others,

provides

rationale for such

an

occupation there are some individuals who are more professional than others.... It seems logical to assume that the more professional occupations have the greater number of professional individuals. However, this does not negate the contention that within each occupation there is individual variation [1972: 53].
Most important, some evidence is available that as professionals in a bureaucracy experience the role-making process, they take the role of others differently than do the less professional (Haga, 1974; Milner, 1970). This is the major premise which underlies our investigation. This article examines an emerging professional group: juvenile correctional workers, specifically the staff of a juvenile court in a midwestern, urban county. The study does not try to determine whether the occupation itself should be considered a profession. Rather, it uses the court as a setting to explore not only professional identity among the court workers but also the interpersonal and media relationships that help these workers define professional conduct.

PROBLEM
PROFESSIONAL IDENTITY

In their comprehensive review of the professionalism issue, Kerr and his associates note that the literature is &dquo;replete with confusing and contradictory definitions and operationalizations&dquo; (1977: 341 ). But they compile a list of six commonly used characteristics of &dquo;ideal&dquo; professionals: expertise, autonomy, commitment, identification with the profession and fellow professionals, ethics, and collegial maintenance of standards

(1977: 332).
Kerr et al. openly concede that their list focuses on attitudinal attributes that characterize individuals as professionals

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355

rather than structural criteria that figure in classifying an occu-

pation

as a

profession.

PROFESSIONAL INTERACTION

In an earlier review of professionalism, Elliott (1972: 40) describes the professional as &dquo;embedded in a dynamic complex of relationships&dquo; which serves to pull the practitioner in different directions. To unravel these effects on the professionals interactions, Elliott argues for a situational approach in study-

ing professionalism.
Goode (1957) expresses similar sentiments in depicting professions as communities contained within the larger society. As communities, professions place such importance on their members relationships that most have established codes of ethics governing members relations with each other, clients, and society. But concepts of professionalism assign these relationships varying degrees of legitimacy as sources for information on appropriate conduct for the professional on the job. In terms of the characteristics compiled by Kerr and his associates, expertise, identification, and collegial maintenance of standards all enhance the status of a professionals peers as informational
sources.

Other characteristics of professionalism help shape the roles of those outside the profession as sources ofjob-related information. For example, according to some lines of reasoning, the notion of autonomy dictates that the professional must claim the exclusive right to diagnose the problem and prescribe remedies; the client lacking such expertise, according to this reasoning, should be excluded from the process (Wilensky,

1964).
This suggests that,
the
sources on

theoretical grounds, certain entities in

can
on

be expected to be strong the job, while others may be negligible or even negative. Previous studies, moreover, have shown that these relationships can vary with setting. Like Elliott (1972), who argues for a situational approach to

professionals surrounding
of information used

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356

professionalism, Kerr and associates call for a focus on the &dquo;type of setting where sample members are employed&dquo; (1977: 340). This dictates an examination of factors in the professionals work setting before assigning priorities among the kinds of people and media that contribute job-related sources of information.

Therefore, our intent is to examine &dquo;role-making&dquo; (the other side of the socialization coin), which is a means of improvising to deal with the total range of experiences associated with ones position in a setting. In the sense used here, role includes not only prescribed/ proscribed behaviors but also areas of option, thereby permitting the occupant behavioral choices (McCall and Simmons, 1978; Katz and Kahn, 1978). Elements of professional identity such as expertise and autonomy can help professionals make their roles differently than do less professional workers (Haga, 1974). As well, interaction with reference groups in a bureaucratic setting contributes to rolemaking. Most persons-professional or noteventually find others whose expectations impact on their

identitiesbehavior (Ziller, 1965;

RECENT EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE ON PROFESSIONALS INTERACTIONS

Dansereau et

al., 1975).

Despite the importance of precepts of professionalism in the transference of information used on the job, the question has received little empirical attention in recent years. In their study of the relation between professionalism and role-making, Haga and his associates (1974: 125-126) report that the more professional workers tend to read more journals and books in searching for new ideas to use in their work. In terms of defining the job themselves, these professionals also cite formal education, collegial contacts, professional associations, and professional publications. Milners (1970, 1971a) study of four Wisconsin police departments reports similar findings. But these studies incorporate several weaknesses in terms of the proposed relation between workers professional identity

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357

and job-related interaction. First, although Milner (1971b) has begun to explore the police occupational milieu as a mitigating factor in compliance with Supreme Court decisions, neither he nor Haga has exlicitly related his variables to attributes of their settings despite the considerable other work suggesting that professionalism and associated interaction vary by setting (Wilensky, 1964; Hall, 1968, Freidson, 1970; Elliott, 1972: 100 and 141; Pavalko, 1971: 106). Presumably elements of the work setting shape both sides of this relation by encouraging or limiting the various aspects of identity and interaction. Second, both the Haga and Milner studies use rather limited sets of variables despite the multifaceted situations faced in real life by many types of workers with varying degrees of professional identity. Third, these studies do not test hypotheses on the relative strengths of various professional identity and interaction variables, despite clear indication that a particular setting makes certain aspects of professional identity and interaction more relevant than others. Fourth, while these studies show that more professional workers and less professional workers tend to select different kinds of information, no data are presented to argue that any of the information has any relation to job behavior for either category of worker. Standard variables on defining, however, provide one means of surmounting this fourth problem. Previous research (Gross, Mason, and McEachern, 1958; Woelfel et al., 1974: 249; Woelfel et al., 1972: 12; Woelfel and Haller, 1971a: 76; Mettlin, 1973: 147) suggests that a persons behavior varies strongly with what media or other persons, called sources, tell him or her is appropriate. This means that the more favorable the source to the behavior and the more often the source conveys that information to the worker, the more frequently the worker will perform that behavior. Defining, basically verbal in nature, involves the focal persons perception of certain others expectations for his or her behavior-including the frequency of such communication. Bersani and associates (1977) not only discuss the above studies which have shown relationships between such variables and behavior but also specify how defining can be measured in

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358

multiplicative attributes-exposure, coverage, and bias. Exposure indicates the persons total contacts with others. Coverage pertains to the proportion of these contacts devoted to the behavior of interest. Multiplied together, exposure and coverage indicate the perceived frequency of the defining. Bias reflects the perceived overall degree of favorableness or unfavorableness of the others to the behavior or, more specifically, the perception of the rate at which others believe that the other person should engage in this behavior. Along with certain other variables, this method of measuring defining has fairly consistently accounted for one-half to three-quarters of the variance in such diverse behaviors as assisting French separatist candidates and attending separatist rallies (R2 = .55 and .37, respectively; Woelfel et al., 1974), marijuana use (R2 = .80; Woelfel et al., 1972), cigarette smoking (R2 = .66; Mettlin, 1973), and occupational and educational aspirations (R2 = .64 and.54, respectively; Woelfel and Haller,
1971).
For the study of professionalism, these four issues-the setting, number of variables, strengths of variables, and informa-

terms of three

tions relation to job behavior-are important to improving the precision of our knowledge of how more professional workers differ from the less professional in a particular work

setting.
not only takes into account the setting-a court-but also, within this setting, a particular behavior: talking with youth about ways to avoid past mistakes. A fundamental job behavior was selected because our informal experience shows that particular sources have varying importance, depending heavily on the task at hand. Overall, the study described in this article uses a specific job behavior in a particular work setting to develop a relatively lengthy list of variables as well as hypotheses on the relative importance of its variables. These consist of a set of 6 measures of professional identity and 10 measures of defining by persons and media that provide the workers with information related to professional conduct, in this case the specific job behavior that serves as the basis for the hypotheses.

This

study

juvenile

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359

Through canonical correlations, this study then compares professional identity variables to the court workers defining on a specific job behavior. It also uses zero-order correlations as a further test of relationships indicated by the canonical correlations and to validate the defining measures by comparing them with actual behavior.
the

SETTING

The juvenile court that served as the setting for this study has established a reputation as a model institution in the juvenile justice field (Kratcoski and Hernandez, 1974). In about 95% of the courts cases, the youngsters never return on subsequent

offenses. tions
a decade ago, this court decided to improve its operaby minimizing the distinction between custodial and treatment personnel. As a means of unifying its operations, the court developed three basic objecives that now underlie all its operations (Kratcoski and Hernandez, 1974). The first calls for minimizing the youngsters penetration into the juvenile justice system. The second objective calls for maximizing the courts capacity for differential treatment, care, and custody. The courts third objective involves maximizing research and evaluation to provide organizational feedback and change. Besides various studies by outside researchers, this includes staff meetings where all aspects of dealing with youths undergo

About

continual reevaluations. The first two objectives reflect the courts acceptance of the major elements of labelling theory. The third objective, with its emphasis on evaluation and feedback, incorporates the courts commitment to management-by-objectives (MBO) as its basic

administrative approach.

potential for achieving its objectives, the places special emphasis on staff recruiting. In effect, applicants are required to invest several days and considerable effort for which they are not paid or reimbursed. All of this is geared toward the recruitment of persons who can accept and
To maximize its
court

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360

operate according to the courts expressed objectives. Administrators then make recommendations to the court judge, who makes the final decision on hiring. The court also tries to hire highly educated persons for all its positions. A key effort involves frequent and mandatory in-service training, uniform in content, for all personnel. This training aims less at promoting individual excellence than at developing the overall competence of the staff. On the job, MBO provides another means of enforcing staff adherence to the courts objectives. The system calls for supervisors and subordinates to establish specific goals, then for the supervisors to provide feedback toward meeting them. The court also exercises its option to call on staff at any hour, day or night, as needed. It, likewise, makes no secret of its willingness to terminate employees who do not measure up to its expectations. The courts objectives, coupled with this process for achieving them, has provided the court with a staff that shares a common outlook toward working for the court. Workers seem to attach relatively little importance to whether they work in
or some other court operation. Even promotions to supervisory jobs do not seem to disturb this self-perception. While new supervisors recognize that their new role requires supervision, they see their purpose as basically the same as before. Almost all supervisors continue to work directly with at least some juveniles, but promotion means closer contact with subordinates in helping the subordinates achieve the objectives as well.

detention, probation,

A SETTING-SPECIFIC BEHAVIOR

pursuing these three objectives, court staff members extensively in eclectic forms of counseling with youths referred to the court. Although certain research has raised doubts about the efficacy of counseling (Truax and Carkhuff, 1967: 5-11; cf. Gillham and Bersani, 1975), this court believes its own approach differs from those shown to be ineffective and
In engage

considers it an essential component of the treatment process. Despite the courts commitment to research and evaluation, no

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361

well-designed investigation on this particular issue has been conducted in this setting. In terms of the three objectives, however, the counseling sessions supposedly help ward off further penetration into the juvenile justice system. They also produce information helpful in determining appropriate dispositions from the variety at the courts disposal. Finally, they figure in the feedback process by providing at least some direct information on the effects of the treatment on the youths. As a measure of this kind of counseling, this study uses the amount of time that the youth workers devote to talking with youths about avoiding past mistakes. This behavior is specific enough to be distinguished from idle chit-chat, on one hand, and more sophisticated techniques, such as behavior modification, on the other. Yet it is general enough to encompass most of what transpires in such counseling, at least in an agency, like this juvenile court, geared to certain behavioral changes.

THEORY
VARIABLES

professional identity variables used in this study basically correspond to the characteristics compiled by Kerr and his associates from many studies in the professionalism literature (see Table 1). For expertise, this study uses variables on the extent of formal education as well as frequency of school and workshop attendance. The court tries, as mentioned in the description of the setting, to hire educated staff. But attending school or workshops off the job could relate to expertise as
The

well.

Autonomy underlies a variable on the frequency with which workers tell youth what to expect. This reflects the extent to which the court workers &dquo;make choices governing both the means and the ends&dquo; (Kerr et al., 1977: 332) in their treatment of these youth. As part of the treatment process, this involved interaction not only with the youths themselves but also with

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362

TABLE 1

Professional

Identity

everyone else in the picture to assure that all concerned clearly understand the situation. This reduces risks that these others may inadvertently interfere or undermine the court workers handling of the case. Commitment to the work and the profession provides the basis for a variable on time spent doing paperwork at home. While much of the court workers activity is involuntary and forced upon him or her by youth with immediate and severe problems, doing job-related paperwork at home is much more voluntary. Quite often, in the first place, workers have complete freedom in choosing whether to do it at all. Second, doing paperwork at home frees more time during the work day for dealing with youth and for other interaction that can involve defining the workers job behavior. A worker demonstrates real commitment regardless of home situation, when he or she spends a strenuous day working on multiple cases and then takes home material to write reports that night as well. Identification &dquo;with the profession and fellow professionals&dquo; as well as collegial maintenance of standards (Kerr et al., 1977: 332) correspond to a variable on the frequency of asking other youth workers for advice on handling troubled youths. These requests create opportunities for these other workers to

virtually

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363
TABLE 2

Professional

Defining

specifically define appropriate behavior for the court worker. Ethics, lastly, corresponds to frequency of following up on youths who pass through the courts jurisdiction. While the workers self-interest might suggest helping youth only on demand, ethical behavior would involve periodically checking on the quality of the treatment rendered them. Such follow-up constitutes service to both the youth and society. The professional defining variables concern those persons and media that could conceivably serve as sources of jobrelated information that corresponds to the court workers professional identity (see Table 2). These interpersonal relations are measured in units described earlier and involve the youngsters whose cases the court worker handles, the parents of these youngsters, the workers own supervisor and coworkers, psychologists who work with the court, youth workers in other agencies, teachers, and police. The media

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364

consist of books, for one, and newspapers and magazines, for the other.
HYPOTHESES

The derivation of the hypotheses take a somewhat different form here than generally found in most other investigations. The problem concerns the impact of the setting on the relation between professional identity and defining. Accordingly, this article bases its hypotheses on the earlier description of the court setting. It is very difficult for us to cite previous research since very little or no research apparently addresses the settings impact on this relation. We are unusually fortunate to have as background an article (Kratcoski and Hernandez, 1974) published on this explicit setting wherein the courts practices are delineated clearly and in detail. We also interviewed selected court staff to clarify certain ambiguities. This limited interviewing does not allow, however, the elaborate cross-referencing normally done in studies mainly dependent on such interviews for generating hypotheses and data collection.
PROFESSIONAL IDENTITY

Overall, professional identity varies with defining on talking

youth about avoiding past mistakes. More specifically, this court hires educated people and education presumably changes persons information seeking; thus, education would constitute an important part of professional identity as these workers decide to whom to listen on appropriate rates of discussions with youth on mistakes. Professional persons would, in other settings, exhibit substantial autonomy, commitment, and identification with the profession. But this court limits that by its many controls directed toward its objectives. As these court workers decide to whom to listen on discussions on mistakes, therefore, professional identity should exhibit only moderate strength in telling youth what to expect, doing job-related paperwork at home, and asking other youth workers for advice.
to

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365

As mentioned earlier, this court finds that few youth come to its attention more than once. Thus, follow-up, to the extent it may represent ethical concerns, would be expected to have little or no importance in professional identity.
SOURCES OF DEFINING

On discussions of mistakes, similarly, sources of defining will vary in the extent to which more professional workers will treat them as more important than do the less professional. Parents are important because the law holds them responsible for the conduct of their children. Additionally, this particular court strongly encourages parent-worker contacts as necessary and practical when working on youth problems. Dealing with parents represents an extra step for professionals, moreover. In many situations the less professional will presumably minimize contacts with parents since many parents, themselves, have severe problems. While professionally oriented court workers might ordinarily pay a reasonable amount of attention to the defining of coworkers and psychologists, this courts setting-through its hiring, training, and management practices-provides much of that guidance to all its staff. This makes the defining of these sources likely to show only moderate importance in relation

professional identity. Supervisors, youngsters in the court workers caseload, and youth workers in other agencies have weaker positions as sources of defining. In addition to having the weaker relations to job and professional behavior found in a variety of settings (Blau and Scott, 1962; Downey et al., 1975; Franklin, 1975; Wilensky, 1964; Haga et al., 1974), supervisors in this court have less to say because of the courts stringent hiring policies and routine monitoring in regard to court objectives. Although a court worker-regardless of professional identity-does have frequent contacts with youths in his or her case load, both professionalism and court policies displace clients from having a major influence on the workers job behavior. While perfunctory contacts with youth workers from other agencies-on such topics as availability of space in a foster home-are necesto

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366

sary for all court workers regardless of professional identity, the court obviously maintains its own policies. Thus, the defining of supervisors, youngsters in the court workers caseload, and youth workers from other agencies should have negligible relation to professional identity. This courts objectives differ from those of police and teachers. While the court tries to keep juvenile offenders away from the court setting and in school, police bring them in for &dquo;justice.&dquo; Teachers prefer to keep &dquo;troublemakers&dquo;-of which there are a large number-out of the classroom. More professional court workers would try to avoid the defining of police and teachers. Less professional workers, on the other hand, might be more open to these discrepant views and acquiesce more frequently. Since police would normally have much less contact with a juvenile offender-and therefore with court staff-than do teachers, professional identity should have a moderate negative relation with police defining and a strong negative one with that of teachers. Of the two media sources included in this study, books, as well as newspapers and magazines, tend to devote themselves to more timely material. But these are negated by this settings use of other procedures, mentioned earlier, to communicate the courts expectations to workers.

METHODS
DATA COLLECTION

The information for this

study

came

from responses to

questionnaire. On four of the six professional identification items (telling youths what to expect, asking other youth workers for advice, attending school or workshops, and following up on youths in their caseloads), respondents chose from alternatives ranging from &dquo;never&dquo; (scored 1) to &dquo;almost always&dquo; (scored 5). The educational-level item provided alternatives ranging from sixth grade through masters degree and scored from 1 through 13. On the remaining professional identity item, re-

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367

asked to give the average number of that hours, per week, they spent on paperwork at home. (Pretests had indicated that respondents could estimate this figure fairly easily while encountering difficulties in making similar estimates for the other items.) For each of the 10 defining variables, the questionnaire obtained exposure, coverage, and bias measures. Possible responses to the exposure item (the respondents overall contact with the source) ranged from &dquo;not at all&dquo; (scored 0) to &dquo;nearly all the time&dquo; (scored 4). Those for the coverage item (the proportion of the contacts involving talking with youths about avoiding past mistakes) ranged from &dquo;none&dquo; (scored 0) to &dquo;almost all the time&dquo; (scored 4). Those for the bias item (the sources overall favorableness or unfavorableness) ranged from &dquo;somewhat opposed&dquo; (scored -1) to &dquo;highly favorable&dquo;

spondents simply

were

(scored +3).
The exposure, coverage, and bias scores for each source multiplied together to form a measure of the sources defining on talking with youths about avoiding past mistakes. Obviously, the defining measure came to zero if ( 1 ) a particular respondent had no contact with the sources or (2) none of the contact involved talking with youths about avoiding past mistakes or (3) the source conveyed an essentially neutral attitude toward the behavior. To verify that the information respondents received from the various sources actually related to their work, the questionnaire also obtained a measure of the amount of time that respondents devoted to talking with youths about avoiding past mistakes. Since pretests had indicated that respondents could not readily make a direct estimate, the question was broken down into four items. These consisted of the number of youths that the respondent normally spoke with, the average length of these conversations, the average number of conversations per youth, and the proportion of the discussions involving avoiding past mistakes. The range of possible responses for each of these items was broken down into specific subranges, each with a corresponding score. When multiplied together, the units of these scores cancelled out, yielding a product monotonic, if not proporwere

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368

tional, to the amount of time that the respondent devoted talking with youths about avoiding past mistakes.2
THE SAMPLE

to

sample consisted of probation officers, detention home counselors, community workers, intake interviewers, and other juvenile court staff members whose work involved dealing with youths. While such personnel might represent different occupations in other juvenile courts, they constitute the single occupation &dquo;court worker&dquo; in this sample because, as described earlier, of the courts practice of minimizing distinctions between different categories of staff members. Questionnaires were distributed to a total of 67 persons along with instructions to return completed questionnaires directly to the investigators to insure anonymity. Of the total, 81% (N 54) responded.
The
=

ANALYSIS

Through canonical analysis the professional identity variwere compared with the defining variables. This type of analysis arrays one set of variables on one side of an equation and the other set on the other. For these variables, it then computes coefficients, frequently called &dquo;weights,&dquo; that maximize the correlation between the two sides of the equation. The canonical correlation indicates the overall relationship between
ables
the two sets of variables while the canonical coefficients reveal the relative importance of each variable. Since two sets of variables can have multiple kinds of relations, more than one canonical correlation may result. The literature suggests two approaches to the interpretation of each variables relative importance. When the researchers substantive theory indicates that a single dimension underlies the variables on one side of the equation and that another underlies on the other side, the researcher generally interprets canonical loadings computed from the coefficients (Van de Geer, 1971: 162; Cooley and Lohnes, 1962: 41-44; Alpert and

Peterson, 1972; Reiman, 1975).

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369

approach does not apply to the situation in this article, however, because according to literature mentioned in the Theory section, both professional identity and interactions are
This

multidimensional not unidimensional.

The second approach applies to situations, like that in this study, in which substantive theory suggests multiple dimensions on each side of the equation. In this case each variable represents a separate dimension, and the original canonical coefficients are used to interpret results. Hotelling (1936: 342344), Kendall (1957: 84-85), and Tatsuoka (1971: 190-191)

provide examples of this approach. Kerlinger (1973: 344) as well as Alpert and Peterson (1972: 189) argue that canonical coefficients are interpreted basically in the same way as regression weights. These authors cite corresponding reasons-multicollinearity and suppressor effectsfor caution in interpretation. To guard against these problems in regression, researchers routinely examine the corresponding Pearson correlations (cf. Lord and Novick, 1968: Kmenta, 1971). To check on multicollinearity, therefore, this study reports such correlations. As protection against suppressor effects, this study requires that each variable show a significant zero-order,
variable in the other set to verify any relation indicated by the canonical analysis. It also uses such zero-order correlations to relate the defining variables to the amount of time spent talking with youths about avoiding past mistakes. This serves to verify that the court workers participation in this behavior is related to the information they receive from at least some of those with whom they interact in the course of their jobs.
Pearson correlation with at least
one

RESULTS
RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN PROFESSIONAL IDENTITY AND DEFINING

On the basic issue analysis reveals only

underlying this study, the one statistically significant

canonical canonical

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370

correlation between the 6 professional identity and 10 defining variables (re =.75, p < .03). (All probability levels presented are one-tailed, unless otherwise noted. The principle of probability sampling underlying significance tests is not met by our sampling procedure. Hence, the probability levels herein must be interpreted with caution.) The square of this correlation-or eigenvalue-indicates that the sets share 56% of the variance. This tends to support the overall importance of those with whom a practitioner interacts as sources of professional information.
RELATIVE STRENGTH OF PROFESSIONAL IDENTITY VARIABLES

Table 4 lists the canonical coefficients for the variables in this study. The professional identity coefficients tell which elements of that identity relate most strongly to job-related defining. Similarly, the defining coefficients tell which sources relate

strongly to identity. expected, level of education proves one of the strongest variables in professional identity with a canonical coefficient of .65; with its relation to defining, it leads the list, followed by three relatively moderate variables: telling youths what to expect (.46), asking other youth workers for advice (.37), and doing paperwork at home (.34). Further affirming their status as professional identity variables, Table 3 shows each of the four also has significant (p < .05) Pearson correlations with variables in the defining
most

As

Education correlates -.34 with teachers and -.36 with police, the two entities whose objectives are especially likely to conflict with those of the court worker. Telling youths what to expect correlates .51 with supervisors, .41 with coworkers, .34 with parents, .32 with workers from other agencies,.33 with the youths in the court workers caseload, and .27 with books. Asking other youth workers for advice correlates .40 with supervisors, .36 with coworkers, and .27 with parents of the youths in the workers caseload. Doing paperwork at home correlates .30 with supervisors and .32 with books.
set.

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372
TABLE 4

Canonical

Analysis of Defining and Professional Identity for Juvenile Court Workers (N 54)
=

The two remaining variables, following up on youths and attending school or workshops, have canonical coefficients of .15 and -.35, respectively. The -.35, by itself, would indicate that, in this juvenile court, the more professional staff members actively avoid school and workshops. But like following up on youths, this variable fails to correlate, negatively or positively, with any of the defining variables. So, as expected, both follow-up and school or workshop prove negligible as variables in professional identity.
RELATIVE STRENGTH OF DEFINING VARIABLES

Table 4 shows that, like the professional identity variables, the defining variables generally follow the predicted pattern. Of the interpersonal sources, parents have the strongest canonical coefficient (.62). Psychologists (.50) and coworkers (.29) show moderate strength; negligible relations appear for supervisors (.18), youth in the workers caseload (-.11 ), and workers from other agencies (-.19). Police (-.28) and teachers

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(-.70) have moderate and strong negative relations, respectively. Of the media sources, both books (.22) and newspapers and magazines (.00) show negligible relations to professional identity in this court.
An examination of the Pearson correlations in Table 3 shows that each of these variables-except psychologists and newspapers and magazines-correlates significantly with at least one variable in the professional identity set. For newspapers and magazines, the lack of such a correlation presents no problem, since, as expected, the canonical coefficient ranks this variable a negligible source of professional information. But psychologists were expected to rank fairly high on the list of defining variables and, in the analysis, they emerged with the second highest coefficient: .50. The Pearson correlations in Table 3 provide one possible explanation for this outcome. While lacking a significant correlation with any professional identity variable, psychologists correlate significantly with seven of the other nine defining variables-all but parents and police. This indicates that workers who confer with psychologists also tend to talk with other sources. Difficult cases presumably stimulate much of the contact with psychologists. But the court assigns such cases to staff members best able to handle them, not necessarily to those with the strongest professional identity. So, compared to their more professional colleagues, less professional workers sometimes may need to work more closely with psychologists. In any event, the lack of a significant zero-order correlation with a professional identity variable forces rejection of the hypothesis that psychologists constitute a substantial source of information for the more professional court workers.
REDUCING THE NUMBER OF VARIABLES

total of 16 variables and 54 cases, the original analysis involves about 3 cases per variable. Multiple regression, a technique closely related to canonical analysis, requires 5 cases per variable. If the analysis excludes the 2 professional identity and 5 interaction variables expected to be negligible, the number ot cases per variable rises to 6. With
a

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TABLE 5

Canonical Analysis Excluding Variables Hypothesized to Have Negligible Relations

Table 5 shows the outcome of reducing the number of variables to nine. Although the magnitude of most of the coefficients changes slightly, they still hold the same relative positions vis-a-vis each other. This indicates that the relatively few cases per variable in the original analysis had not damaged the
outcome.
OUTLYING CASES

A comparison of the Pearson and Spearman correlations in Table 3 reveals several differences, indicating a need to examine outlying cases. These, for the most part, involve respondents in supervisory positions or staff members who talk with relatively few youths. In this court, therefore, professional identity may seem to involve the number of workers that the respondent supervises or the number of youths with whom the worker discusses past mistakes. Table 6 shows the results of adding these two variables to the professional identity set. This produces some modest changes in the magnitude of the canonical coefficients and reverses the order of telling youths what to expect and asking other workers for advice in the professional identity set.

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TABLE 6

Canonical

Analysis Including Two Variables Suggested by Examination of Deviant Cases

In the defining set, however, youths and police, seventh and ninth, respectively, on the original list, in effect switch places. While this does not seem to affect conclusions about youthsor youth workers from other agencies, which remain in eighth place-it no longer allows the police result to be interpreted as moderately negative. This revised analysis, therefore, fails to support the original hypothesis on police as negative sources of information vis-d-vis the court workers professional identity. As for the two additions to the professional identity list,

neither receives support. The canonical coefficient of .09 ranks the number of workers supervised as a negligible indicator. Results are ambiguous, and thus probably negligible, for the number of youths with whom the worker discusses avoiding past mistakes. While the canonical coefficient is negative (-.28), the Pearson correlations are positive: .33 with coworkers, .33 with parents, and .41 with teachers.

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RELATION BETWEEN DEFINING AND BEHAVIOR

further measure of the appropriateness of its defining variables as sources of information used on the job, this study examines the zero-order correlations between these variables and the amount of time devoted to talking to youths about avoiding past mistakes. Table 3 shows that 3 of 10-supervisors, coworkers, and the youths in the court workers caseload-correlate significantly with the behavior. This supports the Woelfel and Haller (1971) findings that people obtain most behavior-related information from relatively few sources. Except for coworkers, the sources that correlate with behavior show relatively little importance when related to professional identity. This implies that the court workers in this sample may look to certain sources for concepts of professional conduct. But in practice, they may find themselves adhering more closely to the expectations of others. In this instance, the relatively strong correlation of youths with the court workers behavior may, in part, reflect the courts use of MBO to optimize use of its resources. This, in turn, implies that court workers seek the route of least likely resistance to reach the desired goal-specific behavior changes on the part of the youths in the courts jurisdiction. So while court workers may be able to resist youths as a source of information related to professional identity, youths still may occupy a potent position vis-a-vis behavior.
As
a

DISCUSSION

Although the structure of juvenile courts per se is important, specific processes of this court regarding hiring, training, policies, and monitoring are most useful in examining the nature of role-making within this setting. Once one knows the nature of such influence, one can make very good guesses, as this article indicates, on the complexion of role-making (Bucher and Stelling, 1977). These data also make explicit one kind of quantitative relation between role-taking and role-making. The defining notion
the

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has demonstrated its usefulness as an element of role-taking, and the combination of multiple measures of defining in a canonical analysis constitutes a quantitative approach to rolemaking that some researchers may find helpful. This approach is easily adapted to the study of multiple identities and to areas of role-making. Lastly, these data suggest a comment on the pervading issue of the relative power of bureaucratic versus professional controls (see, e.g., Kahn et al., 1964; Katz and Kahn, 1978). This court has unusually strong bureaucratic controls, particularly compared to other juvenile courts. While obvious relations exist between the setting and the development of professional identity, professionalism still holds on and role-making shows clear differences among workers of

varying professional identity.

NOTES
1. These data were collected during the first part of 1974. Liska (1974: 263) argues "that the strong criticism ... leveled against the use of questionnaire items as a measure of overt behavior is not well empirically substantiated ... the evidence does not seem to warrant a general discontinuation of their use as an index of behavior.

this type of measurement may be somewhat unusual in sociology, its hardly controversial. For some time physicists have multiplied ratios together, cancelling conceptual units, then working with the remaining units (Physical Science Study Committee, 1960). Second, and more important, a small Monte Carlo study using random variables tested the effects of multiplying scores assigned to ratios rather than the ratios themselves. As expected, the results indicated little or no damage. Third, the dependent variable, which employs a similar multiplicative procedure and is discussed later in the text, was regressed on several measures of components of time spent helping youth avoid past mistakes. These included frequency of discussing alternatives open to youth and frequency of talking to the youth about the experiences of others. Practitioners not involved in this study later reported that these results conformed to their experience.

Although
rationale

is

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VAN DE

chotherapy. Chicago: Aldine/Atherton. GEER, J. P. (1971) Introduction

JOHN McKEON is Associate Professor of Sociology at Walsh College and a doctoral candidate at the University of Akron. His

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research interests include tion, and vandalism.

interpersonal communication,

victimiza-

JAMES GILLHAM is Assistant Professor of Criminal Justice at the State University College at Buffalo, New York. His research focuses on cognitive structure and change among participants in criminal

justice.
CARL BERSANI is Associate Professor of University of Akron. He is currently editing

Sociology at an anthology

the
on

criminology.

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