IIIIIIIIIZIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII THESIS 0385 9850 . b. m («1"314 Mr. A " 5‘ {vs . 0 . .. . . ' pf.:fi 3.1.353 I' . .- Ic- {AL"\:: ‘ fir»; \ 3} J5. ’I‘IA" “Lu-t. ‘ 4.... - . ' 9.0—? "fill-“Q 0:13-35:53!- This is to certify that the thesis entitled GOAL DEFINITION AND GOAL CONSENSUS IN RUNAWAY SERVICES presented by J. Randy Koch has been accepted towards fulfillment of the requirements for ‘- .. M.A. degree in Psychology A Major professor Date February 25, 1982 " \ 0-7639 MSU LIBRARIES \— RETURNING MATERIALS: Place in book drop to remove this checkout from your record. FINES will be charged if book is returned after the date stamped below. AHIHfiew$5r'n m «5 hfiflfli;§}33l % My? 7 20m 200 A355 © 1982 JOHN RAN DOLPH KOCH All Rights Reserved GOAL DEFINITION AND GOAL CONSENSUS IN RUNAWAY SERVICES By J. Randy Koch A THESIS Submitted to Michigan State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of MASTER OF ARTS Department of Psychology 1982 ABSTRACT GOAL DEFINITION AND GOAL CONSENSUS IN RUNAWAY SERVICES By J. Randy Koch The importance of organizational goals to the rational planning of future courses of action and as a key to the understanding of organizational behavior has been widely acknowledged. In addition, it has been proposed that consensus on goals within an organization may greatly facilitate coordinated and efficient organizational action, especially when the organization is geographically dispersed and employs a non-routinized work technology. In this study, a methodology for assessing organizational goals was developed and implemented within a system of service organizations for runaway youths. Additionally, the relationship of staff goal consensus to the organizations' staff socialization processes and level of staff participation in decision making was explored. The results of both the descriptive and correla- tional analyses are presented and discussed, and recommendations are made for future research. TABLE OF CONTENTS Page LIST OF TABLES iv Chapter 1. REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE ................................... 1 Introduction ............................................ 1 The Runaway Problem ............... . ................... 3 The Administration and Planning of Runaway Services .................................. 6 The Centralized—Rational Model ....................... 107 Conclusions .......................................... 16 Alternate Conceptualizations of Organizational Goals.... 16 Goals as Official Purposes ........................... 17 Goals as Operational Policies ........................ 18 Goals as Intended Consequences ....................... 21 Conclusions .......................................... 22 Goals and Organizational Characteristics ................ 23 Goals and Organizational Structure ................... 24 Goals and Organizational Process ..................... 30 Goals and Organizational Environment ................. 31 Conclusions .......................................... 33 Rationale ............................................... 34 Conclusions from the Literature ...................... 34 Specific Research Goals .............................. 37 2. METHOD OF PROCEDURE ........................................ 39 Research Setting ........................................ 39 Projects ............................................. 39 Planning Agencies .................................... 44 Respondents ............................................. 45 Project Staff ........................................ 45 State Planners ....................................... 46 Procedures .............................................. 48 Measures ................................................ 52 Goal Assessment Questionnaire ........................ 52 Participatory Decision Making Questionnaire .......... 58 Staff Socialization Questionnaire .................... 58 3. RESULTS .................................................... 62 Scale Development and Reliability Assessment ............ 62 Scale Development .................................... 62 Test-Retest Reliability .............................. 69 ii Page Descriptive Results for Service Goals ..................... 73 Project Staff .......................................... 73 State Planners ......................................... 75 Planner and Staff Agreement on Service Goals ........... 78 The Correlates of Goal Consensus .......................... 81 Goal Consensus Index ................................... 83 Participatory Decision Making Index .................... 83 Staff Socialization Indeces ............................ 85 Correlational Results .................................. 86 4. DISCUSSION .................................................. 91 Runaway Services and Program Goals ........................ 91 Project Staff .......................................... 91 State Planners ......................................... 94 Planner and Staff Agreement on Service Goals ........... 96 Staff Goal Consensus ...................................... 99 Recommendations for Future Research ....................... 102 APPENDICES Appendix A: Project Fact Sheet ................................. 105 Appendix B: Participant Consent Form ........................... 107 Appendix C: Staff Goal Assessment Questionnaire ................ 108 Appendix D: Planner/Administrator Goal Assessment Questionnaire ...................................... 116 Appendix E: Participatory Decision Making Questionnaire ........ 124 Appendix F: Staff Socialization Questionnaire .................. 129 REFERENCES ......................................................... 132 Table Table Table Table Table Table Table Table Table Table Table Table Table Table Table Table Table Table Table Table Table LIST OF TABLES Page Number of Projects by Service Category .................. 41 Number of Projects by Size of Staff ..................... 41 Number of Projects by Funding Agency .................... 43 Number of Staff by Occupational Specialty ............... 47 Number of State Planner Respondents by Agency ........... 49 Goal Assessment Items ................................... 54 Participatory Decision Making Items ..................... 59 Staff Socialization Variables ........................... 61 Initial Rational Goal Scales ............................ 64 Final Goal Scales ....................................... 67 Goal Interscale Correlations ............................ 67 Reliability Estimates for Goal Scales ................... 71 Reliability Estimates for Staff Socialization Items ..... 72 Staff Scale Means and Standard Deviations ............... 74 Summary of Paired T-tests for Project Staff ............. 76 Highest Priority Goals of Project Staff ................. 77 Planner Scale Means and Standard Deviations ............. 77 Summary of Paired T—tests for State Planners ............ 79 Highest Priority Goals of State Planners ................ 8O T-tests for Staff and Planner Comparisons ............... 82 Project Scores for Goal Consensus. ...................... 84 Page Table 22. Participatory Decision Making Scores ................... 84 Table 23. Staff Socialization Indeces ............................ 87 Table 24. Summary of Correlational Results ....................... 89 CHAPTER 1 REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE Introduction In the past decade the large number of runaways and reports of their victimization while on the streets has pointed out the need to provide services to this population of youth. In response, a large network of runaway services was developed both within the State of Michigan and all across the United States. The actual delivery of services to runaways was typically provided by small, community—based projects. These runaway projects usually operated within a larger, hierarchical organization which had responsibility for the administra- tion and planning of runaway services. The administration and planning within this organizational structure essentially followed what will be described as a centralized-rational model. The centralized-rational model employs a sequential planning process in which the first step is setting goals, that is, specifying desired outcomes. These goals then guide the planner in the development and evaluation of alternative action strategies to attain the stated goals. This process may be centralized to the extent that major goals and policies are determined by decision makers at the top of the hier- archy. These goals and policies are then communicated to successively lower levels of the hierarchy so that ultimately they should be opera- tionalized in the activities of the service providers. It is assumed that compliance with official goals and policies is necessary for 1 2 coordinated and efficient action in addressing the problem. However, the Imechanisms for assuring compliance are imperfect, especially when the organization is geographically dispersed and the non-routine work tech- . nology allows discretion on the part of the individual worker, as is true Iin runaway services. In such situations agreement among organization members on the goals which should be attained, that is goal consensus, may be particularly important in facilitating a coordinated, efficient effort. Research and theory related to organizational goals has identi- fied variables potentially relevant to goal consensus including the degree of staff socialization and the degree of participatory decision making. rfihis report will present the results of an assessment of the goals of runaway services in the State of Michigan, and explore the relation- ship between goal consensus within runaway projects and other organiza- tional characteristics. Prior to presenting the research methodology and results of the study three sections of background literature which provide the rationale for the study will be presented. In the first section an overview of the runaway problem will be presented as well as a description of the administrative and planning structure of runaway services. This structure will be related to the centralized-rational model of planning with special attention given to the requirements of this model in terms of goal definition and goal consensus. In the second section, alternative conceptualizations of organizational goals are re- viewed and the implications for measurement of these goals are discussed. Finally, in the third section, empirical research and theory concerning the relationship between organizational goals and other organizational variables is reviewed for the purpose of identifying factors relevant to goal consensus. l \ The Runaway Problem L/ The runaway has enjoyed a unique position among youth in the history of America. From the romanticized adventurer named Huckleberry Finn to the rebel, peace and love seeking hippy of the late sixties, he has been pictured as youth's search for independence and idealism. But, as those who have probed the lives of runaways have learned, this dramatic act is one born more out of despair than out of independence and the journey is filled more with tragedy than with adventure. While the runaway response has occasionally been attributed to individual pathology (e.g., Leventhal, 1963; 1964) the overwhelming majority of investigations have concluded that running away is the result of a dysfunctional parent-child relationship (Suddick, 1973). However, despite the general agreement on the etiology of running away, two distinct conceptualizations of this phenomenon have emerged. The first viewpoint has conceptualized the runaway as a highly delinquent or dis- turbed youth who runs away in order to escape family conflict and parental rejection (Hildebrand, 1963; Jenkins, 1971). The second viewpoint has described runaways as being no different from other youth, and has por- trayed running away as being most often an adaptive response to an intol- erable situation (Shellow, 1967; Ambrosino, 1971). But no matter how one explains the runaway phenomenon, it remains a serious problem for the runaway youth, his family and society. In numbers alone, runaway youth reflect the development of a major social problem. It has been estimated that as many as one million children and adolescents run away each year (e.g., Rubin, 1976; Zastrow and Navarre, 1975), while Federal Bureau of Investigation statistics indicate an alarming increase of 70% from 1967 to 1972 (Dunford, 1976). 4 Even though these data must be interpreted carefully due to the imprecise nature of estimating the actual number of runaways (Chapman, 1976), such information does suggest that runaway youth is a problem of great pro- portions. However, the problem extends far beyond mere numbers. Once on the run, these youth must confront the consequences of their actions, the first being the difficulty of mere survival. Some manage by living with friends or relatives, but others set up their own homes, or continue to live on the road (Rubin, 1976). For the latter two groups, just "getting by” is difficult. As pointed out by several authors (e.g;; Brenton:~1978; Miller, Miller, Hoffman & Duggan, 1980; Rubin, 1976), this is a particu- larly vulnerable group of youth. They must subsist however they can, and if they are victimized in the process they have no recourse in the law. Just as they are often the victim, they may also become the victim- izer. Forced to survive by any means available, their offenses are well known to law enforcement officials. A New York City policeman reported that runaway girls provided the biggest source of prostitutes in that city, composing as much as half the total population (Rubin, 1976). Following hearings on the runaway problem, Congress also concluded that running away often sets the occasion for more serious offenses which may lead to a delinquent career (Runaway Youth Act Report, 1972), though this has been disputed by others (e.g., Gold and Reimer, 1974). Upon returning, the youth who has run away frequently or for long periods of time may find fitting back into the community very difficult. Though inconclusive, some research suggests such youth will have difficulty in obtaining and maintaining employment, participating in community activities and performing well in school. Furthermore, these problems seem to worsen with increasing frequency of reported runaways (Shellow, 1967). 5 As participation in community institutions disintegrates and peer relationships are disturbed (D'Angelo, 1974), these youth seem to suffer the same alienation from society as those who remain on the road. For some, a frequent consequence of running away is arrest and formal involvement in the juvenile justice system. Despite a national movement to divert status offenders from the juvenile justice system, there were a reported 143,598 youths arrested for running away in 1980 (F81, 1980). For these, and runaways arrested in other years, the outlook is not so good. For example, Shellow (1967) noted an increase in the proportion of youth with formal charges against them after their first official runaway offense. This increase was from one in six, to one in four. Similar patterns have been noted by others, leading some to suggest that involvement in the juvenile justice system may actually function to increase future delinquency_(e,g‘1—Gold—and Jtttthumsr—196944 For some the consequences of running away may be even more severe. When the runaway episodes occur frequently enough, and the parents claim to be or are judged to be unable to "control" their child, institution- alization is often the result. Though current legislation, the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act of 1981, requires states to reduce the institutionalization of status offenders in order to receive certain federal funds, institutionalizing runaways has not been an uncommon "solution" in the past. For example, Rubin (1976) found that half of the inmates in both the Indiana and Illinois Training School for Girls were there for running away from home. Such findings are given additional sup- port by the National Council on Crime and Delinquency which reported that 23% of the boys, and 70% of the girls in juvenile correctional institutions are only status offenders (Rubin, 1976). 6 The Administration and Planning of Runaway Services In response to the increasing number of reported runaways and to stories of their victimization, small youth service projects called run- away houses began to emerge. Initially these projects were developed by those local communities which attracted large numbers of runaway youth. Thus, the first runaway house was begun in San Francisco in 1968 (Chapman, 1976) with a second to follow shortly after in Boston (Washton, 1974). Despite these early attempts to provide services to runaways the federal government did not begin to provide substantial support until 1974. In that year, on September 7, President Ford signed into law the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act (JJDPA). This Act, in general, and Title III of JJDPA, the Runaway Youth Act, in particular, have been two primary sources of funding for runaway services. A third major source is Title XX of the Social Security Act, enacted October 1, 1975. The goals and funding structure of each of these three sources will be described below. While major changes have taken place in the administration of each of these funding sources, their operation and structure at the time this study was conducted will be described here. Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act. The primary mandate of JJDPA was the deinstitutionalization of status offenders. Specifically, JJDPA was a grant—in-aid program which required states to reduce the institutionalization of status offenders by 75% in order to continue receiving the financial support provided through this Act. As a result of the large number of runaways who are institutionalized, as noted earlier, it is no wonder that this population has received significant attention by states attempting to attain the goal set by JJDPA. 7 The Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act was administered by the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration (LEAA) through its Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP). The Law Enforce- ment Assistance Administration was located within the U.S. Department of Justice. In its role as administrator of the Act, OJJDP monitored state com- pliance with deinstitutionalization, provided technical assistance in order to facilitate achievement of the mandate and distributed funds to the next level of the funding structure, the state planning agencies (SPA's). The SPA's in turn developed state—wide service plans, distributed funds directly to the youth serving projects and monitored their performance. In addition, the SPA's assumed responsibility on the state level for the deinstitutionalization of status offenders. Finally, the administrative hierarchy was completed by regional planning units. These units served county or multi—county areas, depending on size, and served such functions as: I) initially screening requests for funding and making recommendations to the SPA; 2) providing technical assistance to individual projects; and 3) providing local input into the service plans developed by the SPA's. Again, it is important to remember that the planning and monitoring were primarily oriented toward reducing institutionalization of status offenders. The JJDPA was extended for three more years, beginning in fiscal year 1981, in order to continue working towards this goal;_J Runaway Youth Act. As noted above, the Runaway Youth Actf(RYA) was, and currently is, part of the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act. However, the goals of RYA are specific to runaway youth and a separate funding structure has been employed. 8 The intended goals of the projects providing services under the Runaway Youth Act was perhaps best summarized in Senator Bayh's report from the Committee on the Judiciary (United States Senate, 1973, p. 1). The report stated that runaway projects were to: . shelter young people for a very short period of time rather than on a long-term basis. These facilities could be used by the courts and the police to house run- aways temporarily prior to their return home or to another permanent living arrangement. However, their primary function is to provide a place where runaways can find shelter and immediate assistance, such as medical care and counseling. Once in the runaway house, the young person would be encouraged to contact home and reestablish in a permanent living arrangement. Professional, medical, and psychological services would be available to these houses from the community as they are needed. Most importantly, the shelters established under S. 645 will be equipped to provide field counseling for both the runaway and his family or feasible, information on where to seek more comprehensive professional help will be supplied. In short, these houses will serve as highly specialized alternatives to the traditional law enforce- ment methods of dealing with runaways. The Runaway Youth Act was administered by the Youth Development Bureau (YDB) within the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare (HEW) (now the Department of Health and Human Services). In administering the Runaway Youth Act YDB activities included: 1) devel- oping rules and guidelines for runaway projects; 2) providing technical assistance through conferences and workshops; 3) monitoring the operation of the projects through a national, client-based information system; and 4) reporting to Congress on an annual basis concerning the effectiveness of runaway projects. Funding of individual projects was accomplished through allocations to each of the 10 HEW national regions who in turn approved grant appli- cations and distributed the funds to local projects. Each region had one staff member who assumed responsibility for administering RYA at 9 the regional level, in addition to providing technical assistance to the runaway projects. As part of JJDPA the Runaway Youth Act was also extended for three years in 1978, and again in 1981 under the title of the Runaway and Homeless Youth Act. Title XX. Title XX was enacted to provide for the delivery of direct human services, under the Social Security Act, to people who were not recipients of income maintenance (Mueller, 1976). Additionally, the receipt of Title XX funds was not contingent on the development of any specific programs; instead states were provided "more flexibility and responsibility for determining needs, definingservices, and planning for coordinated and comprehensive delivery of services" (Mueller, 1976, p. 1). Services provided under Title XX were to address one of the five following goals: Self-support. Self-sufficiency. Prevent and remedy neglect, abuse, or exploitation of children or adults and preserve families. Prevention of inappropriate institutional care through community based programs. 5. Provision of institutional care where appropriate. 4> wNI—I Title XX funds were administered by the Administration for Public Services, Office of Human Development Services in HEW. Funds were allo- cated to the states which then reviewed and processed local grant applica- tions. In order to receive Title XX funds states were required to submit an annual service plan to HEW. This plan included a description of the types of services to be funded, an explanation of the eligibility require- ments for receipt of services and a description of the administration of the program. In Michigan these funds were administered by the Department of Social Services. Summary. While the exact form of the three funding and planning structures were not the same, some common characteristics do emerge. 10 Thus, one finds that the structures were basically hierarchical in nature. Major goals were provided in the original legislation, though these were often broadly defined (for example, "preserve families"). A branch of the federal government was then charged with administering the legislation. This included monitoring attainment of the stated goals and developing certain rules and regulations which were to facilitate the attainment of stated goals in an efficient manner. Compliance with these rules and regulations were, of course, also monitored. At a still lower level, usually the state or national region, funds were distributed to local projects which agreed to pursue the goals of the funding agency. Again, technical assistance was provided in order to improve the projects' abilities to attain the goals, and monitor activities relevant to the rules and regulations were monitored. Finally, in some cases there was yet another level which assumed more localized responsibility for technical assistance, monitoring and coordination of services. The overall process and structure described above is based on a particular model of social planning; a centralized-rational model. The procedures and organizational structure of this model, as well as its requirements for effective opera- tion, will now be discussed. The Centralized—Rational Planning Model Planning has been defined as a ”process for determining appropriate future action through a sequence of choices" (Davidoff and Reiner, 1962, p. 103). While alternate models for conducting the planning process have been proposed (see, for example, Davidoff, 1965; Grabow & Heskin, 1973; Klosterman, 1978; Lindblom, 1965) planning theory has largely been directed by a "rational" model (Stuart, 1969). Essentially, this model prescribes the steps outlined by Harris (1972) in which: 1) goals are 11 set; 2) alternative means of attaining the goals are developed; 3) out- comes of the alternative actions are predicted; and, 4) the alternatives are evaluated in terms of their predicted outcomes and success in achieving goals. Although the steps in the rational planning model can be easily specified, two basic problems often arise which frustrate this process. These two problems are related to the specification of goals and the implementation of the selected alternative course of action. The essential role of goal setting has been noted by several authors (e.g., Davidoff and Reiner, 1962; Young, 1966; Williams, 1976), and its importance has been highlighted by its position as the first step in the planning process (e.g., Harris, 1972; Hudson, 1979). However, the first question that must be answered is, whose goals? Some planners have decried what they see as the tendency of other planners to set goals on the basis of "their creed” rather than on the basis of the true needs and desires of society and the particular target population (Young, 1966, p. 84). While this criticism seems valid, the immediate problem that arises is the difficulty in determining "true needs." One may delegate this responsibility to "expert judgment” of what is best for the client and society, but this denies the basic nature of goals; that is, goals are value determined and inherently political (Davidoff, 1965). As such, we can expect goals to be different across constituencies and even across individuals within the same constituency. For example, in the area of runaway services goals may be different both within and between the state planner and runaway project constituencies. These dissimilar goals may simply be differences in the priorities of certain goals or in some cases, the goals may be in direct conflict. 12 The strategy for dealing with dissimilar goals varies with the philosophy of the planner. Some planners choose an advocacy strategy in which a specific value-related position is adopted and the planner's skills are employed in achieving the goals derived from this position (e.g., Davidoff, 1965; Guskin and Ross, 1971; Heskin, 1980). Davidoff (1965) has even proposed a planning model, recently demonstrated by Rothblatt (1978),in which all positions or constituencies would be represented by planner-advocates with the final decisions being made in the political arena. A second strategy which has been adopted to deal with dissimilar goals is that of the citizen survey (Glass, 1979). In one application of this strategy members of the decision-making or target populations are surveyed concerning what they believe the goals should be relative to a particular issue (e.g., Lorei & Caffey, 1978; Schimpeler and Greco, 1968). For example, the planners of runaway services may assess the goals of the providers of direct services to runaways or the goals of runaways them- selves. In this manner, the planner may assess the relative priority of goals and seek to develop and implement programs which maximally satisfy these goals. It has also been noted that a procedure for assigning relative priorities to goals is necessary even when there is no conflict on goals; even when common goals are held, these goals may not be totally complimentary. For example, implementation of a feasible plan may result in the subversion of one goal in order to attain another. This problem may be dealt with by assigning relative priorities to the entire goal set. The planner may then evaluate the alternatives on their effectiveness in achieving the most important goals (Stuart, 1969). For example, in the case of runaway services, a project may decide that it is more important 13 to provide independent living arrangements for runaways than to reunite families. On this basis a project with limited resources would choose to train staff to teach independent living skills rather than to conduct family counseling. Finally, Young (1966) has described another major obstacle to be overcome in setting goals. That is, the planner must avoid goal state— ments which are so general as to provide no guidance in selecting appro- priate action strategies. As stated by Young, "The problem before us is to convert the lofty but vague expression to detailed directions that will serve as specifications of the design portion of the planning process" (p. 81). Thus, general goal statements (e.g., helping youths to become better adjusted) provide little help in planning future actions while goals stated in more specific terms (e.g., diverting runaways from formal juvenile justice processing) provide a focus for the intervention. The second major problem faced by the rational model (and all plan- ning efforts) is the difficulty in fully implementing the program or policy once it is selected (Elmore, 1968; Williams & Elmore, 1976). This dif- ficulty may arise from several sources, including: 1) characteristics of the environment (for example, economic constraints and opposition by pri- vate interest groups); 2) characteristics of the program or policy (for example, the number of people it affects and the flexibility of the pro- gram or policy); and, 3) characteristics of the planner (for example, bargaining power and negotiation skills) (Bolan, 1967). Grabow and Heskin (1973) have suggested that as a result of the large number of factors which can influence the outcome of the planning process, a situation of uncertainty is created that disrupts the rational planning process. In an attempt to control this uncertainty, rational planning becomes centralized. In this manner all information can be 14 considered in the formulation of plans and the final action strategies may be coordinated in order to facilitate a more efficient set of policies and program. This characteristic is similar to the administrative and planning structure of runaway services. That is, a central body of deci- sion makers (state and federal agencies) collected information on the client population and project activities, as well as provided guidelines for the activities of the runaway projects. Again, the objective was to gain control over those factors which were sources of uncertainty, and as such, interfered with the rational planning process. But despite the attempt to gain control over certain contingencies through centralization, this strategy may still fail to control a second major source of uncertainty; the actions of the planning organization's own members (Friedman and Hudson, 1974). Every hierarchical system requires that decisions made at the top level be fully implemented by the appropriate levels below it in order for goals to be achieved. However, the mechanisms of control within these hierarchies are always imperfect, often resulting in the organization's failure to operationalize official goals. Given that an organization cannot perfectly control the activities of its members, other mechanisms must be relied upon to insure that staff activities are directed towards the attainment of desired outcomes. One such mechanism is goal consensus (Elmore, 1978; Hasenfeld & English, 1974). This consensus may be important for goal attainment, both within the implementing agency (Zald, 1963) (for example, a runaway project) and between multiple levels of planning (Young, 1966) (for example, federal, state and local levels of runaway service organizations). In both of these areas goal consensus may be an important factor in facilitating coordinated planning and efficient action. 15 Finally, it has been noted in other contexts that non-routine work technologies, such as counseling, (Thompson, 1967) and spatial dispersion of organizational units (Pugh, Hickson, Hinings and Turner, 1969) are related to increased worker discretion and, consequently, less organiza- tional control. Both of these conditions are characteristic of runaway services. Under such circumstances the function of goal consensus in guiding staff behavior should be particularly important. Summary. A description of centralized-rational planning appears to provide a model fitting the planning structure and process which were prevalent in runaway services. That is, major goals were set and service plans were developed to attain these goals by a centralized organization; the federal government. Service plans were translated into rules and regulations for service delivery and funding priorities, and then passed on to the state or region. At this level new programs were coordinated with existing programs, local needs were assessed and funds were distri- buted to individual projects along with the rules and regulations needed to direct their activities towards official goals. Finally, at the local level official goals were operationalized in the activities of project staff members under the direction of a chief administrator. Additional rules, regulations and performance criteria were also passed on to the local level in order to increase compliance, and in order to provide a coordinated effort in addressing the problems of runaway youth. The analysis of the centralized-rational planning model has also suggested the importance of goals in the planning process. Assessments of goals may serve to direct the planner's attention to areas of primary concern and to the needs of his/her constituencies. Most importantly, the setting of goals provides guidance to the planner in developing and evaluating alternative action strategies. It was also noted that this 16 latter task is facilitated by defining goals specifically rather than in broad generalities, and by assessing the relative priority of multiple goals. Finally, it has been suggested that the actual operationalization of official goals in the activities of organization members is often difficult to achieve. However, consensus on goals may reduce this problem. Conclusions Runaway youth appears to be a serious social problem in the United States. In response to this problem a large amount of financial and human resources were allocated to provide services to these youth. The planning and administration of runaway services may be described as fit- ting a centralized-rational model. Within this model the assessment and definition of goals is of central importance in guiding the planning process, while consensus on goals may be necessary for an effective opera- tionalization of those goals. But before an empirical investigation of organizational goals con- sensus can be undertaken, the procedures for measuring organizational goals must be determined. The following review of alternative concep- tualizations of organizational goals provides a framework for accomplishing this task. Alternative Conceptualizations of Organizational Goals One of the recurring problems in the study of organizational goals is the lack of specific, agreed upon definition of what organizational goals are. In reviewing the theoretical literature on this topic there appear to be three distinct definitions employed: (1) goals as official purposes; (2) goals as operational policies; and (3) goals as intended consequences . 17 Goals as Official Purposes The official purposes model represents the traditional view of organizational goals. This view is based in the highly rational models of organizational behavior in which organizations are seen as existing for the expressed purpose of accomplishing some specific goal. The goal then serves the function of providing guidance and direction to organiza- tional action. Within the official purposes model the goals of an organization are assumed to be identical to the official mission of the organization "as put forth in the charter, annual reports, public statements by key executives and other authoritative announcements" (Perrow, 1961, p. 885). The official purposes model has been severely criticized for a number of reasons. For example, Perrow (1961) acknowledged that while organizations do have official goals, an exclusive focus on these fails to elucidate the "unofficial goals pursued by groups within the organiza- tion" which are not made explicit to the general public (p. 885). Further, unofficial goals, according to Perrow, do not necessarily bear any relation to the official goals but are more likely to reflect the individual interests of organization members. A second criticism of the official purposes model is that it is not consistent with the conclusion of many observers of organizational behavior that organizations are not oriented toward the attainment of a single, ultimate mission but instead have a number of goals which differ in priority (e.g., Perrow, 1961; Simon, 1964). Organizations are thus viewed as actively working toward several objectives at the same time while allocating disproportionate resources, or even subverting the attainment of one goal in the pursuit of another, higher priority goal. A third fault found with the official purposes model is what has been called the "personification problem" (Mohr, 1973, p. 473). Common 18 definitions of goals include such phrases as "desired state of affairs" (Etzioni, 1964, p. 6) and "a state of affairs or situation which does not exist at present but is intended" (Warner, 1967, p. 5). Clearly, organi- zations cannot intend or desire as is implied in these definitions, and thus, the personification problem. As noted by Perrow (1970) ”organizations do not have goals; only individuals do" (p. 134). The official purposes model is plagued with this problem since it defines organizational goals in terms of the organization as a whole rather than a combination of individual goals. Finally, it has been found that official goal statements are very vague and general (Doig, 1976). While this may serve an important function for the organization by providing flexibility and a means to avoid strict accountability (Warner & Haven, 1968) such descriptions of goals are of little use to the researcher interested in accurately de- scribing and predicting organizational behavior. It is likely that their failure to delineate unofficial goals has resulted in the tendency observed by Etzioni (1960) for studies to consistently find that the actual policies and procedures of the organization deviate from the official goals. As a result, an analysis of official goal statements may tell us little about how the organization and its members will behave. Goals as Operational Policies In reaction to the inadequacies of the official purposes model the operative model of organizational goals was developed. This conceptual- ization has been elaborated in the writings of Perrow (1961, 1970), Simon (1964) and Thompson (1967). For Perrow (1961) official goal statements were hopelessly vague and provided little insight into the actual operations of an organization. According to Perrow, if one wants to know what the real goals of an 19 organization are one must examine "the actual operating policies of the organization" for it is these that "tell us what the organization is actually trying to do, regardless of what the official goals say are the aims" (p. 885). By focusing on the actual behavior of the organization the operative definition can account for the differential priority of multiple goals, the unofficial goals pursued by the organization, and the ”alternative ways of achieving official goals" which may "become ends in themselves" (p. 885). In a further elaboration of the operational goal concept Perrow (1961) proposed that the goals of an individual organization are "shaped" by members of the "dominant group" (p. 856). The dominant group consists of those members of the organization who have the ability to address the most critical problems faced by the organization at a particular time. Thus, to use an example given by Perrow, if a voluntary general hospital is in need of financial resources it is likely that the trustees will be in a very powerful position to shape organization policies (even outside the financial area) since it is this group that legitimates the hospital in the eyes of the community and which has access to potential donors. This analysis is valuable in pointing out the dynamic nature of organiza- tional goals and in diverting our attention from an exclusive focus on the owner/manager as the sole determiner of organizational goals. Finally, Perrow's notion of operative goals allows us to avoid the personification of organizations. By focusing on the actual operations of the organization, we do not have to infer motivation or values on the part of the organization itself. Instead, the goals of the organization are interpretable from the actions of organization members, primarily the dominant group. Simon (1964) has placed particular emphasis on the process of deci- sion making in the definition of organizational goals. In essence, 20 organizational goals are considered to act as "constraints" that an individual decision must satisfy (p. 1). These constraints operate in several ways. They may guide the decision maker in the search for poten- tial courses of action, they may limit the alternative actions to be considered, or they may be used to test the satisfactoriness of the various alternatives. But what is most important for the current topic is that Simon proposes that the set of constraints which are operational for a given individual are "associated with an organizational role" (p. 21). Further, the specific constraints which are operative for a particular role are the result of decisions made in some part of the organization. Such a system provides for consistency in decision making throughout the organi- zation in order that an overall movement towards the goals can be main- tained. Simon concludes that organizational goals can only be assessed by analyzing ”the structure of the organizational decision-making mechanism" (p. 22). Thus, a strong operative conceptualization is suggested. In addition to the focus on decision making as a method for assessing organizational goals, Simon's work is noteworthy in another respect. That is, Simon has directed attention to the role of individual members of the organization in the operationalization of organizational goals. In con— trast to Perrow's focus on the dominant group, Simon asserts that such an exclusive focus "raises new difficulties, for we often have occasion to observe that the goals that actually underlie the decisions made in an organization do not coincide with the goals of the owners, or of top man- agement, but have been modified by managers and employees at all echelons" (p. 2).1 Even though Simon does not believe that individual discretion is a relatively salient factor due to role constraints, it seems reasonable 1This Observation has also been made, more recently, by Hauschildt and Hamel (1978). 21 to suggest that the importance of individual discretion is increased in O organizations where the work is less routinized, thus making professional judgement a critical component in task completion. Under such circumstances, an assessment of organizational goals must acknowledge the importance of the individual member's beliefs about what the goals should be. Although the empirical approach of the operative model has contri- buted greatly to our understanding of organizational goals it too suffers limitations. Warriner (1965) pointed out a particularly important problem in the interpretation of operational assessments of organizational goals. In discussing the repeated findings that the operative goals of an organi- zation were not consistent with the official goals, Warriner observed: Although the literature was persuasive, it soon became clear that there were several conceptual and procedural problems disguised by the obviousness of the findings. The probl ms were clarified when we recognized (I) that any actiVity may have a multiplicity of consequences, and (2) that no scientific specification of consequences had been made in the studies. Rather it appeared that we were dealing not with demonstrably real consequences but rather with assumptions made by the participants concerning . the consequences of particular activities. (p. 143) Thus, because we do not have a valid and reliable measure of the con— sequences of organizational activities, and because our position as outside observers requires large inferrential leaps in the interpretation of organizational activities, the operative method may lead to incorrect con- clusiohs. What we assume to be the purpose of a particular activity may 0 not in fact be what was intended by the person being observed. Goals as Intended Consequences After pointing out the problem with inferring goals from organiza- tion's actions Warriner (1965) concluded that “we must deal therefore with the logics and beliefs of the organization about each of its activities and activity sets” (p. 143). To do this we must determine what the ”assumed value function".(p. 145) (that is to say, intended 22 consequences) of the many organizational activities are. This requires the reporting of goals by organization members through, for example, interview or questionnaire methods. In a similar vein, Mohr (1973) noted the importance of intent in the definition of organizational goals. However, in concurring with the opinion of others (e.g., Perrow, 1970; Thompson, 1967) Mohr acknowledged the need to avoid the problem of personification in such a definition. Mohr continues the discussion by asserting that collectivities of persons, including organizations, have two types of measurable character- istics. The first of these are "global" characteristics. "A global characteristic is one that inheres in the collectivity itself and is not some statistical combination of the traits of individuals" (p. 473). An example of such a characteristic is organization size. The second type of characteristic is "analytical" or "aggregated." "We determine their levels by summing or averaging” across the level in each individual member (p. 473). Organizational goals are posited as this second type of characteristic. Thus, according to Mohr's conceptualization, in the assessment of organizational goals one must "depend upon the judgement and report of participants" (p. 478) and then combine the individual reports to obtain an accurate picture of the whole. Conclusions A review of the conceptual literature thus leads to a number of con- clusions relevant to the assessment of organizational goals. First, any assessment of organizational purpose should recognize that there are likely to be multiple goals which differ in relative priority. Second, an empir- ical approach is necessary if one is to avoid vague, general statements of organizational goals. Third, personification of organizations may be avoided by treating organizational goals as an analytical characteristic. 23 This approach requires that individual members be assessed relative to the organization's goals. Finally, the role of the individual organiza— tion member is particularly important in the assessment of organizational goals since each person's beliefs about appropriate goals, and the activities which result from these beliefs, will affect the overall operative goals of the organization. This may be especially true in organizations employing a non-routine technology in which professional discretion is necessary, for example, runaway projects. These guidelines have several implications for the assessment of goals in runaway services. First, an empirical approach is needed which does not rely on an observer's interpretation of organization member's activities, since the intended consequences of the activity may not be apparent to the observer. Hence, an interview or questionnaire procedure is appropriate. Second, the assessment instrument must provide for the rating of goals on the basis of their relative importance. Third, the goal statements should be specific. And, finally, all members of the organization who can directly or indirectly influence goals should contri- bute to the specification of project goals. We now turn to the study of the relationship between organizational goals and other organizational variables. This literature is important not only in gaining a more complete understanding of the goal concept, but also as a means of identifying variables which may be related to goal consensus. Goals and Organizational Characteristics The concept of organizational goals has its roots in the study of organizational behavior. The central importance of the goal concept in this area can be seen by the manner in which organizations are often defined. For example, Parsons (1956) stated that the "primacy of 24 orientation to the attainment of a specific goal is used as the defining characteristic of an organization which distinguishes it from other types of social systems” (p. 64). Similarly, Gross (1969) asserted that "It is the dominating presence of a goal which marks off an 'organization'. . ." (p. 277). Despite the importance of the goal concept implied in the above definitions, little attention was devoted to this concept by early investi- gators (Perrow, 1961; Hauschildt & Hamel, 1978). Goals were merely assumed to exist, and although critical to the rational functioning of organizations, the nature of their influence on the structure of behavior of organizations was not considered. However, this unofficial policy of neglect has been challenged over the past several years. Thus, in 1970 Perrow wrote "I have paid so much attention, and devoted so many pages, to the neglected area of goals because I believe that they provide a key, not found elsewhere, to an organization's 'character', and thus to its behavior” (p. 171). Others, as well, have begun to recognize the importance of goals and have initiated investigations into their relationship to the functioning of organizations. These investigations have taken three primary directions. These are, the relationship of organizational goals to: (1) the internal structure of the organization; (2) the internal processes of the organization, and, (3) the external environment of the organization. Goals and Organizational Structure Like the other areas to be discussed, the relationship of goals to organizational structure has received little empirical attention by investigators. One study was conducted by Gross (1968) in which all administrators (n = 8,828) and a ten percent sample of faculty members (n = 6,756) were asked to respond to a mailed questionnaire concerning their perceptions of their university's goals, both as they are and as 25 they should be. Respondents were selected from 68 universities across the United States. Universities were selected largely on the basis of the size of their doctoral programs. The investigator included only uni- versities with large Ph.D. programs on the assumption that this would increase the variation in goals within a given university. While a number of issues relevant to goals were addressed, a primary focus of the study was to determine if there is a relationship between respondent's perceptions of what the goals are and several global char- acteristics of the universities. In this respect, Gross found substantial relationships between specific goals and the type of university on the dimensions of type of control (private vs. state), prestige (measured by peer ratings, size and quality of library resources, and faculty publica- tions), and source of power (based on respondent's ratings of the relative power of faculty, chairmen, state legislators, and state government). For example, ratings of 24 out of 47 goals were significantly different when comparing private with state controlled universities. Private universi- ties were found to emphasize goals concerning "student-expressive matters such as the student intellect, affecting the student permanently with great ideas, and helping the student to develop objectivity about him- self . . . . In contrast, state universities emphasize to a distinctly greater extent . . . preparing the students for useful careers, assisting citizens through extension and doing applied research" (pp. 533-534). Finally, the issue of goal consensus between administrators and faculty members was addressed. But even though Gross reported that these two groups "tend to see eye-to-eye," no supporting evidence was provided, nor was the degree of goal consensus within universities related to the other organizational variables being studied (p. 538). 26 While this study is commendable for its venture into an empirical investigation of organizational goals it does have a number of short- comings. First, the study suffers from the problems inherent in the use of mailed questionnaires, including low return rate (50.9% for administrators and 40.4% for faculty), and lack of standardization of the testing situa- tion. Second, many of the goal statements included in the questionnaire were extremely vague and general. Such items as "Make sure the student is permanently affected (in mind and spirit) by the great ideas of the great minds of history" (p. 524) may be so vague and general that the respondents may easily interpret them in different ways, or not be able to interpret them at all. Further, goals of such a general nature are difficult to relate to current or future actions of the organization. Their utility appears severely limited. The second study relating organizational goals to structure was con- ducted by Zald (1963) in an investigation of four juvenile correctional institutions. In this study a combination of official documents, inter- views with and observations of executives, and questionnaires administered to staff were used to place the institutions on a continuum of custodial versus treatment goals. Position on this continuum was then related to three characteristics of organizational structure: (1) organizational norms; (2) departmentalization; and, (3) power center. In examining the relationship of goals with organizational norms Zald hypothesized that custodial institutions would emphasize norms of staff control over inmates, large social distance between staff and inmates and deference to staff by inmates. To assess organizational norms relative to the above concepts staff members were asked to select items they thought most closely described the expectations of the executives for their behavior. As predicted by Zald, the staff of the two institutions determined to be 27 relatively custodial in orientation were more likely to perceive the executives as desiring staff control, social distance and the defer- rence of inmates to staff. In discussing the relationship of treatment versus custodial goals to departmentalization, Zald suggested that the non-routine, one-to—one nature of treatment oriented work requires smaller spans of control by supervisors. This, combined with the necessary separation of treatment and custodial functions, results in an increase in departmentalization. While inferring that this situation was true for the institutions in the current study, no empirical data was presented to support the hypothesis. Similarly, Zald proposed that the balances of power would be tipped in favor of staff who performed roles related to the primary goals of the institutions. Thus, clinical staff would exert most power in treatment oriented institutions while cottage parents would be most powerful in custodial institutions. Again, no empirical evidence was presented to support this hypothesis. Finally, Zald reportedly observed "sharp differences" in goals as expressed in the "on-going relations" between occupational subgroups (p. 233). Even though these differences were not reflected in the results of his questionnaire Zald hypothesized that the lack of goal consensus "may be seen as a function of professional training and perspectives and the demands of the respective roles" (p. 223). While this study represents a useful model for the study of organizational goals it is clearly deficient in its failure to report or employ empirical assessments of critical variables, and in the small number of organizations included in the sample. The third study to explore the relationship between organizational goals and structures was conducted by Kriesberg (1976). In this study a variety of organizational characteristics, including goals, were examined in relation to the degree of differentiation and centralization 28 in international nongovernmental organizations (e.g., World Medical Organization, War Resisters' International, and the International Chamber of Commerce). For the purposes of this study differentiation was measured by the number of levels (vertical differentiation), the number of structures (vertical and horizontal differentiation) and the number of committees (horizontal differentiation) in the organization. Centralization was measured by the ”frequency with which the smallest elective or representa- tive body of the organization meets relative to the frequency with which the members meet in a general assembly" (formal centralization) and ques- tionnaire responses by the organizations' secretary generals concerning their ability to act on their "own initiative” (informal centralization) (p. 3). Data for this study came from the 9th and 10th editions of the Yearbook of International Associations and a questionnaire mailed to the secretary general of all international organizations known to exist in 1967. Organizational goals were assessed through a content analysis of information presented in the Yearbooks while goal consensus was based on the author's perceptions of the degree of consensus/conflict inherent in particular types of organizations (apparently based on the diversity of their membership). Kriesberg proposed four hypotheses relating differentiation and cen— tralization to different aspects of organizational goals. There were: 1. "organizations with instrumental rather than expressive or analytical goals tend to be more differentiated; presumably instrumentally-oriented organizations would particularly elaborate activities to be conducted" (p. 6) 2. "organizations whose goals pertain to serving the interests of nonmembers rather than only members will tend to be more differentiated, elaborating their structure to reach non- members or other organizations which serve them" (p. 6) 3. organizations "directed to serve the interests of members vis-a-vis non-members tend to be more centralized" (p. 8) 29 4. organizations "with greater consensus tend to be less centralized since coordination need not be so directed but can occur from like—mindedness of the members" (p. 8) Using a significance level of .01, Kriesberg found that the first hypothesis was not confirmed. That is, organizations with instrumental goals were not found to be more differentiated than those with expressive or analytical goals. These results held for both vertical and horizontal differentiation (§_not reported; N = 846). With respect to the second hypothesis, the analyses indicated that organizations with goals per- taining to serving members' interests to the exclusion of nonmembers' were less differentiated (vertically and horizontally), thus supporting Kriesberg's hypothesis (3 not reported; N = 846). For the third hypothesis there was little evidence that organizations serving their own members vis-a-vis nonmembers were more or less centralized (formally or informally). While the correlations were reported to be positive, they were also non- significant (N = 292). Finally, mixed results were reported for the relationship between goal consensus and centralization. Goal consensus was found to be significantly negatively related to formal centralization (:_= -.22; N = 292), while consensus was positively related to informal centralization (: not reported). Obviously, this study may be faulted for failing to adequately report the results of the statistical analyses. More critical, perhaps, was the failure to specifically define the operational measures of organizational goals (e.g., instrumental and analytical goals) and goal consensus. In particular, the seemingly arbitrary manner in which goal consensus was assessed leaves many questions concerning the reliability and validity of this measure. A more objective and empirical measure of goal consensus would have been in order. 30 Goals and Organizational Process Somewhat more attention has been paid to the relationship between goals and organizational processes, but the state of empirical investi- gation in this area is no more encouraging than that described above. The only empirical study located was one conducted by Hage and Aiken (1974) in which the relationship between organizational goals and the routinization of the respondent's work in 16 "health and welfare agencies" was explored (p. 299). Respondents in the study included all heads of departments and supervisors, and a random selection of all "professional" staff stratified by department within each organization. The total number of respondents was not reported although it was stated that the number ranged from 11 to 62 per organization. Since the unit of analysis for this study is the organization, the authors noted that individual scores were aggregated to produce organization scores on relevant variables. Routinization of work was assessed through interviews in which staff responded to a series of Likert-type items. A factor analysis was employed to develop the final scale. There was very little variance of organizational scores on this scale. Scores ranged from 1.31 to 2.46 on a scale with a potential range of 1.00 to 4.00. As noted by Hage and Aiken the lack of variance is likely due to the similarity in function of the agencies and the "washing-out" of variance within agencies by combining departments and levels to create the aggregate score. The relative importance of four types of agency goals were assessed. These were: ”(1) the effectiveness of client services, (2) the efficiency of operation, (3) the morale of the staff, [and] (4) the development of new programs or services” (p. 310). Separate scales were used for each of these goal categories. Assessment involved staff interviews in which respondents selected goals they felt were actually being emphasized by their agency from a series of paired comparisons. 31 Hage and Aiken did not find any significant correlations between level of work routinization and degree of emphasis on each of the four goal categories. The most promising correlation was found between emphasis on efficiency and routinization; however, the correlation of .45 was only significant at p .10. Hage and Aiken hypothesized that such a relationship may be due to the impact routine work has on organizations. That is, routinization allows "formalization of regulations and careful planning“ which in turn facilitate the efficient handling of clients (p. 311). Other characteristics of organizational processes have also been hypothesized as possible correlates of certain dimensions of organizational goals. In particular, extensive record-keeping, close supervision and staff training may be employed in order to communicate to staff members what the appropriate goals are and to insure that staff members conduct activities oriented towards the attainment of these goals (Hasenfeld & English, 1974). These appear to be socialization mechanisms employed by organization in order to develop goal consensus. It has also been sug- gested that the development of goal consensus may be facilitiated by participation in decision making on the part of staff members (McGregor, 1957 & Litwak, 1961). Goals and the Organizational Environment The role of the environment in relation to organizational goals has been a focus of attention of several authors (e.g., Simon, 1964; Thompson, 1967; Thompson & McEwen, 1958; Zald, 1963). This relationship is typically explained using an economic model, although the principles are easily applied to organizations outside of business and industry. In essence, it is suggested that all organizations must obtain inputs (raw material, clients, etc.) and dispose of outputs (products, changed clients, etc.). 32 Further, the type of outputs produced by the organization, regardless of whether they are merchandise or people, must be desired by the potential consumers in the organization's environment. Not only does the consumer influence the general categories of products, but even the characteristics of the product are similarly determined. For example, recipients of an organization's products may decide that they want compact rather than luxury cars, or youth with good communication skills rather than high self—esteem. Finally, it is noted that without an environment that desires an organization's products, profit will not be generated or the legitimi- zation needed for futUre funding and referral of clients will not occur. The inputs thus terminated, result in the failure of the organization to survive. Parsons (1956), among others, has proposed that it is in this way that individual communities, and society in general, force organi- zations to meet their needs. In an elaboration of this model Thompson (1967) proposed that an organization's dependency on particular elements in its environment, and consequently its lack of power to determine its own goals, exist I'(1) in proportion to the organization's need for resources or performances which that element can provide and (2) in inverse proportion to the ability of other elements to provide the same resource or performance" (p. 30). Thus, where an organization is the only producer of a particular output it is relatively free to establish the characteristics of the output (assuming some minimal level of need or desire for the product at all). But regardless of an organization's position or power and dependency at any given time, Thompson (1958) has suggested that organizations cbntinually engage in activities to increase their power and decrease their dependency. In order to accomplish this, organizations may adopt four different strat- egies, each of which have implications for the goals they set. 33 An organization may adopt a competitive strategy where another organization has the same output. This situation provides an excellent environment for the community to exert considerable influence in determining organizational goals since both organizations will strive for maximum appeal to the consumer. The other three strategies are all forms of cooperation. The first of these is bargaining, in which there is "an agreement for the exchange of goods or services between two or more organizations" (p. 26). This strategy results in a moderate amount of environmental control over goal setting since each organization may have to compromise on certain goals in order to attain others. The second cooperative strategy is that of co-optation. Employing this strategy organizations seek to "avert threats to its stability or existence" by absorbing new elements into the leadership or policy-determining structure (p. 21). However, this strategy is used at the cost of bringing outsiders into the organization who may actively participate in setting future goals. Finally, organi- zations may choose to form coalitions in order to pursue goals unattain- able by individual organizations given their current resources. This strategy exerts the most extreme form of environmental control over goals since it requires joint decision making and coordination of activities for the future. While the above model suggests directions for empirical research on the influence of the environment with respect to organizational goals the area is yet untapped. Conclusions A review of the organizational behavior literature in regards to organizational goals reveals three primary areas of investigation. These are: (1) the relationship of goals to organizational structure; (2) the relationship of goals to organizational processes; and, (3) the 34 relationship of goals to the organizational environment. Even though each of these three areas holds promise for increasing our understanding of organizations there has been very little empirical research. The empirical research which has been conducted does not adequately address those issues which are important from a planning perspective. In particular, with the exception of Gross (1968), goals have neither been defined in relation to the outcomes to be attained, nor have goals been stated in specific terms. Both of these characteristics of goal definition are necessary for guiding the development of alternative courses of action and for evaluating the alternatives. Finally, only three studies have been found which address the issue of goal consensus (Gross, 1968; Kriesberg, 1978; Zald, 1963). However, even these studies are limited by methodological problems and their sole focus on goal consensus as an internal organizational phenomenon. Most importantly, research on goals is limited by its failure to examine the relationship between goal consensus and other organizational char- acteristics. Such research may be able to identify changes in organiza- tional structure or process which could lead to increased goal consensus and, consequently, improved performance. At this point the identification of such organizational variables remains pure conjecture. Some suggested variables include staff diversity in occupational roles, organizational socialization mechanisms, participatory decision making, and centralization. Rationale Conclusions from the Literature From the preceeding literature it has been shown that runaway youth is a serious social problem. Not only may runaways be symptomatic of poor parent—child relationships (Suddick, 1973) but the very act of 35 running away often results in victimization of the youth (Rubin, 1976), institutionalization (Rubin, 1976), and increasing involvement in the justice system (Shellow, 1967). In order to address the problems of runaways there has been increasing support for community-based, direct-service projects for such youth. These runaway projects are largely funded by federal money generated through the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act, the Runaway Youth Act and Title XX of the Social Security Act. The process and structure for planning services, distributing funds and monitoring activities in runaway services resembles what may be called a centralized-rational model. The model is considered to be rational in that it operates by a planning process in which goals are set; the most efficient means for attaining these goals (within existing technology and environmental constraints) are implemented; and success in attaining the goals is assessed for the purpose of improving service delivery. The model is centralized in that major goals and guidelines are formulated by a central decision-making body at the top of an hierarchical organization. These goals and guidelines are then operationalized by successively lower levels of the hierarchy, ultimately resulting in the delivery of services to the client population. The activities of each level are monitored by the level above in order to insure that efficient and coordinated action is being taken towards the achievement of official goals. In order for the centralized-rational model to work effectively, certain requirements exist. First, goals must be defined which express the desired outcomes of the activities (Harris, 1972). Second, these goals should be defined in specific terms (Young, 1966) and weighted according to their relative importance or priority (Stuart, 1969) in order to provide guidance in the development and evaluation of alternative 36 courses of action. Finally, official goals must be operationalized in the activities of lower-level staff members, though this is often difficult because organizations cannot exercise absolute control over its members (Friedman et al., 1974). However, it has also been suggested that goal consensus, both across and within levels of planning and service delivery, may provide for a directed and coordinated effort (Young, 1966; Zald, 1963). Thus, goal consensus may serve the same function as control when such control is imperfect. Despite the apparent importance of goal consensus there has been little empirical research addressing this topic. In addition, of the few located studies addressing the issue of goal consensus only Zald (1963) and Kriesberg (1976) considered the relationship of goal consensus to other organizational characteristics. This latter line of research is important in that it may suggest possible changes in organizations which will lead to increased goal consensus and, as a result, improved organi- zational effectiveness. At the present time there are no clear and promising directions in this area of research, although some variables have been hypothesized to be related to goal consensus. These variables include diversity of occupational roles within the organization (Zald, 1963), organization socialization practices (Hasenfeld & English, 1974), participatory decision making (Litwak, 1961; McGregor, 1957) and cen- tralization (Kriesberg, 1976). Finally, a review of the alternative conceptualizations of organi- zational goals has provided guidelines in the development of procedures for assessing goals. First, an empirical methodology is necessary in order to avoid the use of official goal statements since these are often overly general and vague. Second, the methodology should not rely totally on an outside observer's interpretation of members' activities. Since . every activity has multiple outcomes the outside observer will have a 37 difficult time determining which was the intended outcome; and it is the intended outcome which defines goals. This suggests that organization members should be directly questioned as to their goals. Third, the methodology should allow for the expression of multiple goals which vary in relative importance. Finally, all organization members who can influ- ence goals either through policy related decision making (i.e., official goals) or through their work activities (i.e., operative goals) should be included in the assessment. Specific Research Goals The following study was conducted in order to assess the desired goals of those involved in the provision of runaway services in the State of Michigan. More specifically, this study attempted to assess what state planners and runaway project staff members believe should be the goals of runaway projects. As was noted earlier, goal assessments provide impor- tant information for the rational planning process. In accordance with the guidelines which have been suggested, goals were stated in specific terms and rated on the basis of their relative importance. The second major component of the study was an investigation of goal consensus across planning levels of runaway services. In particular, the desired goals of staff members from individual runaway projects were compared to the desired goals of relevant members of the state planning constituency. This analysis was important given the role that goal con- sensus across planning levels may play in facilitating implementation of official goals. A lack of goal consensus may have indicated a need for ameliorative action on the part of the runaway projects and/or the state planners, since a disagreement on goals may have been an obstacle to coordinated and efficient organizational action. The next major focus of the study was an examination of the rela- tionship between goal consensus in individual runaway projects and two 38 other project characteristics; these are staff socialization and participatory decision making. Specifically, it was hypothesized that: (1) the level of project goal consensus is positively correlated with the intensity of staff socialization practices; and (2) the level of project goal consensus is positively correlated with the level of participatory decision making. Socialization practices were defined as those formal processes of an organization which communicate official goals to staff members (for example, staff training and supervision) and those informal processes which facilitate the development of similar attitudes, values, and so forth (for example, socializing outside of work). Participatory decision making was defined as the extent to which all staff members have a voice in decisions which affect projects policies, rules, and programs. Even though other variables which may be related to organizational goals were described in the literature, staff socialization and partici— patory decision making were selected for investigation for two major reasons. First, staff socialization and participatory decision making were specifically mentioned as likely correlates of goal consensus. Second, in contrast to other potential correlates, socialization and participatory decision making can be purposely changed by an organiza- tion. An investigation of these variables may thus open up avenues for improving organizational functioning. CHAPTER 2 METHOD OF PROCEDURE Research Setting The research setting for this study consisted of 18 direct- service runaway projects and the three statewide agencies which served in funding and/or planning roles relative to these projects. The functioning and organization of the projects and statewide agencies are described below. Projects While the projects shared many common characteristics there were also a number of differences which contributed to the uniqueness of each project. Some of the important dimensions which highlight the similarities and differences are described below. These include the target popula- tion, types of services provided, size, staffing and funding base. All 18 projects placed a strong emphasis on providing services to runaway youth. However, while this population made up a large percentage of the clients served at each project, services were also provided to other youth under the age of 18 when the project determined that no other local agency would be more appropriate. The extent to which non-runaway youth were included in the client population varied from project to pro- ject and depended largely on the specific intake criteria employed by a project and the availability of other community services. An additional factor contributing to broader client populations in some projects was the source of funding. Nine projects were receiving funds appropriated by 39 40 the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act. As a result of this Act's emphasis on the deinstitutionalization of status offenders, projects receiving these funds explicitly included all status offenders in their target population. Perhaps one of the most distinguishing characteristics of the pro— jects was the types of services they provided. Most importantly, all but one project provided temporary shelter. This shelter was provided on-site, that is, in the project's own facility, or through placement in foster— care homes supervised by the project. In addition, one project not having on-site shelter facilities used the facilities of a nearby project. Finally, 16 of the 18 projects provided ongoing out—client services to youth regard- less of whether they received temporary shelter or not. The number of pro- jects providing each of the above categories of services (on-site shelter, foster-care shelter, shelter in another facility and out-client services) is presented in Table 1. Beyond the general categories of services described above the projects provided a wide variety of specific services to their clients and the com- munity. The range of services provided clients included individual, group and family counseling; medical care; and assistance in locating new living arrangements. The community in general may have also been served by the project through educational seminars focusing on such topics as juvenile law, youth advocacy and parenting skills. A dimension on which the projects were most diverse was the staff size. When considering only non—clerical staff paid for 20 hours or more work per week. the projects varied in size from 3 to 16 staff with the mean being 9.7 staff. Table 2 presents the distribution of projects according to staff size. TABLE 1. TABLE 2. 41 Number of Projects by Service Category Service Category 3_ On-Site Shelter l2 Foster—Care Shelter 8 Other Group Shelter 1 Out-Client Services 16 Note. Columns total to more than 100% because projects provide more than one type service. could of Number of Projects by Size of Staff Size of Staff .3 5 or Less 3 6 - 9 5 10 - 13 6 14 or More 4 XI= 9.7 Mode = 11 Note. Staff size is computed 0n the number of non-cleri cal staff paid for 20 hours of work, or more, per week. 42 In general, the staffing of the projects included a director or project coordinator who performed the principal administrative functions of the organization. The majority of direct service work was handled by three major classes of staff. First, counselors generally assumed responsi- bility for individual clients and provided the majority of professional services. Second, para-professional level staff, often called youth workers, worked in a direct service role but did not assume case responsibility. Youth workers typically engaged in such services as group work, recreational activities with youth, and client intakes. Finally, for those projects which provided on-site shelter, a significant proportion of staff functioned in house-parent roles. Included in this category were house managers and night workers. These staff participated in shelter management functions of the project, supervised youth when the youth were not being seen by a counselor and provided crisis intervention services. For projects that did not provide on-site shelter but which used foster-care homes, certain staff were given responsibility for the recruitment and supervision of the foster-care placements. These staff were considered counselors for the purposes of the current description since they provided direct services at a professional level. The projects represented a diversity of funding agents (see Table 3), and each project was typically funded by two or more sources. The largest and most frequent funder was the Michigan Department of Social Services (MDSS) using Title XX monies. The next most frequent funding agent was the Office of Criminal Justice Programs (OCJP) which distributed funds allocated through the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act (JJDPA). A few projects also received federal funds directly from the Department of Health, Education and Welfare (HEW). These funds were allocated by the Runaway Youth Act of 1978 and were administered by the 43 TABLE 3. Number of Projects By Funding Agency Agency 'fl Michigan Department of Social Services 15 Office of Criminal Justice Programs 9 Department of Health Education and Welfare 4 Locala 12 Note. Several projects received funds from more than one of the three primary funding agencies (i.e., DDS, OCJP, and HEW). Since this table presents the number of projects receiving funds from each source, multiple- funded projects are included more than once in this listing. aProject received 10% or more of its funds from local sources. 44 Youth Development Bureau within HEW. In addition to the above sources, 12 projects derived a significant proportion of their budgets from local sources, including United Fund and individual donations. Planning Agencies The second source of data for the study was the group of statewide agencies which provided funds and/or technical assistance to the projects described above. This group consisted of three agencies: (1) the Michigan Department of Social Services (MDSS); (2) the Office of Criminal Justice Programs (OCJP); and (3) the Michigan Coalition of Runaway Services (MCRS). As noted earlier the first two organizations, M085 and OCJP, were the primary funding agencies of the projects. In this role MOSS and OCJP not only distributed funds but also conducted program audits, monitored attainment of official goals and provided assistance in program planning and administration. The Michigan Coalition of Runaway Services, on the other hand, was not a funding agency. Instead it had contracts with OCJP and MDSS to provide technical assistance and support services to the projects. An important characteristic in describing the relationship between the projects and the planning agencies is the organizational make-up of MCRS. The Michigan Coalition of Runaway Services consisted of both paid professional staff and runaway projects from around the State of Michigan. The staff provided for the maintenance of MCRS as an organization, advo- cated for laws and policies of interest to coalition members and provided technical assistance to the projects in fiscal and programatic matters. On the other hand, representatives of the runaway projects served on the MCRS board of directors, which set policies for the organization and provided direction to the activities of the staff. It is also significant 45 that at the time this study was conducted the membership of the Coalition was almost exclusively comprised of MDSS funded projects.1 Only two members were receiving funds from OCJP.2 Finally, it should be noted that the distinction between OCJP and MDSS funded projects was somewhat ambiguous. As a result of the decreasing grant formula under which the OCJP projects were implemented, MDSS has begun to "pick-up“ the funding of many of these projects. This trend was expected to continue until all projects had completed OCJP funding and were then largely funded by M038 and other sources located by individual projects. I The resulting network of relationships described above does not allow simple categorization. One can only suggest generalizations while keeping in mind that exceptions exist. Thus, one may generalize that the projects included in the study were either OCJP projects or MDSS projects. In addition, while MCRS provided technical assistance to projects funded by both agencies, its membership and policy board consisted of projects initiated and funded by MDSS. Respondents Project Staff Respondents from the project staff population were identified 35.211 project staff who: (1) held non-clerical positions; (2) were paid staff; and, (3) worked 20 hours per week or more. The criteria were selected to insure that respondents would be in a position to directly, or operatively (i.e., through work activities) influence organizational goals to a signi- ficant degree. 1One project, though not funded by OCJP or MDSS, was a member of MCRS and received its services. 2It should be noted that since the initiation of the contract between MCRS and OCJP other projects funded by OCJP had applied for membership to the Coalition. 46 A total of 177 staff positions met the above criteria, although at the time of data collection eleven of these positions were vacant. Thus, the total potential number of staff respondents was 166. Of this number, a total of 150 (90.4%) respondents were actually obtained. In addition, no less than 70% of the staff in each project participated. The respondents were categorized into four major types of occupa- tional specialties with a fifth miscellaneous category. The respondents included (1) administrators (i.e., directors/project coordinators, admin- istrative assistants); (2) professional direct-service workers (i.e., counselors, foster-care workers); (3) para-professional direct-service workers (i.e., youth workers, child-care workers, recreation workers); and (4) shelter-care staff (i.e., house parents, night attendants, house managers). The (5th) category labeled "other" includes a largely profes- sional level staff involved in indirect services. These services include community education, program evaluation and program development. The distribution of staff across the five occupational categories, as recorded by the respondents, is presented in Table 4. State Planners As discussed earlier, the state planner respondents were drawn from the Office of Criminal Justice Programs, the Michigan Department of Social Services and the Michigan Coalition of Runaway Services. Respondents from these organizations were those staff who work directly with the projects in a monitoring/technical assistance role or those who are in planning/ administrative positions which directly influence the operation of the projects. These people are thus responsible for setting goals, providing assistance for goal attainment and monitoring the attainment of goals by the projects included in this study. A total of 19 respondents were identified given the above criteria. Fourteen of these were associated with OCJP; six as members of the state 47 TABLE 4. Number of Staff by Occupational Specialty Occupation fl_ Administrationa 33 Professional Direct-Service 64 Para—professional Direct-Service 19 Shelter Care 23 Other 7 Unknown 4 Total 150 aTwo people in this category are shared between two projects included in this study. 48 office and eight as Regional Representatives in regions in which runaway projects are located. In addition, two respondents were members of M033 and three were staff members of MCRS. Of these potential respondents all MDSS, MCRS and state-level OCJP staff participated, while six out of the eight OCJP Regional Representatives participated. A summary of state planner respondents by agency is presented in Table 5. Procedures The study was implemented in four stages. In the first stage a telephone survey was conducted with all projects. The telephone contact began with a brief description of the study including an explanation of the general topic, the sponsorship of the study and the time commitment needed on the part of the project. Following this explanation some general information related to staffing pattern, funding and service modalities of the project was collected. This information was collected in order to familiarize the principal investigator with all of the projects, to identify relevant criteria for defining the provider respondent population and to determine the total number of potential respondents in this cate- gory. A copy of the survey form is included in Appendix A. In the second stage of the study, open-ended interviews were con- ducted with members of each constituency as well as with clients. These interviews were employed in order to generate a broad list of specific goals and in order to explore other issues relevant to project goals. A total of nine such interviews were conducted. Three interviews were conducted with youth who were in temporary shelter at the time of the interview. Four interviews were conducted with providers, with one being selected from each of the four occupational specialities described earlier (i.e., administrator, professional direct-service, para-professional 49 TABLE 5. Number of State Planner Respondents by Agency Agency .n Michigan Department of Social Services 2 Office of Criminal Justice Programsa 12 Michigan Coalition of Runaway Services 3 aSix of the OCJP respondents were employed at the state office, while six were regional representatives. 50 direct-service, and shelter staff). Two interviews were conducted with state planners one of whom operated in a direct technical assistance role, and the other who worked in a planning/monitoring capacity. In the third stage all instruments were field tested in an agency similar to the projects included in the study. The field test was used to obtain feedback on the clarity and exhaustiveness of the items. Fol- lowing revision of the instruments, the study entered the final stage, that of data collection. A cross-sectional design was employed in which data collection took place primarily through questionnaires administered by the principal investigator and two assistants. In general, the questionnaire was administered to project staff 3 Prior to administration members in a group setting at their project. of the questionnaire the criteria for being included in the staff respon- dent group was_reviewed with the project director and the job titles of those who would participate were verified. The names and positions of all staff who were absent were also obtained at this time so that they could be contacted at a later date. The questionnaire was administered in the following manner. First, an overview of the study was given to the participants. It was explained that the research was being conducted by the Michigan Coalition of Run- away Services for the primary purpose of obtaining feedback from a variety of sources on what they believe should be the goals of runaway services. In particular, it was noted that runaway services' goals would be assessed from the perspectives of project staff members and planners/administrators related to runaway services, including OCJP, 055 and MCRS staff. Second, a Participant Consent Form (see Appendix B) was 3For a few cases in which a respondent was not available for the scheduled time, the questionnaire was later administered to him/her at the Michigan Coalition of Runaway Services' office (five cases) or the questionnaire was administered by a fellow staff member (five cases). 51 given to the respondents and each point was explained. In particular, it was explained that participation in the study was voluntary, that information provided by individual respondents was anonymous and that the aggregate data of individual projects was confidential. Respondents were, however, asked if they would be willing to complete the questionnaire a second time in order that the degree to which peoples responses "change or stay the same” over time could be assessed. It was carefully explained that such participation was voluntary and would require the loss of respon— dent anonymity. In the third step of data collection the questionnaire itself was handed out and explained. The participants were told that the question- naire consisted of three separate sections with the first section dealing specifically with project goals and the second and third sections being concerned with their work activities. It was further explained that following completion of each section they should read the instructions for the next section and continue filling out the questionnaire. The instructions for the first section were given verbally to the participants as they read along. The respondents were then asked if they had any questions. After these questions were answered, the respondents were instructed to begin filling out the questionnaire. In the final step of data collection, after all questionnaires had been completed, a short, structured interview was conducted with the project director. During this interview additional information concerning project activities and characteristics was collected. The same general procedures were followed in administering the questionnaire to the planner/administrator respondents, though for this group the questionnaire was usually administered to each person individually 52 in his or her office.4 Again, each respondent was told that the study was being conducted by MCRS, the format of the questionnaire was described and the Participant Consent Form was explained in detail. Prior to actually administering the questionnaire, the interviewer determined the runaway projects for which each respondent was responsible and what those responsi- bilities entailed. As with project staff, the instructions for the Goal Assessment Questionnaire were given verbally while the respondent read along. It was particularly emphasized that the goals should be rated in relation to the project(s) that the respondent was professionally responsible for. The planner/administrator constituency, it should be noted, did not complete the additional sections of the questionnaire relating to work activities. Measures Goal Assessment Questionnaire Individual respondent's beliefs about appropriate goals for the runaway projects were assessed through the Goal Assessment Questionnaire (GAQ) developed by the principal investigator. The GAQ presents the respondent with a series of 116 goal statements (items), each of which is to be rated on a five-point, Likert-type scale, in terms of its "relative priority." The goal statements for the GAO were conceptualized as representing both a level of intervention and a life area. The level of intervention refers to whether the goal involves a change in the individual client (individual level of intervention), or whether the goal is concerned with a change in a group, organization, institution, or community (systems level of intervention). The life area refers to the context in which the 4In four cases, all of them OCJP Regional Representatives, the questionnaire was mailed to the respondent with a separate letter of instructions after a telephone conversation in which an overview of the study was given. 53 goal occurs. There are eight such life areas: (1) family/interpersonal relations; (2) employment; (3) legal/juvenile justice; (4) physical needs/ health; (5) education; (6) recreation/leisure—time; (7) life/survival skills; and (8) personal habits, thoughts, feelings and emotions. This categorization scheme can be illustrated by way of an example. Thus, the goal "to increase youth participation in school decision making" is con- sidered to be a systems level goal, since the goal requires a change in an institution rather than an individual client; and the goal is considered to be in the life area of education, since the context of change is within the school. The items for the Goal Assessment Questionnaire, as well as the level of intervention and life area each represents, are presented in Table 6. Finally, it is important to note that project staff members were asked to rate each goal in terms of how important the goal should be for their individual project. While it would have been desirable for the state planners to also rate the goals in reference to individual projects since their goals may have differed across the individual projects, this pro- cedure would have been impractical given the existing situation. That is, while almost all the regional representatives were closely tied to one project, other members of the state planning constituency related to many, and in some cases, all of the projects. In the latter case it was unlikely that the respondents could have sufficiently discriminated between each of the projects, and even more unlikely that they would have been willing to complete 18 questionnaires. In order to handle this situation the projects with which individual planners worked were defined, and the ratings were made with respect to these projects as a group. Following completion of the questionnaire each state planner who rated groups of projects was asked how his/her ratings might have been different if each 54 TABLE 6. Goal Assessment Items Family/Interpersonal Relations Individual having the client return to live with parents having the client visit parents while in temporary shelter having the client call parents while in temporary shelter increasing the client's understanding of parents' problems and needs increasing the client's participation in family decision making increasing the client's compliance with parental requests improving the client's relations with peers improving the client's interpersonal skills improving the client's communication skills having the client get along better with authority figures Systems increasing the client's freedom and independence within the family improving the parenting skills of the client's parents increasing parent's understanding of the client's problems and needs identifying abuse and neglect within the families of clients filing petitions in cases of abuse and neglect increasing the knowledge of child development of client's parents improving communication skills of the client's parents improving communication within the client's family reducing the number of family arguments in the client's family reducing conflict between the client and his/her siblings increasing mutual trust in the client's family increasing joint family planning in client's families reducing abuse and neglect in this community improving ability of client's families to solve their own problems maintaining a relationship between the client and his/her family Employment Individual having the client obtain a job improving the client's job seeking skills having the client obtain a job interview having the client set career goals decreasing the client's job absenteeism improving the client's job performance increasing the client's promptness in getting to work 55 Table 6 (cont'd) Systems developing youth employment alternatives in this community decreasing the rate of youth unemployment in this community Legal/Juvenile Justice Individual preventing the client's detention in a court facility having the client represented by legal counsel preventing adjudication of the client for a status offense preventing institutionalization of the client reducing future JJS involvement of the client reducing the number of future criminal offenses by the client reducing the number of times the client runs away in the future Systems increasing referrals from the police increasing referrals from the court decreasing the use of detention for youth who commit delinquent (i.e., criminal) offenses decreasing use of detention for status offenders increasing youth input into the law-making process eliminating Juvenile Justice System jurisdiction over status offenses reducing the number of runaways decreasing the juvenile crime rate Physical Needs/Health Individual obtaining medical care for the client obtaining food and shelter for runaway youth obtaining a living arrangement for the client after leaving a temporary shelter obtaining a permanent living arrangement for the client increasing the client's knowledge of contraceptives/birth control Systems developing group homes for youth in this community developing independent living options for youth in this community increasing/improving the availability of health care for youth in this community increasing the availability of family planning/pregnancy services to youth in this community increasing the number of foster-care homes in this community increasing the accessibility of contraceptives to youth in this community increasing the availability of pregnancy counseling for youth in this community 56 Table 6 (cont'd) decreasing the rate of teen pregnancy in this community decreasing the V.D. rate among youth in this community decreasing the number of unwanted children born to teenage parents in this community Educational Individual having the client enroll in school having the client enroll in a high school equivalency program increasing the client's school attendance improving the client's grades in school reducing conflicts between the client and school teachers/administration having the client graduate from high school having the client obtain job skills Systems increasing referrals from schools improving the ability of school personnel to identify runaways getting schools to teach relevant life skills to students increasing student participation in school decision making increasing parent participation in school decision making facilitating the establishment of alternative schools for youth facilitating the development of an alternative student newspaper reducing the use of corporal punishment in the schools increasing public awareness of runaways reducing school truancy reducing the school drop—out rate increasing this community's awareness of runaway services increasing the public's knowledge of youth rights and the Juvenile Justice System decreasing the public stigma attached to receiving social services Life/Survival Skills Individual increasing the client's ability to use community services improving the client's planning skills improving the client's self-advocacy skills having the client set goals for the future increasing the client's knowledge of youth's rights increasing the client's knowledge of the Juvenile Justice System improving the client's consumer skills improving the client's problem solving skills having the client avoid being arrested while on the run having the client avoid victimization while on the run 57 Table 6 (cont'd) Recreation/Leisure-Time Individual increasing the client's knowledge of recreational alternatives increasing the client's use of recreational facilities increasing the client's participation in organized recreational activities Systems increasing recreational alternatives for youth in this community increasing the use of recreational alternatives for youth in this community Personal Habits, Emotions, Feelings and Thought Individual increasing the client's insight into his/her problems having the client be able to talk about his/her problems improving the client's ability to express his/her emotions improving the client's attitudes toward authority figures improving the client's attitudes toward his/her parents increasing the client's love and respect for his/her parents improving the client's self-concept decreasing the client's promiscuous sexual behavior improving the client's personal hygiene reducing the client's use of alcohol reducing the client's use of drugs decreasing the client's cigarette smoking having the client obtain long-term counseling having the client obtain a psychological evaluation Systems developing mental health resources for youth in this community decreasing punitive attitudes towards youth in this community 58 project had been rated individually. Through this procedure it was determined that the state planners did not assign unique goal ratings to individual runaway projects but instead, assigned the same general priority of goals to all of the projects that they were responsible for. The Goal Assessment Questionnaire for project staff members is presented in Appendix C and the corresponding GAQ for the administrator/ planner group is presented in Appendix D. Participatory Decision Making Questionnaire The Participatory Decision Making Questionnaire (PDMQ) was developed to assess the degree of participation of staff members in project decision making. The items for this instrument consisted of 13 types of decisions commonly made in the operation of runaway projects. These decisions were conceptualized as forming two rational scales. These are decision related to: (1) worker policies and practices; and (2) global project policies. The specific items included in each scale are presented in Table 7. The respondents were asked to rate on a Likert-type scale, the extent to which they currently participate or expect to participate in the future, in making each type of decision. The Participatory Decision Making Question- naire is presented in Appendix E. Staff Socialization As described earlier, staff socialization consists of the formal practices of the projects which communicate official goals, the informal processes which facilitate the development of similar values, attitudes and goals on the part of the staff, and prior experiences which help shape professional beliefs. Twenty-one different items were selected to address these concepts. A majority of these items were included in the individual staff questionnaire (see Appendix F) while the remaining items were included in a structured interview conducted with the director of each project (see Appendix E). 59 TABLE 7. Participatory Decision Making Items Worker Policies and Practices Decisions hiring new staff developing job descriptions i.e., defining job responsibilities of staff positions setting salary levels setting rules and regulations for staff behavior determining job evaluation criteria for staff determining staff work assignments determining types of in—service training to be received Global Project Policy Decisions determining client intake criteria i.e., defining who is eligible for project services determining the types of services to be provided by the project determining what funding is to be sought by the project determining which other agencies should receive referrals from this project selecting new board members determining the criteria for terminating services to clients 60 Formal socialization practices of the projects were addressed by items operationalizing constructs which included the amount and intensity of staff supervision, the amount of in-service training and the degree to which the worker's role is specifically defined. Informal social- ization was operationalized as staff ratings of frequency of work related conversations and social activities engaged in with other staff, as well as the number of consultations with fellow staff members. Prior social- ization experiences addressed through the questionnaire were the highest level of education attained, the area of education (social work, psychology, etc.) and whether or not the person had prior employment in a direct- service, youth agency. Finally, since the length of time over which the socialization pro— cess occurs may be a mediating factor in each of the above dimensions, three additional items were included. These were: (1) duration of prior employment in direct, youth services; (2) duration of employment at the runaway project; and, (3) age of the runaway project. A list of the Staff Socialization items is presented in Table 8. 61 TABLE 8. Staff Socialization Items Formal Project Practices number of hours of supervision received per month rating of the level/intensity of supervision received rating of the amount of discretion the worker has written job description (yes/no) written guidelines for job performance (yes/no) supervisory responsibilities (yes/no); if yes, the number of supervisees number and type of workshops/training seminars conducted by the project in the past six months number and type of workshops/training seminars conducted by persons outside the project but attended by project staff number of staff meetings for the entire staff in a four week period number, type and frequency of other staff meetings Informal Project Processes number of consultations with other staff members in the past week rating of the frequency of work related conversation with other staff rating of the frequency of social activities participated in with other staff Non—project Socialization Factors prior employment at another direct-service, youth agency (yeS/nO) highest grade completed in school area of college education (if applicable) Time Factors number of months of employment at the project number of months of prior employment at direct-service, youth agencies age of the project CHAPTER 3 RESULTS The data analyses for this study focused on two major areas. The first area was the description of the relative priority of goals for runaway services from the perspectives of project staff members and state planners. The second area of investigation was an examination of the relationship between project goal consensus and participatory decision making and staff socialization. In particular, the latter area was investigated in order to test the hypotheses that organizational goal consensus is positively related to the level of participatory decision making and the degree of different staff socialization practices. Prior to addressing these two areas, the analyses and results pertaining to scale development and test-retest reliability assessment will be described. Scale Development and Reliability Assessment Scale Development Scale development strategies were used to develop new measures that would have greater reliability than would individual items. Also, in the case of the goal assessment questionnaire, scale development was employed as a tool to reduce the original pool of 116 items to a smaller number of "goal areas" in order to simplify the subsequent analyses and the inter— pretation of the results. The scale development activities will be pre- sented for each of the three major groups of variables; goals, partici- patory decision making, and staff socialization. For all three groups of 62 63 variables the goal of the scale development procedures was to develop internally consistent and independent scales that were rationally mean- ingful in terms of their item content. 'GQle. As has been described earlier, runaway service goals were assessed through the Goal Assessment Questionnaire. This instrument included a list of 116 possible goals for runaway services which were rated on a Likert-type scale in terms of their "relative priority." The overall strategy of scale development for the goal items may be described as a rational-empirical approach. That is, the original pool of 116 items were grouped into scales on the basis of similar item content (i.e., goal area). The internal consistency and independence of the resulting scales were then assessed in order to provide empirical guide— lines for modifying the rational scales, thus creating internally consis- tent and independent scales. After a close reexamination of the goal items, these items were grouped into 21 rational scales. As described earlier, the goals were conceptualized as representing several life areas (e.g., family, employ- ment, education, and personal habits), and within some life areas the goals also represented a level of intervention (e.g., youth focus or system focus). These rational scales were submitted to an analysis of internal consistency using the reliability program of the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) (Nie, Hull, Jenkins, Steinbrenner, & Bent, 1975). In addition, the scale intercorrelations were computed, also using SPSS. The original rational scales, their item content, and the corre- sponding coefficient alpha (Cronbach's alpha) are presented in Table 9. As can be seen from an examination of this table, the alpha levels were generally very high, ranging from .61 to .92. However, the interscale 64 TABLE 9. Initial Rational Goal Scales Scales Items Alpha Family Change: Youth Focus 8,61,62,82,84,87 .74 Family Change: Parent Focus 14,19,93,112 .69 Family Change: Family Focus 11,24,55,57,68,69,77,96,97 .78 Interpersonal 70,88,101,104,115 .80 Abuse/Neglect 58,99,105 .61 Employment: Youth Focus 20,36,41,45,49,63,73,100 .92 Employment: System Focus 29,44 .80 Juvenile Justice: Youth Focus 3,7,12,26,43,51,102,106 .68 Juvenile Justice: System Focus 2,9,50,78,79,81,94,108 .67 Sexual IO,18,21,22,31,95,114 .91 Health/Physical Needs: I Youth Focus 34,54,65,71,72 .64 Health/Physical Needs: System Focus 28,47,53,90 .70 Educational: Youth Focus 15,23,37,40,46,59,110 .89 Educational: System Focus 13,30,33,48,74,89,92,103,113,116 .90 Community Education 1,75,80,85,111 .78 Youth Survival Skills 6,27,76,83,107 .73 Traditional Therapy 4,67,98 .61 Recreation: Youth Focus 38,52,109 .85 Recreation: System Focus 25,64 .80 Psychological 5,17,32,35,56,63,86,91 .67 Personal Habits 16,39,42,60 .78 65 correlations were also very high. These ranged from .12 to .81, with a substantial majority of these correlations (approximately 60%) being greater than or equal to .40. Subsequent attempts to modify the original scales therefore emphasized the need to decrease the scale intercorrela- tions in order to create independent scales. In general, the original scales were modified using the following procedures or decision rules. First, items were deleted from scales when its removal would increase the alpha level of the scale. In this case, the item's correlation with other scales was examined to determine if the item could be moved to a different scale where it was highly cor- related agg_"fit" rationally with the content of that scale. Second, items were moved from one scale to another if the item correlated more highly with the second scale than with the original scale, and if the item rationally fit in the second scale. Third, because of the high interscale correlations, items were dropped from their original scales when the items did not correlate higher with their original scales than with any other scale by a difference of at least .15. That is, the items had at least a .15 greater correlation with their original scales than with any other scale. Finally, items dropped from scales were continually reexamined to see if they should be added to one of the scales during the several steps of the scale development process. Four scales resulted from the above procedures. These were: 1. Family Therapy. Items in this scale reflect service goals that target family change (including a youth and parent focus) employing traditional therapy goals such as insight and communication. Example items include ”Increasing the parent's understanding of the client's problems and needs" and "Increasing mutual trust in the client's family." 2. Education/Employment. This scale reflects service goals concerned with improving the youths performance in the school and job areas, as well as creating community/ organizational change in the local education and employment systems. Example items include "Improving the client's 66 grades in school," "having the client obtain a job," and "Increasing parent participation in school decision making in the community." 3. Juvenile Justice. This scale reflects service goals concerned with reducing clients' juvenile justice con— tacts and with making changes in the operation of the local juvenile justice system. Example items include "Reducing future juvenile justice system involvement of the client," and "Decreasing use of detention in the community for youth who commit status offenses." 4. Community Education. Items in this scale reflect service goals concerned with increasing community awareness of runaway youths and the services for them, and with changing community attitudes. Example items include "Increasing the community's awareness of the runaway youth problem," and "Decreasing punitive attitudes towards youth in the community. " The final four scales, their item content, and the corresponding alpha levels are presented in Table 10, while the scale intercorrelations are presented in Table 11. As can be seen in these tables the four goal scales had substantially high internal consistency (ranging from .75 to .94) and were relatively independent (the intercorrelations ranged from —.O3 to .29). Participatory decision making. The same general strategy employed in developing the goal scales was used with the participatory decision making items. As described in Chapter 2, each of the 13 items that made up this measure were rated in terms of the extent to which the respondent participated in making the decision. Each of the 13 items reflected different decisions that are made in the operation of a run- away project. As originally constructed, the Participatory Decision Making Scale was considered to consist of two subscales; one relating to staff policy decisions (e.g., setting salary levels and hiring new staff) and the other relating to policy decisions regarding project services (e.g., determining client intake and termination criteria). A complete list of the items in each scale was presented in Table 7. 67 TABLE 10. Final Goal Scales Scale Items Alpha Family Therapy 17,35,55,56,57,67,69, 93,101,112 .89 Education/Employment 13,15,20,23,29,30,36, 37,40,41,45,49,59,63,73,110 .94 Juvenile Justice 7,26,81,106 .75 Community Education 1,74,80,111 .76 TABLE 11. Goal Interscale Correlations Scales Family Education/ Juvenile Community Therapy Employment Justice Education Family 1.0000 Therapy Education/ .12 1.0000 Employment P= .063 Juvenile .18 -.03 1.0000 Justice P= .010 P= .372 Community .26 .29 .20 1.0000 Education P: .001 P= .001 P: .006 68 These two subscales were submitted to the SPSS internal consistency analysis which resulted in acceptable alpha levels of .85 and .76. However, these subscales were not sufficiently independent. The interscale cor- relation was .69; significant at the .001 level. In addition, every item in the two scales was significantly correlated (p<.001) both with its own scale and the other scale, and the item-scale correlations ranged from .50 to .65. Given the impossibility of developing two internally consistent and independent scales, all 13 items were combined and treated as one scale.1 Coefficient alpha for the 13-item Participatory Decision Making Scale was .89. Staff Socialization. The staff socialization measures consisted of a variety of items reflecting the formal practices by which organizations communicate official goals to its members, the informal practices which facilitate the development of similar values, attitudes, and goals on the part of staff, and the prior experiences which help shape the professional beliefs that may underlie goals. Unlike the goal and participatory decision making items, no 3 prigri scales for staff socialization were specified. Therefore, the scale development process began with a factor analysis of these items. It should be noted however, that many of the variables related to staff socialization were measured at the organizational rather than individual level (e.g., number of workshops/in-service training sessions conducted by the project, and the number of staff meetings held by the project) and were therefore not included in this analysis. The following 13 items were submitted to the factor analysis: 1. Number of hours of supervision received per month. 2. Rating of the intensity/level of supervision received. 1A factor analysis of the participatory decision making items was also conducted, but this failed to identify any rationally meaningful and independent scales. 69 Rating of the amount of discretion the worker has. Whether or not the respondent has a written job description for his/her position. 5. Whether or not the respondent has written guidelines for the performance of his/her job responsibilities. 6. The number of persons the respondent has supervisory responsibility for. 7. Number of consultations with other staff members in the past week. 8. Rating of the frequency of work related conversations with other staff. 9. Rating of the frequency of social activities partici- pated in with other staff. 10. Number of months of prior employment in youth service programs. 11. Number of months of employment at the runaway project. 12. Total number of months worked in youth service agencies (prior plus current). 13. Highest grade completed in school. 43-00 These items were submitted to the principal components analysis program of SPSS, and a varimax rotation (orthogonal factors) was used. Kaiser's criterion was used to estimate the number of factors to extract, although a range of factor solutions around the criterion number were extracted in order to examine a variety of factor solutions so that the one that was most rationally meaningful could be selected. Using this approach, factor solutions ranging from four to eight factors were extracted. The seven factor solution was most interpretable in terms of item content. This solution resulted in six two-item scales and a one-item scale. These scales were then submitted to an analysis of internal con- sistency. The resulting alpha levels were very low, with all but one alpha below .37. Given the low internal consistency, these items were treated independently in subsequent analyses. Test—Retest Reliability In addition to assessing reliability of the measures through the analysis of internal consistency, a coefficient of stability was developed for each measure by assessing the test—retest reliability of the items and scales. The test-retest reliability of the measures was assessed through 70 a second administration of the questionnaire to 18 respondents repre- senting eight of the runaway projects. The second administration of the questionnaire took place approximately 1 month after each respondent completed the questionnaire for the first time. All respondents partici- pating in the reliability assessment were volunteers. Identical proce- dures were followed in the administration of the second questionnaire. It should be noted that the test-retest reliability assessment did not include those variables that were measured through interviews with the project directors, but it included all variables measured on the individual staff level. In the following sections the test-retest reliabilities for each category of measures are presented. Gggls. Two different estimates of the test-retest reliability of the goals were calculated. First, an average percent agreement across all 116 items was calculated. This resulted in an average of 50.9% exggt agree- ment, and an average of 88.9% plus or minus one agreement. Second, the test-retest correlations for the goal scales were calculated. The results of this analysis are presented in Table 12. As can be seen from this table, the test—retest correlations ranged from .37 to .90, with the test-retest correlations for all scales except the Juvenile Justice scale being signif- icant at the .01 level.2 Participatory decision making. Like the goal scales, the measure used for the reliability of the participatory decision making scale was the test-retest correlation. The resulting correlation was .85 (p_.01), indicating substantial test-retest reliability. Staff socialization. The test—retest reliability estimates for the staff socialization items are presented in Table 13. As can be seen from 2All significance tests for the test—retest correlations are one- tailed tests of significance. 71 TABLE 12. Reliability Estimates for Goal Scales Scale tt Family Therapy .74** Education/Employment .56** Juvenile Justice .37* Community Education .90** ** E§.01 * Not significant 72 TABLE 13. Reliability Estimates for Staff Socialization Items Percent Percent Items Exact Agree. :1 Agree. tt Hours of Supervision 50.0 50.0 .85* Number of Consultations ____a ____a .79* Rating of Supervision Intensity 72.2 94.4 .78* Rating of Job Discretion 50.0 88.9 -.11 Job Description (Yes/No) 100.0 ---- —---b Written Job Guidelines (Yes/No) 66.7 ---- .29 Supervisor (Yes/No) 100.0 I ---- 1.00* Number of Supervisees 72.2 83.3 .98* Rating Frequency of Job Talk 94.4 100.0 ----b Rating Frequency of Socializing 55.6 100.0 .69* Months Worked at Project -—--C ----C 1.00* Prior Job in Youth Services (Y/N) 83.3 ---- .70* Months Worked in Prior Job 77.8 83.3 .87* Highest Grade Completed 94.4 100.0 .97* Job Position 94.4 ---- ---- Note: n = 18 *B<.01 aTest-retest by percent agreement was inappropriate since the question asked for the number of consultations in the past seven days. bTest-retest correlation could not be computed due to a lack of variance. CTest-retest by percent agreement was inappropriate since the number of months of employment would change from the first to the second admini- stration of the questionnaire. 73 this table, reliability was estimated using both percent agreement (except for those items whose values would necessarily change from test to retest) and the test-retest correlation (except for two variables which lacked sufficient variance and the one nominal level variable). With few exceptions the test-retest reliability was quite high. 0f the 13 variables for which a test—retest correlation was appropriate, 11 variables had significant correlations at the .01 level, and the one nominal level variable had a 94.4% exact agreement between time one and time two. The only two variables of questionable reliability were respon- dent's rating of the amount of job discretion they had (rtt = -.11) and whether or not the respondent had written guidelines for his/her job responsibilities (Ett = .29). Descriptive Results for Service Goals In this section the descriptive results from the assessment of runaway service goals will be presented. Included in this presentation will be separate analyses of the service goals for the project staff respondents and the state planner respondents, as well as a comparison of the service goals for these two groups. Project Staff Scale means and standard deviations were calculated for each of the four goal scales. These calculations were made on the combined group of project staff and on the subgroups of staff representing each of the 18 runaway projects. As can be seen from Table 14, when taken as a group project staff rated Family Therapy goals as the highest priority goals for runaway services (mean rating equals 4.50). Family Therapy goals were followed somewhat closely by Juvenile Justice goals (4.20), and by Community Education goals (3.88). The lowest rated goal scale was Education/Employment, receiving a mean rating of just 2.87. 74 TABLE 14. Staff Scale Means and Standard Deviations Family Education/ Juvenile Community Project Therapy Employment _Justice Egucation x 2 if: :4 s9 All Projects Combined 4.50 .47 2.87 .78 4.20 .72 3.88 .78 A 4.98 .05 3.20 1.19 4.69 .32 4.25 .54 B 4.43 .28 3.25 .85 4.39 .48 3.75 .82 C 4.70 .20 3.55 .48 4.25 .56 4.60 .29 D 4.40 .58 2.00 .34 4.90 .14 4.50 .40 E 4.49 .61 2.98 .46 4.36 .54 3.91 .88 F 4.54 .41 2.82 .88 3.69 .20 3.63 .67 G 4.38 .50 1.98 .69 4.90 .14 2.05 .57 H 4.97 .05 2.94 .84 4.71 .37 3.58 .83 I 4.28 .55 2.41 .64 4.60 .42 4.25 .25 J 4.63 .36 2.78 .57 4.33 .69 3.89 .87 K 4.13 .66 3.16 .55 4.55 .55 3.75 .77 L 4.57 .41 3.37 .75 3.89 .67 4.17 .63 M 4.49 .48 2.89 .96 3.85 .62 3.90 .56 N 4.35 .43 3.01 .75 3.83 .64 3.95 .47 O 4.33 .54 3.00 .75 3.86 .69 4.07 .70 P 4.76 .27 2.68 .54 3.71 .74 4.17 .49 Q 4.58 .48 2.78 .64 4.11 .76 3.61 .85 R 4.36 .41 2.17 .84 4.14 .85 3.92 .73 75 In order to test the significance of the differences between the mean ratings of the four scales a paired t-test (i.e., a t-test for correlated data) was performed comparing each scale with every other scale. A sum- mary of the results of these tests is presented is Table 15. As can be seen from Table 15, all of the t-tests demonstrated a significant dif- ference between the ratings of each scale at the .01 level (two-tailed tests). Finally, the descriptive results of the goal assessment for project staff was analyzed by determining the highest rated individual goals (items) as rated by this group of respondents. The nine highest rated goals, each having a mean rating of 4.5 or above, are presented in Table 16. The goals presented in Table 16 had mean ratings ranging from 4.5 to 4.7. By examining the content of these individual goals one can see that all but one of the items reflect the same goals as the Family Therapy Scale. That is, the highest rated items include such goals as improving family com- munication, increasing trust within the family, and increasing parents' understanding of their children. The results of the analysis of individual items adds further support to the finding that goals related to family therapy are of the highest priority to project staff members. State Planners As with the project staff respondents, scale means and standard deviations were calculated for the goal scales for all state planners combined and separately for each group of state planners. The results of this analysis are presented in Table 17. The highest rated goal scale for the state planners was Juvenile Justice (4.28). This was followed by Family Therapy (3.89), Community Education (3.82), and Education/ Employment (2.67). TABLE 15. 76 Summary of Paired T-tests for Project Staff Scale g_ Ix .sg .g: _: Family Therapy 4.51 .46 150 149 22.95** Education/Employ. 2.88 .78 Family Therapy 4.51 .46 150 149 4.77** Juvenile Justice 4.21 .72 Family Therapy 4.51 .46 150 149 9.91** Community Ed. 3.89 .77 Education/Employ. 2.88 .78 150 149 15.02** Juvenile Justice 4.21 .72 Education/Employ. 2.88 .78 150 149 13.49** Community Ed. 3.89 .77 Juvenile Justice 4.21 .72 150 149 4.08** Community Ed. 3.89 .77 **E<.01. 77 TABLE 16. Highest Priority Goals of Project Staff Goals XI §D_ Having the client be able to talk about his/her problems. 4. .61 Increasing the client's insight into his/her problems. 4. .55 Improving communication within the client's family. 4. .53 Obtaining food and shelter for runaway youth. 4. .69 Increasing the parent's understanding of the client's problems and needs. 4. .57 Improving the ability of client's families to solve their own problems. 4. .73 Improving the client's ability to express his/her emotions. 4. .60 Increasing mutual trust in the client's family. 4. .66 Improving the client's problem-solving skills. 4. .66 TABLE 17. Planner Scale Means and Standard Deviations Family Education/ Juvenile Community Organization Therapy Employment Justice Egucation X 5.0. X 5.0. X 8.0. X 5.0. All State Planners Combined 3.89 .61 2.67 .86 4.28 .65 3.82 .51 State OCJP 3.65 .47 2.44 .64 3.92 .47 3.42 .30 Regional OCJP 4.10 .79 3.38 .57 4.46 .78 3.96 .58 038 4.50 .14 1.28 .04 4.88 .18 4.25 .00 MCRS 3.57 .15 2.67 .73 4.25 .66 4.08 .38 78 Again, paired t-tests were conducted to test the differences in the ratings of each pair of goal scales. All of the differences in scale ratings were significant at the .01 level except the difference between Family Therapy and Community Education. A summary of the t-tests is presented in Table 18. Finally, the descriptive analysis of the state planner goal assess- ment was completed by determining the highest rated individual goals for this group. The eight highest rated goals with mean ratings ranging from 4.3 to 4.5 are listed in Table 19. Again, the analysis of individual items adds support to the scale results. Of the eight goals, four are concerned with the juvenile justice system and delinquency. These four items include, preventing the client's detention in a court facility and reducing the client's future juvenile justice system involvement. The remaining four high rated items reflect goals concerned with community education (i.e., increasing community awareness of runaway services), family therapy (i.e., maintaining family relationships and increasing client insight), and providing for the physical needs of runaway youths. Planner and Staff Agreement on Service Goals In general, the pattern of priority goals for project staff and state planners was similar. Both groups gave Education/Employment goals the lowest rating of priority, and Community Education goals the second lowest rating of priority. The major difference in the ranking of the goal scales was the relative priority assigned to Family Therapy as com- pared to Juvenile Justice goals. That is, whereas project staff rated Family Therapy goals as the highest priority, state planners assigned the number one priority to Juvenile Justice related goals. TABLE 18. 79 Summary of Paired T-tests for State Planners Scale g_ x' §g_ _gf _t Family Therapy 3.89 .61 17 16 5.09** Education/Employ. 2.67 .86 Family Therapy 3.89 .61 17 16 2.99** Juvenile Justice 4.28 .65 Family Therapy 3.89 .61 17 16 .40 Community Ed. 3.82 .51 Education/Employ. 2.67 .86 17 16 6.25** Juvenile Justice 4.28 .65 Education/Employ. 2.67 .86 17 16 4.83** Community Ed. 3.82 .51 Juvenile Justice 4.28 .65 17 16 3.27** Community Ed. 3.82 .51 ** <.OI. 80 TABLE 19. Highest Priority Goals of State Planners Goal IX .§Q Reducing the number of times the client runs away in the future. 4. .72 Obtaining food and shelter for runaway youth. 4. .62 Preventing the client's detention in a court facility. 4.4 .80 Maintaining a relationship between the client and his/her family. 4.4 .70 Reducing future juvenile justice system involvement of the client. 4.4 .61 Increasing the client's insight into his/her problems. 4.4 .61 Decreasing use of detention in this community for youth who commit status offenses. 4. .71 Increasing this community's awareness of runaway services. 4. .47 81 The differences in the ratings of the goal scales was also analyzed using t-tests to compare the two groups on each of the scales.3 A sum- mary of the results of these tests are presented in Table 20. As can be seen from this table, the only significant difference between the two groups was on their rating of the Family Therapy Scale (p.<.01). On this scale, project staff members mean rating was 4.50 while the state planners mean rating was 3.89. The mean ratings for the other three scales were nearly identical for the two groups of respondents. The Correlates of Goal Consensus One of the major purposes of this study was to examine the organi- zational correlates of staff goal consensus. In particular, two hypoth- eses were proposed concerning the relationship between staff consensus on project goals and the constructs of participatory decision making and staff socialization. More specifically, it was hypothesized that: (1) staff goal consensus is positively related to participatory decision making (i.e., higher levels of goal consensus are associated with greater participation of staff in project decision); and (2) staff goal con- sensus is positively related to the intensity of staff socialization (i.e., higher levels of goal consensus are associated with a greater intensity of staff socialization as indicated by the amount of supervision, degree of social interaction among staff, and so forth). In this section the results of the correlational analysis will be presented. However, prior to presenting the correlational results the 3Since the groups being compared through the t-tests are the entire (or nearly entire) population of interests, the t-tests were not employed in order to make an inference concerning the reliability of population differences. Instead the t-tests were used as a guide to interpreting the size of the differences. TABLE 20. 82 T-tests for Staff and Planner Comparisons Family Therapy Goals Group D 7 2 it 1:. Project Staff 150 4.50 .47 165 5.11** State Planners 17 3.89 .61 Education and Employment Goals Group 2 3? :4 d_f 3 Project Staff 150 2.87 .78 165 1.03 State Planners 17 2.67 .86 Juvenile Justice System Goals Group D 3? fl 9°. i Project Staff 150 4.20 .72 165 -.41 State Planners 17 4.28 .65 Community Education Goals Group p_ x' §g_ gf_ .3 Project Staff 150 3.88 .78 165 .33 State Planners 17 3.82 .51 **p<.01. 83 method for constructing the organizational level indeces of goal con- sensus, participatory decision making, and staff socialization will be described. Goal Consensus Index In order to obtain a measure of goal consensus within each runaway project, the data matrix of staff goal ratings was transposed and submitted to the SPSS reliability program. Cronbach's alpha was computed for each group of staff representing a single project. Thus, alpha became a measure of the internal consis- tency of staff responses across the 116 goal items.4 In order to correct for the differences in the number of staff (i.e., respondents) across the 18 projects, and thus make the goal consensus index comparable for pro- jects of different staff sizes, the Spearman-Brown prophecy formula was used (Magnusson, 1967).5 The resulting goal consensus scores for each project are presented in Table 21. The goal consensus scores ranged from .65 to .96, with higher values indicating greater goal consensus. Participatory Decision Making Index The index of participatory decision making for each project was calculated as the mean score for staff within a project on the 13 item Participatory Decision Making Scale. Project scores for this index ranged from 1.58 to 2.81 with high scores indicating greater staff participation in project decision. A list of the project scores for this measure are presented in Table 22. 4This analysis was also conducted for each group of items that combined to make a scale. However, for most of the projects alpha could not be calculated due to a lack of variance in staff responses for the items composing the scale. Therefore, this line of analysis was dropped. 5 . 0 = — The Spearman-Brown prophecy formula 15. rtt nrtt/1+(n 1)rtt. 84 TABLE 21. Project Scores for Goal Consensus Goal Goal Project Consensus Project Consensus A .90 J .92 B .79 K .86 C .78 L .65 D .96 M .83 E .89 N .79 F .90 O .84 e .96 P ' .92 H .94 Q .89 I .90 R .94 TABLE 22. Participatory Decision Making Scores Project PDM Project PDM A 2.31 J 1.84 B 1.58 K 1.77 C 1.48 L 1.87 D 1.90 M 1.70 E 1.95 N 1.71 F 1.70 O 1.58 G 2.00 P 1.96 H 2.41 Q 1.75 I 1.75 R 2.81 85 Staff Socialization Indeces Staff socialization indeces were developed from the individual items described earlier. As you will remember these included items reflecting the formal processes for communicating organizational goals, the informal processes which facilitate the development of similar goals, and the prior experiences which may shape professional beliefs. For all items representing formal and informal processes of staff social- ization, responses were scaled such that greater values for these items indicate greater intensities of staff socialization. Thus, these items were hypothesized to be positively correlated with goal consensus. Those items related to prior socialization experiences were scaled such that greater values indicate more diversity in project staff's background (e.g., the standard deviation of the number of years of education com- pleted), or the amount of prior socialization experiences (e.g., median number of months staff have worked in other youth service agencies). Since prior socialization experiences may be related to one's profes- sional beliefs, and thus goals, diversity in staff background and the amount of prior experiences (i.e., socialization) were hypothesized to be negatively correlated with goal consensus. In addition to the above items, another group of items which may mediate the socialization of staff was examined. Included in this group were the median number of months the current staff have worked at the project, age of the project, number of staff, and the number of different job titles. The number of months staff have worked at the project and the age of the project were both hypothesized to be positively correlated with goal consensus. It was assumed that the communication of goals and the development of similar professional beliefs takes time, and therefore, 86 the longer staff have been working together the more they will share a set of goals for the project. Similarly, it was assumed that it takes time for a project to clearly define its goals and communicate them to its staff. On the other hand, it was hypothesized that with increasing numbers of staff it becomes more difficult to socialize staff in terms of the appropriate project goals, and therefore this construct should be negatively correlated with goal consensus. Finally, it was hypothesized that staff in different job roles would place prior- ities on goals that more closely reflect their work activities. There- fore, the greater diversity there is in job roles (as indicated by job titles) the less goal consensus there would be. A complete listing of the staff socialization indeces is presented in Table 23. Correlational Results Goal consensus scores for each of the 18 projects were correlated with the Participatory Decision Making Scale and each of the 24 staff socialization items, and a one-tailed test of significance was conducted. A summary of the results is presented in Table 24. As indicated in this table, three of the correlations were significant at the .05 level. The significant correlations were between goal consensus and the following variables: 1. Total number of staff meetings per staff (.41) 2. Mean rating of the frequency of "work related talk" with other staff (.44) 3. Participatory Decision Making Scale (.48) In addition to the above significant correlations, two other cor- relations were significant, although in the direction opposite of that hypothesized. That is, two of the measures of formal processes of staff socialization (intensity of supervision and written work guidelines) were negatively correlated with staff goal consensus. These and the other results are discussed in the next chapter. 87 TABLE 23. Staff Socialization Indeces Formal Processes of Staff Socialization Median number of staff per supervisor (i.e., average size of supervisory load as an indication of the span of control) Number of in-house workshops or staff training sessions 1. Median number of hours of supervision per staff 2. Mean rating of the intensity of supervision received 3. Mean rating of the amount of discretion 4. Percentage of staff with written job descriptions 5. Percentage of staff with written work guidelines 6. Percentage of staff with supervisory responsibilities 7. 8. 9. Number of outside workshops attended by project staff 10. Total number of workshops attended by project staff 11. Total number of workshops per staff person 12. Number of staff meetings for 311 staff per month 13. Number of special staff meetings per month 14. Total number of staff meetings per month 15. Total number of staff meetings per staff person Informal Processes of Staff Socialization 1. Median number of consultations with other staff 2. Mean rating of the frequency of "work-related talk" with other staff 3. Mean rating of the frequency of socializing with other staff Prior Socialization Experience of Staff 1. Percentage of staff with prior employment in youth services Median number of months of prior employment in youth services Standard deviation of the number of years of education 88 Table 23 (cont'd) Factors Mediating Staff Socialization 1. Median number of months the current staff have worked at the project 2. Age of the project (in months) 3. Number of staff 4. Number of different job titles (differentiation in job roles) TABLE 24. Summary of Correlational Results Organizational Characteristic Pearson r Formal Processes of Staff Socialization 1. Median number of hours of supervision per staff .13 2. Mean rating of the intensity of super- vision received -.70 3. Mean rating of the amount of discretion —.38 (high score indicates lack of discretion) 4. Percentage of staff with written job descriptions -.27 5. Percentage of staff with written work guidelines -.43 6. Percentage of staff with supervisory responsibility -.12 7. Median number of staff per supervisor (span of control) .08 8. Number of in-house workshops of staff training sessions .11 9. Number of outside workshops attended by project staff in the past six months .03 10. Total number of workshops attended by project staff in the past six months .08 11. Total number of workshops per staff person .30 12. Number of staff meetings for pll_staff per month .28 13. Number of special staff meetings per month .00 14. Total number of staff meetings per month .16 15. Total number of staff meetings per staff person .41* 90 Table 24 (cont'd) Informal Processes of Staff Socialization 1. Median number of consultations with other staff 2. Mean rating of the frequency of "work-related talk" with other staff 3. Mean rating of the frequency of socializing with other staff Prior Socialization Experiences of Staff 1. Percentage of staff with prior employment in youth services 2. Median number of months of prior employment in youth services 3. Standard deviation of the number of years of education Other Project Characteristics 1. Median number of months the current staff have worked at the project 2. Age of the project (in months) 3. Number of staff 4. Number of different job title (organizational complexity, differentiation) Participatory Decision Making (mean rating of the extent to which individual decisions involve the partici- pation of project staff) .33 .44* .Ol .18 .09 .28 .19 .08 .3O .17 .48* fp<.05. *fprOI. CHAPTER 4 DISCUSSION The results of this study provided some interesting insights into the goals of runaway services in the State of Michigan. In this section of the report there will be a discussion of both the descriptive analysis of runaway service goals and the results of the correlational component of the study relating goal consensus to participatory decision making and staff socialization. Finally, some recommendations will be made for future research in this area. Runaway Services and Program Goals The descriptive component of this study focused on the assessment of service goals for the network of runaway services in the State of Michigan. This assessment included the perspectives of the two major groups related to runaway services: those who coordinate funding, pro— vide technical assistance and establish standards; and those who are the providers of direct’services to runaway youths. The priority of goals for each of these groups will be discussed separately, and this will be followed by a comparison of the goals between the state planners and project staff. Project Staff The results of the goal assessment for project staff seemed to indi- cate a clear priority for service goals concerned with improving family functioning through traditional therapeutic methods. This observation 92 is supported by the signficantly higher rating of the Family Therapy Scale and by the high ratings given to individual items reflecting such goals as improving family communication and increasing client insight. In fact, the extremely high rating of the Family Therapy Scale combined with the consistently high rated goals of a similar nature suggest that runaway projects have goals that are characteristic of more traditional counseling agencies. This appears true despite the "alternative" image of services for runaway youth. Also contributing to the traditional counseling image arising from the goal assessment, is the noticeable absence of many of the goals that one would think of as unique to runaway projects. Thus, while providing food and shelter to runaway youths appeared among the top nine goals, the large number of other uniquely runaway goals were not so highly rated. For example, developing independent living options was ranked 65th, while having the runaway youth return to live with his/her parents was ranked 33rd. In trying to interpret the above findings, the composition of the projects' clientele, professional beliefs about runaway services, and the goals stated in the initiating legislation should be considered. While the projects tend to be identified as providers of services to runaway youths, and are funded to serve only this group (with the exception of the eight OCJ funded projects who were to serve all status offenders), the actual composition of their clientele is much more diverse. For example, during a five month period immediately preceding the initiation of this study, it was reported that only 43% of the clients served by the 18 projects were actual runaway youths. The remaining youths were reported to include youths who were "away from home by mutual agreement” with their parents (18%), "non-runaway crisis youth" (15%), "throwaways" (11%), "potential runaways" (5%), and youths labeled as “other" (7%) 93 (Program Development Associates, 1979). Given the proportion of youths who were specifically identified as ”runaways," it may not be surprising that goals uniquely related to this group of youths did not dominate the list of highest rated goals. A second possible reason for the emphasis on family therapy goals and a lack of emphasis on goals unique to runaways may be related to the project staff's beliefs concerning the cause of youths running away. As was described in the introduction to this report, several authors have proposed that running away is a consequence of family conflict and parental rejection (e.g., Hildebrand, 1963; Jenkins, 1971). Given the predominance of this belief, it would not be surprising that project staff view adolescent running away as one of many symptoms of family problems. As a result, improving family functioning becomes the focus of runaway services in their attempt to help their young clients. Finally, the predominance of family therapy goals may be attri- buted to the emphasis of the initiating legislation for the Runaway Youth Act. As presented in the introduction to this report, the ini- tiating legislation stated “Most importantly, the shelters runaway projects. . .will be equipped to provide field counseling for both the runaway and his family or feasible, information on where to seek more comprehensive professional help will be supplied" (United States Senate, 1973, p. 1). Thus, the goals of project staff may accurately reflect the priorities of official goals for runaway services. In addition to the relative priority of goals for the combined group of project staff respondents, another interesting result of the study concerns the consistency of goals across the 18 projects. In general, the results indicate a substantial amount of agreement between the projects on the priority of service goals. As you will remember, 94 project staff as a group ranked the goal scales in the following order: (1) Family Therapy; (2) Juvenile Justice; (3) Community Education; and (4) Education/Employment. Of the 18 projects, eight projects ranked the goal areas in the same order. In addition, all projects gave the lowest rating to Education/Employment, and there were only four projects that did not give the highest rating to Family Therapy. In fact, the average rating for the Family Therapy Scale was greater than 4.00 for all of the runaway projects. State Planners In contrast to the project staff respondents, the state planners overwhelmingly endorsed goals concerned with juvenile justice and delinquency. This was true both in terms of the average rating given to the Juvenile Justice Scale and in terms of the relatively high ratings given to the individual goals related to juvenile justice and delinquency. As you will remember, the Juvenile Justice Scale was rated significantly higher than the other three scales, and the list of the eight highest priority goals included four goals specifically concerned with the juvenile justice area. The high priority placed on juvenile justice goals may be strongly related to the funding role of three of the state planner groups. As was described in the introduction, a major source of funding for the projects included in this study was the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act. One of the major conditions for the states to receive this funding was for the states to reduce the institutionalization (including secure detention) of status offenders. Given this condition for the receipt of federal funds, state planners had to be concerned with reducing the delin- quent behavior of project clients and creating change in local juvenile justice systems around the State. Both the future of the projects they initiated and their own jobs depended on it. 95 Interestingly, while the project staff did not seem to give the highest ratings to uniquely runaway goals, the state planners did. Of the eight highest rated goals for the state planner respondents, three were specifically related to runaways and runaway services. These three goals were: (1) reducing the number of times the client runs away; (2) providing food and shelter to runaways; and, (3) increasing community awareness of runaway services. The relative emphasis on runaway—related goals may be interpreted in a couple of different ways. For example, these goals may be considered as reflecting the same concern as the juvenile justice goals. That is, the emphasis on runaways simply reflects this groups concern with status offenders and the need to facilitate deinstitutionalization. Runaways, as perhaps the largest category of status offenders and the group most likely to be institutionalized, thus becomes an obvious and critical focus in the attempt to comply with the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act. Another possible explanation for the relatively highly rated runaway goals is related to the position that the state planners occupy in the centralized runaway service system. As was described in the introduction, the runaway service system corresponds to a model in which higher levels in the system set standards and establish guidelines that are passed down to lower levels of the system to be operationalized. It would be expected that the higher up in the system that one would go, the more correspondence one would find between the officially mandated goals and the expressed goals of those questioned. The state planners occupied an intermediate level in the runaway service system in which they received the statement of official goals from the federal funding sources, and were charged with communicating those goals to the runaway projects and monitoring their progress. Given this system, it may be understandable that the expressed 96 goals of the state planners was in closer agreement to the officially mandated goals of runaway services than were the expressed goals of project staff. The final set of observations concerning the assessment of goals for the state planner respondents is related to the consistency of goals across the four groups in this category (i.e., state OCJP, regional OCJP, 035, and MCRS). The results indicated a remarkable amount of agreement between the different state planners. In fact, the pattern of ratings for the four goal scales was nearly identical. In only one case was there any deviation from the rank order of the goal scales. That is, the average ratings of staff from the Michigan Coalition of Runaway Services were higher for the Community Education Scale than they were for the Family Therapy Scale. The other three groups of state planner respondents rated the Family Therapy Scale higher than the Community Education Scale. The relatively higher rating given to Community Education goals by MCRS may be related to their role within the runaway service system. In contrast to the other state planner groups, MCRS does not function in a funding capacity but primarily provides technical assistance to the projects and lobbies on their behalf with state government. In conducting these activities, MCRS fre— quently attempts to raise awareness around the State about runaway services and to provide educational material to the projects in order to improve project services. Thus, these activities and many others clearly suggest that a major portion of the MCRS's activities are in the area of community education. Planner and Staff Agreement on Service Goals In general, the analysis of the goal assessment data revealed a substantial degree of agreement between the goals of the project staff 97 and the state planners. As was discussed in the introduction, goal consensus across planning levels may greatly facilitate the performance of desired activities as defined by the centralized planning body (Young, 1966). If Young's hypothesis is true, one would expect there to have been a great deal of correspondence between the activities of project staff and the desired outcomes of the state planners. The results of this study also provide some support for the effectiveness of the centralized rational planning model in communicating official goals across levels of planning and operation. One of the major areas where the goals of the two groups differed is family therapy. That is, project staff rated the Family Therapy Scale significantly higher than did the state planners, and whereas the Family Therapy Scale received the number one rating from project staff, state planners rated this scale second among the four scales. As discussed in the preceding sections, the concern for family therapy goals may be related to project staff's professional beliefs about the cause of youths running away, and the actual composition of the projects' clientele. On the other hand, the relative priority state planners assign to juvenile justice goals (as opposed to family therapy goals) may reflect their concern with meeting funding guidelines and fully implementing the intent of the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act. State planners, from their position along the sidelines of direct service provision, may not be attuned to the actual composition of the projects' clientele, while the majority of project staff may not be aware of the origin and requirements of the money that funds their work activ- ities. While project staff did assign a relatively lower priority to juvenile justice goals, in terms of the rank order of the four scales, 98 it is interesting to note that the eight projects funded by OCJP all gave higher average ratings to the Juvenile Justice Scale than the average rating for this scale for all projects combined. That is, while the average rating for the Juvenile Justice Scale for all pro- jects combined was 4.20, the project rating of this scale for all of the OCJP funded projects was greater than 4.20. In addition, three of these projects did rate the Juvenile Justice Scale as a higher priority than the Family Therapy Scale. These results would seem to indicate that OCJP was somewhat successful in communicating the official goals of the authorizing legislation (i.e., JJDPA) and the federal funding source. Given the results of the goal assessment component of this study there tends to be a relationship between the expressed goals of the respondents and their actual job role or work activities. Thus, pro- ject staff members assigned high priority to family therapy goals. The importance of the goals within this scale may not only be related to the staff's desire to improve the functioning of the clients' family, but also to the method by which this improvement is to take place. That is, the Family Therapy Scale included items focusing on improving communication, gaining insight, and getting the client to talk about his/her problems: all of which involve the active participation of the project staff and reflect their actual work activities. In other words, as a counselor project staff talk to their clients, employ their communication skills, and offer their insights into the client's problems. Similarily, the high priority given to juvenile justice goals by the state planners may be interpreted as closely reflecting their job roles. A majority of the state planner respondents were employed by criminal justice planning agencies, and the remaining respondents worked for agencies that received a great deal of funding through the Office of 99 Criminal Justice Programs. Further, some of the individual goals given high priority by the state planners (for example, increasing awareness of runaway services and reducing the detention of status offenders) are goals that are more actively pursued by those who work at the state rather than individual client level. Even within the state planner respondents, it was found that the one agency that engaged in the most community education work rated the Community Education Scale higher, relative to the other scales, than did the other categories of state planners. Staff Goal Consensus The second major component of the study attempted to determine some of the organizational characteristics that may be related to staff con- sensus on project goals. While very little empirical research has been conducted in this area, some authors have proposed that goal consensus may be related to the processes through which organizational goals are com- municated to its members (referred to here as staff socialization) (Hasenfeld & English, 1974), and the degree to which organization members participate in decision making (McGregor, 1957; Litwak, 1961). The results of this study do provide some support for there being a relationship between goal consensus and participatory decision making and staff social- ization. In fact, two of the measures for various aspects of staff social- ization and the one measure of participatory decision making were signifi- cantly correlated with the index of staff goal consensus.1 While the study was successful in demonstrating a relationship between goal consensus and the constructs of staff socialization and participatory decision making, support for the specific hypotheses that were posed was 1Given the large number of correlations which were computed, some of the significant correlations obtained may have been due to chance. However, the extent to this problem cannot be determined. 100 mixed. Specifically, the hypothesis of a positive relationship between goal consensus and staff participation in project decision making was confirmed. The correlation between the index of goal consensus and the Participatory Decision Making Scale was .48 (p5.05). However, the results of the correlational analyses relating staff socialization to goal con- sensus provided both supporting and contradictory evidence for the pro- posed hypotheses. As hypothesized, the rating of the frequency of ”work related talk” with other staff members was positively correlated with staff goal con- sensus (r = .44; p<.05). It was hypothesized that frequent interaction among staff members would facilitate the communication of official pro- ject goals (especially to new members), and would also facilitate the development of a shared set of professional beliefs, attitudes, and know- ledge that provide the basis of service goals. Also as hypothesized, the number of staff meetings including all staff (calculated as a rate of meetings per staff) was positively cor- related with goal consensus (r = .41; p5.05). Staff meetings were con- sidered to be one of the methods through which the organization can com- municate to its membership the goals of the organization. These meetings may also be used as a setting in which to share professional beliefs and attitudes, to discuss appropriate types of services, and other activities that may facilitate the development of common goals. Interestingly, the measure of the number of "special" meetings for particular subgroups of the project staff was not correlated with goal consensus. While these meetings may serve the same purposes as the general staff meetings for all members, their inclusion of only a portion of the staff may not con- tribute to agency-wide agreement on project goals. While the above two indicators of staff socialization were positively correlated with goal consensus, as hypothesized, two other measures were u 101 negatively correlated with goal consensus. That is, the rating of the intensity of supervision was correlated -.70 with goal consensus, and the percentage of staff with written work guidelines was correlated -.43 with goal consensus. Both of these correlations were in the opposite direction of that hypothesized, thus not confirming the original hypo- theses.2 Given the above results, a reinterpretation of the variables ”intensity of staff supervision" and "percent of staff with written work guidelines” seems necessary. Originally, these variables were simply considered to be two of the many methods through which organizations may communicate official goals to their members. However it may also be hypothesized that these variables are not measures of organizations' attempts to communicate with their members, but rather they are methods by which organizations attempt to obtain compliance with organizational goals when consensus is lacking. This explanation would also be very consistent with the finding that goal consensus was positively correlated with staff participation in organizational decisions. That is, it may be proposed that when goal consensus is lacking projects take direct steps to assure compliance with official goals by increasing supervision, for- malizing job roles, and centralizing decision making. On the other hand, when there is consensus on organizational goals, the organization may monitor work performance less closely, allow more job discretion, and permit greater participation in decision making. Of course, because of the correlational nature of this study, conclusions about the cause and effect relationship of these variables cannot be drawn. 2Intensity of staff supervision would have been significant at the .01 level, and percentage of staff with written work guidelines would have been significant at the .05 level had a two-tailed test of signifi- cance been conducted. 102 Recommendations for Future Research The results of this study suggest some promise for fruitful research in this area, and further investigation should be encouraged. In this section some recommendations will be presented that would hopefully improve the quality and usefulness of future research, and provide some directions for future investigation. One of the unfortunate consequences of the method selected for assessing organizational goals (i.e., the questionnaire method) is the lack of an observable and quantifiable indicator of the goals in 3 In other words, while the results terms of the organizations' behavior. of the study indicate that runaway projects assign a very high priority to family therapy goals, it is not clear how that priority is reflected in their day to day operation. Similarly, while the Family Therapy Scale received a significantly higher rating by project staff than did the Juvenile Justice Scale, it is not possible to say what this tells us about the extent to which resources are devoted to improving family functioning as compared to reducing delinquent behavior. What is needed then, are other measures of organizational behavior that will both vali- date the questionnaire results and provide information about the meaning- fulness of these results. Further research should attempt to assess actual organizational behavior as it is related to expressed goals. Such measures as percentage of staff time and proportion of financial resources devoted to particular areas should be examined in terms of their relationship to expressed goals. Future research on the relationship between goal consensus and other organizational characteristics should attempt to include a broader 3Such observable indicators of goals corresponds to the operational goal concept of Perrow (1961) in which goals are defined in terms of observed organizational behavior. 103 range of organizational measures in the search for other elements of organizational process and structure that may be related to goal con- sensus. Such research would expand on the limited number of hypothe- sized relationships between goal consensus and other organizational characteristics. As described earlier, relationships have only been proposed between goal consensus and diversity of occupational roles and socialization practices (Hasenfeld & English, 1974), participatory decision making (Litwak, 1961; McGregor, 1957), and organizational centralization (Kriesberg, 1976). It would also be advisable to include a broader variety of organizations in this research. In the current study, the organizations were very similar on many of the variables that were measured, including the measure of goal consensus. By including a greater variety of organizations, even on such variables as size, age, and location, there would be a greater likelihood of determining other correlates of goal consensus. Future research should also examine goal consensus across planning levels in a variety of other settings. If goal consensus is an important mechanism for achieving coordinated action within multiple level organiza- tions, as proposed by Young (1966), then this research may identify characteristics of such organizations that are related to interlevel goal consensus and thus, organizational effectiveness. Another critical focus of future research should be the relationship between goal consensus and organizational performance. While it has been proposed by many authors that goal consensus is an important ingredient in successful organizations (e.g., Zald, 1963), future research should more closely examine this hypothesis and more closely examine the nature of the relationship between goal consensus and organizational performance. Finally, if further research supports the positive relationship between goal consensus and organizational effectiveness; and if future 104 research replicates the results of this study and identifies other organizational characteristics that are related to goal consensus; then experimental research should be conducted in an attempt to directly increase goal consensus, and through it, improve organizational per- formance. APPENDICES APPENDIX A PROJECT FACT SHEET Project: Staffing (includes counseling, clerical and administrative staff; i.e., all paid staff) Title/Position Degree Total Number of Staff: 00 you anticipate any staffing changes before January. (If ”yes” determine what type of changes and when they will occur). 105 106 Total number of volunteers in direct service roles: Type of Services Provided Clients: ____Temporary shelter in project's facility ____;Temporary shelter in foster care family Other temporary shelter ITdescribe) Out-client services Funding Sources Source % Best days for interviewing: ______ ______ lst 2nd 3rd Does project have a formal statement of goals? For internal planning purposes For external purposes (PR, grants, etc.) APPENDIX B PARTICIPANT CONSENT FORM I have voluntarily consented to take part in the Goal Assessment Study being conducted by the Michigan Coalition of Runaway Services. The study has been explained to me and I understand the explanation that has been given and what my participation will involve. I understand that I am free to discontinue my participation in this study at any time without penalty. I understand that the results of the study will be treated in strict confidence and that I will remain anonymous. I also understand that the data collected from this project will not be identified by name. Within these restrictions, results of the study will be made available to me at my request. I understand that my participation in the study does not guarantee any beneficial results to me. I understand that, at my request, I can receive additional explanation of the study after the study has been completed. I understand that a final copy of the report will be provided to this project as well as those results of the study pertaining to this project in particular. Signed Date 107 APPENDIX C STAFF GOAL ASSESSMENT QUESTIONNAIRE Project Staff Member Questionnaire Section I Given an environment in which resources are limited, youth service projects are often forced to determine priorities for the types of goals they will try to achieve. Listed below are several goals which a youth service pro- ject may have. For each goal please indicate what priority ygp_believe this goal should be for this project. While you may see a particular need in your community and in your clients, this need would only be considered a priority goal if you believe that this project should actively work towards meeting the need. For example, while you may believe there is a need for more college scholarships for youth in your community this would only be considered a priority goal if you believe that this project should devote some effort towards attaining college scholarships. Be sure to consider the priority of each goal in relation to other potential goals for your project. For each goal, circle the abbreviation which indicates your response to the following statement--RELATIVE TO OTHER POTENTIAL GOALS FOR THIS PROJECT, THIS GOAL should be an extremely high priority 5? should be a_high priority Hi should be a moderate priority Mod should be a lpp_priority Lo should pg; be a priority Not REMEMBER, RATE EACH GOAL IN TERMS OF WHAT PRIORITY IT SHOULD BE FOR THIS PROJECT. 1. Increasing this community's awareness Ex of the runaway youth problem. Hi Hi Mod Lo Not 108 IO. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 109 Increasing referrals to this project from the court. Reducing the number of times the client runs away in the future. Improving the client's planning skills. Improving the client's self-concept. Improving the client's consumer skills. Preventing the client's detention in a court facility. Improving the client's attitudes toward his/her parents. Decreasing the use of detention in this community for youth who commit delinquent (i.e., criminal) offenses. Decreasing the rate of teen pregnancy in this community. Maintaining a relationship between the client and his/her family. Having the client avoid being arrested while on the run. Reducing school truancy in this community. Improving the parenting skills of client's parents. Having the client enroll in school. Reducing the client's use of drugs. Having the client be able to talk about his/her problems. Increasing the availability of family planning/pregnancy services to youth in this community. Increasing the knowledge of child development of client's parents. Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Mod Mod Mod Mod Mod Mod Mod Mod Mod Mod Mod Mod Mod Mod Mod Mod Mod Mod Lo Lo Lo Lo Lo Lo Lo Lo Lo Lo Lo Lo Lo Lo Lo Lo Lo Lo Not Not Not Not Not Not Not Not Not Not Not Not Not Not Not Not Not Not 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 110 Having the client set career goals. Decreasing the client's promiscuous sexual behavior. Increasing the client's knowledge of contraceptives/birth control. Having the client enroll in high school equivalency program. Increasing the client's participation in family decision making. Increasing the use of recreational alternatives by youth in this community. Reducing future Juvenile Justice System involvement of the client. Increasing the client's knowledge of youth rights. Increasing the number of foster-care homes in this community. Decreasing the rate of youth unemploy- ment in this community. Increasing parent participation in school decision making in this community. Decreasing the number of unwanted children born to teenage parents in this community. Having the client obtain long-term counseling. Increasing student participation in school decision making in this community. Obtaining medical care for the client. Improving the client's ability to express his/her emotions. Improving the client's job seeking skills. Improving the client's grades in school. Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Mod Mod Mod Mod Mod Mod Mod Mod Mod Mod Mod Mod Mod Mod Mod Mod Mod Mod Lo Lo Lo Lo Lo Lo Lo Lo Lo Lo Lo Lo Lo Lo Lo Lo Lo Lo Not Not Not Not Not Not Not Not Not Not Not Not Not Not Not Not Not Not 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 111 Increasing the client's knowledge of recreational alternatives. Improving the client's personal hygiene. Increasing the client's school attendance. Having the client obtain job skills. Reducing the client's use of alcohol. Having the client represented by legal counsel when going to court. Developing youth employment alternatives in this community. Increasing the client's promptness in getting to work. Reducing conflicts between the client and school teachers/administration. Developing independent living options for youth in this community. Getting schools in this community to teach relevant life skills to students. Decreasing the client's job absenteeism. Increasing youth input into the law- making process. Reducing the number of future criminal offenses by the client. Increasing the client's participation in organized recreational activities. Increasing the availability of health care to youth in this community. Obtaining food and shelter for runaway youth. Increasing mutual trust in the client's family. Increasing the client's insight into his/her problems. Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Mod Mod Mod Mod Mod Mod Mod Mod Mod Mod Mod Mod Mod Mod Mod Mod Mod Mod Mod Lo Lo Lo Lo Lo Lo Lo Lo Lo Lo Lo Lo Lo Lo Lo Lo Lo Lo Lo Not Not Not Not Not Not Not Not Not Not Not Not Not Not Not Not Not Not Not 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70. 71. 72. 73. 74. 75. 112 Improving the ability of client's families to solve their own problems. Reducing child abuse and child neglect in this community. Having the client graduate from high school. Decreasing the client's cigarette smoking. Increasing the client's love and respect for his/her parents. Increasing the client's understanding of his/her parent's problems and needs. Having the client obtain a job. Increasing recreational alternatives for youth in this community. Having the client avoid victimization while on the run. Having the client obtain a psychological evaluation. Improving the client's communication skills. Increasing the client's freedom and independence within the family. Improving communication within the client's family. Having the client get along better with authority figures. Obtaining a living arrangement for the client when he/she leaves temporary shelter. Obtaining a permanent living arrangement for the client. Having the client obtain a job interview. Increasing referrals to this project from schools. Decreasing the public stigma attached to receiving social services. Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Mod Mod Mod Mod Mod Mod Mod Mod Mod Mod Mod Mod Mod Mod Mod Mod Mod Mod Mod Lo Lo Lo Lo Lo Lo Lo LO Lo Lo Lo Lo Lo Lo Lo Lo Lo Lo Lo Not Not Not Not Not Not Not Not Not Not Not Not Not Not Not Not Not Not Not 76. 77. 78. 79. 80. 81. 82. 83. 84. 85. 86. 87. 88. 89. 90. 91. 92. 113 Increasing the client's ability to use community services. Reducing the number of family arguments in the client's family. Reducing the number of runaways in this community. Increasing referrals to this project from the police. Decreasing punitive attitudes towards youth in this community. Decreasing use of detention in this community for youth who commit status offenses. Having the client call his/her parents while the client is in temporary shelter. Improving the client's self-advocacy skills. Having the client visit his/her parents while the client is in temporary shelter. Increasing this community's knowledge of youth rights and the Juvenile Justice System. Developing mental health resources for youth in this community. Increasing the client's compliance with parental requests. Improving the client's attitudes toward authority figures. Improving the ability of school personnel to identify runaways. Developing group homes for youth in this community. Having the client set goals for the future. Facilitating the establishment of alternative schools for youth in this community. Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Mod Mod Mod Mod Mod Mod Mod Mod Mod Mod Mod Mod Mod Mod Mod Mod Mod Lo Lo Lo Lo Lo Lo Lo Lo Lo Lo Lo Lo Lo Lo Lo Lo Lo Not Not Not Not Not Not Not Not Not Not Not Not Not Not Not Not Not 93. 94. 95. 96. 97. 98. 99. 100. 101. 102. 103. 104. 105. 106. 107. 108. 109. 110. 111. 114 Increasing the parent's understanding of the client's problems and needs. Decreasing the juvenile crime rate in this community. Decreasing the V.D. rate among youth in this community. Having the client return to live with his/her parents. Increasing joint family planning in client's families. Improving the client's problem-solving skills. Filing petitions in cases of abuse and/or neglect. Improving the client's job performance. Improving the client's interpersonal skills. Preventing institutionalization of the client. Reducing the school drop-out rate in this community. Reducing conflict between the client and his/her siblings. Identifying abuse and neglect within the families of clients. Preventing adjudication of the client for status offenses. Increasing the client's knowledge of the Juvenile Justice System. Eliminating Juvenile Justice System jurisdiction over status offenses. Increasing the client's use of recreational facilities. Improving the client's behavior in school. Increasing this community's awareness of runaway services. Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Mod Mod Mod Mod Mod Mod Mod Mod Mod Mod Mod Mod Mod Mod Mod Mod Mod Mod Mod Lo Lo Lo Lo Lo Lo Lo Lo Lo Lo Lo Lo Lo Lo Lo Lo Lo Lo Lo Not Not Not Not Not Not Not Not Not Not Not Not Not Not Not Not Not Not Not 112. 113. 114. 115. 116. 115 Improving communication skills of the client's parents. Facilitating the development of an alternative student newspaper in this community. Increasing the accessibility of contraceptives to youth in this community. Improving the client's relations with peers. Reducing the use of corporal punishment by schools in this community. Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Mod Mod Mod Mod Mod Lo Lo Lo Lo Lo Not Not Not Not Not APPENDIX D PLANNER/ADMINISTRATOR GOAL ASSESSMENT QUESTIONNAIRE /////// (1-6) Given an environment in which resources are limited, youth service projects are often forced to determine priorities for the types of goals they will try to achieve. Listed below are several goals which a youth service project may have. For each goal please indicate what priority ypp_believe this goal should be for the runaway projects you relate to. While you may see a particular need in the projects' com- munity and in their clients, this need would only be considered a priority goal if you believe that the projects should actively work towards meeting the need. For example, while you may believe there is a need for more college scholarships for youth in the communities this would only be considered a priority goal if you believe that the projects should devote some effort towards attaining college scholar- ships. Be sure to consider the priority of each goal in relation to other potential goals for your projects. For each goal, circle the abbreviation which indicates your response to the following statement--RELATIVE TO OTHER POTENTIAL GOALS FOR THE PROJECTS, THIS GOAL should be an extremely high priority Ni should be a high_priority Hi should be a moderate priority Mod should be a 19p priority Lo should_ppp be a priority Not REMEMBER, RATE EACH GOAL IN TERMS OF WHAT PRIORITY IT SHOULD BE FOR THE RUNAWAY PROJECTS YOU RELATE TO. 1. Increasing the community's awareness Ex of the runaway youth problem. Hi Hi Mod Lo Not 2. Increasing referrals to the project Ex from the court. Hi Hi Mod Lo Not 3. Reducing the number of times the client Ex runs away in the future. Hi Hi Mod Lo Not 116 IO. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 117 Improving the client's planning skills. Improving the client's self-concept. Improving the client's consumer skills. Preventing the client's detention in a court facility. Improving the client's attitudes toward his/her parents. Decreasing the use of detention in the community for youth who commit delin- quent (i.e., criminal) offenses. Decreasing the rate of teen pregnancy in the community. Maintaining a relationship between the client and his/her family. Having the client avoid being arrested while on the run. Reducing school truancy in the community. Improving the parenting skills of client's parents. Having the client enroll in school. Reducing the client's use of drugs. Having the client be able to talk about his/her problems. Increasing the availability of family planning/pregnancy services to youth in the community. Increasing the knowledge of child development of client's parents. Having the client set career goals. Decreasing the client's promiscuous sexual behavior. Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Mod Mod Mod Mod Mod Mod Mod Mod Mod Mod Mod Mod Mod Mod Mod Mod Mod Mod Lo Lo Lo Lo Lo Lo Lo Lo Lo Lo Lo Lo Lo Lo Lo Lo Lo Lo Not Not Not Not Not Not Not Not Not Not Not Not Not Not Not Not Not Not 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 118 Increasing the client's knowledge of contraceptives/birth control. Having the client enroll in a high school equivalency program. Increasing the client's participation in family decision making. Increasing the use of recreational alternatives by youth in the community. Reducing future Juvenile Justice System involvement of the client. Increasing the client's knowledge of youth rights. Increasing the number of foster-care homes in the community. Decreasing the rate of youth unemploy— ment in the community. Increasing parent participation in school decision making in the community. Decreasing the number of unwanted children born to teenage parents in the community. Having the client obtain long-term counseling. Increasing student participation in school decision making in the community. Obtaining medical care for the client. Improving the client's ability to express his/her emotions. Improving the client's job seeking skills. Improving the client's grades in school. Increasing the client's knowledge of recreational alternatives. Improving the client's personal hygiene. Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Mod Mod Mod Mod Mod Mod Mod Mod Mod Mod Mod Mod Mod Mod Mod Mod Mod Mod Lo Lo Lo Lo Lo Lo Lo Lo Lo Lo Lo Lo Lo Lo Lo Lo Lo Lo Not Not Not Not Not Not Not Not Not Not Not Not Not Not Not Not Not Not 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 119 Increasing the client's school attendance. Having the client obtain job skills. Reducing the client's use of alcohol. Having the client represented by legal counsel when going to court. Developing youth employment alternatives in the community. Increasing the client's promptness in getting to work. Reducing conflicts between the client and school teachers/administration. Developing independent living options for youth in the community. Getting schools in the community to teach relevant life skills to students. Decreasing the client's job absenteeism. Increasing youth input into the law- making process. Reducing the number of future criminal offenses by the client. Increasing the client's participation in organized recreational activities. Increasing the availability of health care to youth in the community. Obtaining food and shelter for runaway youth. Increasing mutual trust in the client's family. Increasing the client's insight into his/her problems. Improving the ability of client's families to solve their own problems. Reducing child abuse and child neglect in the community. Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Mod Mod Mod Mod Mod Mod Mod Mod Mod Mod Mod Mod Mod Mod Mod Mod Mod Mod Mod Lo Lo Lo Lo Lo Lo Lo Lo Lo Lo Lo Lo Lo Lo Lo Lo Lo Lo Lo Not Not Not Not Not Not Not Not Not Not Not Not Not Not Not Not Not Not Not 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70. 71. 72. 73. 74. 75. 76. 77. 120 Having the client graduate from high school. Decreasing the client's cigarette smoking. Increasing the client's love and respect for his/her parents. Increasing the client's understanding of his/her parent's problems and needs. Having the client obtain a job. Increasing recreational alternatives for youth in the community. Having the client avoid victimization while on the run. Having the client obtain a psychological evaluation. Improving the client's communication skills. Increasing the client's freedom and independence within the family. Improving communication within the client's family. Having the client get along better with authority figures. Obtaining a living arrangement for the client when he/she leaves temporary shelter. Obtaining a permanent living arrangement for the client. Having the client obtain a job interview. Increasing referrals to the project from schools. Decreasing the public stigma attached to receiving social services. Increasing the client's ability to use community services. Reducing the number of family arguments in the client's family. Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Mod Mod Mod Mod Mod Mod Mod Mod Mod Mod Mod Mod Mod Mod Mod Mod Mod Mod Mod Lo Lo Lo Lo Lo Lo Lo Lo Lo Lo Lo Lo Lo Lo Lo Lo Lo Lo Lo Not Not Not Not Not Not Not Not Not Not Not Not Not Not Not Not Not Not Not 78. 79. 80. 81. 82. 83. 84. 85. 86. 87. 88. 89. 90. 91. 92. 93. 94. 121 Reducing the number of runaways in the community. Increasing referrals to the project from the police. Decreasing punitive attitudes towards youth in the community. Decreasing use of detention in the community for youth who commit status offenses. Having the client call his/her parents while the client is in temporary shelter. Improving the client's self-advocacy skills. Having the client visit his/her parents while the client is in temporary shelter. Increasing this community's knowledge of youth rights and the Juvenile Justice System. Developing mental health resources for youth in the community. Increasing the client's compliance with parental requests. Improving the client's attitudes toward authority figures. Improving the ability of school personnel to identify runaways. Developing group homes for youth in the community. Having the client set goals for the future. Facilitating the establishment of alternative schools for youth in the community. Increasing the parent's understanding of the client's problems and needs. Decreasing the juvenile crime rate in the community. Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Mod Mod Mod Mod Mod Mod Mod Mod Mod Mod Mod Mod Mod Mod Mod Mod Mod Lo Lo Lo Lo Lo Lo Lo Lo Lo Lo Lo Lo Lo Lo Lo Lo Lo Not Not Not Not Not Not Not Not Not Not Not Not Not Not Not Not Not 95. 96. 97. 98. 99. 100. 101. 102. 103. 104. 105. 106. 107. 108. 109. 110. 111. 112. 113. 122 Decreasing the V.D. rate among youth in the community. Having the client return to live with his/her parents. Increasing joint family planning in client's families. Improving the client's problem-solving skills. Filing petitions in cases of abuse and/or neglect. Improving the client's job performance. Improving the client's interpersonal skills. Preventing institutionalization of the client. Reducing the school drop-out rate in the community. Reducing conflict between the client and his/her siblings. Identifying abuse and neglect within the families of clients. Preventing adjudication of the client for status offenses. Increasing the client's knowledge of the Juvenile Justice System. Eliminating Juvenile Justice System jurisdiction over status offenses. Increasing the client's use of recreational facilities. Improving the client's behavior in school. Increasing the community's awareness of runaway services. Improving communication skills of the client's parents. Facilitating the development of an alternative student newspaper in the community. Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi Mod Mod Mod Mod Mod Mod Mod Mod Mod Mod Mod Mod Mod Mod Mod Mod Mod Mod Mod Lo Lo Lo Lo Lo Lo Lo Lo Lo Lo Lo Lo Lo Lo Lo Lo Lo Lo Lo Not Not Not Not Not Not Not Not Not Not Not Not Not Not Not Not Not Not Not 114. 115. 116. 123 Increasing the accessibility of contraceptives to youth in the community. Improving the client's relations with peers. Reducing the use of corporal punishment by schools in the community. Ex Hi Ex Hi Ex Hi Hi Hi Hi Mod Mod Mod Lo Lo Lo Not Not Not APPENDIX E PARTICIPATORY DECISION MAKING QUESTIONNAIRE Listed below are several types of decisions which must be made in the operation of a youth service/runaway project. For each type Of decision check the one statement which best describes the extent to which ygg currently participate or would expect to participate in the future, in making this type of decision. CHECK ONLY mug RESPONSE FOR EACH DECISION 1. Decisions in regard to setting rules and regulations for staff behavior. I alone make this type of decision. I make this type of decision with input from others. This type of decision is made by a group consensus or a group vote in which I participate. I provide input into this type of decision, but the final decision is made by another person or other persons. I do not participate in making this type of decision. 2. Decisions in regard to determining the general criteria for ter- minating services to clients. I alone make this type of decision. I make this type of decision with input from others. This type of decision is made by a group consensus or a -——————-—. group vote in which I participate. I provide input into this type of decision, but the final decision is made by another person or other persons. I do not participate in making this type of decision. 124 125 Decisions in regards to setting staff salary levels. I alone make this type of decision. I make this type of decision with input from others. This type of decision is made by group consensus or a group vote in which I participate. I provide input into this type of decision, but the final decision is made by another person or other persons. I do not participate in making this type of decision. Decisions in regard to selecting (hiring) a new staff member. I alone make this type of decision. I make this type of decision with input from others. This type of decision is made by group consensus or a group vote in which I participate. I provide input into this type of decision, but the final decision is made by another person or other persons. I do not participate in making this type of decision. Decisions in regard to determining staff work assignments. I alone make this type of decision. I make this type of decision with input from others. This type of decision is made by group consensus or a group vote in which I participate. I provide input into this type of decision, but the final decision is made by another person or other persons. I do not participate in making this type of decision. 126 Decisions in regard to determining which other agencies should receive referrals from this project. I alone make this type of decision. I make this type of decision with input from others. This type of decision is made by group consensus or a group vote in which I participate. I provide input into this type of decision, but the final decision is made by another person or other persons. I do not participate in making this type of decision. Decisions in regard to determining the types of services to be provided by the project. I alone make this type of decision. I make this type of decision with input from others. This type of decision is made by group consensus or a group vote in which I participate. I provide input into this type of decision, but the final decision is made by another person or other persons. I do not participate in making this type of decision. Decisions in regard to determining the types of in-service training to be received. I alone make this type of decision. I make this type of decision with input from others. This type of decision is made by group consensus or a group vote in which I participate. I provide input into this type of decision, but the final decision is made by another person or other persons. I do not participate in making this type of decision. 127 Decisions in regard to selecting new board members. I alone make this type of decision. I make this type of decision with input from others. This type of decision is made by group consensus or a group vote in which I participate. I provide input into this type of decision, but the final decision is made by another person or other persons. I do not participate in making this type of decision. Decisions in regard to developing job descriptions that is, defining the job responsibilities of staff positions. I alone make this type of decision. I make this type of decision with input from others. This type of decision is made by group consensus or a group vote in which I participate. I provide input into this type of decision, but the final decision is made by another person or other persons. I do not participate in making this type of decision. Decisions in regard to determining job evaluation criteria for staff. I alone make this type of decision. I make this type of decision with input from others. This type of decision is made by group consensus or a group vote in which I participate. I provide input into this type of decision, but the final decision is made by another person or other persons. I do not participate in making this type of decision. 128 Decisions in regard to determining client intake criteria that is, defining who is eligible for project services. I alone make this type of decision. I make this type of decision with input from others. This type of decision is made by group consensus or a group vote in which I participate. I provide input into this type of decision, but the final decision is made by another person or other persons. I do not participate in making this type of decision. Decisions in regard to determining what funding is to be sought by the project. I alone make this type of decision. I make this type of decision with input from others. This type of decision is made by group consensus or a group vote in which I participate. I provide input into this type of decision, but the final decision is made by another person or other persons. I do not participate in making this type of decision. 7a. APPENDIX F STAFF SOCIALIZATION QUESTIONNAIRE In general, how many hours do you spend in formal supervision meetings with your supervisor(s) in a four week period of time? Include supervision meetings related to the handling of individual clients and supervision meetings related to your overall job performance. (Note: If you are the chief executive staff member of this project, then do not answer this question). hours On how many occasions in the past seven days have you consulted with a fellow staff member about your work activities? The way in which I carry out my job responsibilities is closely supervised. (Check One) Strongly agree Agree Undecided Disagree Strongly disagree I am able to exercise a lot of discretion in performing my job activities. (Check One) Strongly agree Agree Undecided Disagree Strongly disagree Is there a written job description for your position? (Yes or No) Is there a written set of guidelines describing how your job activities are to be performed? (Yes or No) DO you supervise any other paid staff members? (Yes or NO) If "YES" answer #7b. 7b. How many paid staff members do you supervise? How often do you talk to other staff members about work related topics? (Check One) Frequently Sometimes Seldom Never 129 10. 11a. 12. 13. 14. 130 How often do you spend time with other staff members in social situations that is, non-work related situations? Frequently Sometimes Seldom Never How long have you worked at this project? (Note: Record your answer to the nearest month). yrs. and mos. Have you ever been employed by any other direct-service, youth agencies? (Yes or No) If "YES" answer #11b. 11b. How long did you work for this agency(ies)? (Note: If you have worked at more than one agency, then record the total duration of employment for all agencies combined; record your answer to the nearest month). yrs. and mos. Circle the number below which corresponds to the highest grade in school which you have completed. High School College Graduate/Professional 9 IO 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 If you have attended college what was your most recent major field of study? (Note: Answer this item even if you did not complete a college degree). Social Work Psychology Education Other field in the social sciences Other field pp; in the social sciences Check the category below or on the next page which best describes your current job position. If you are unsure of the appropriate category, or if your job position does not fall into one of the specified categories, then check "Other” and describe your job. Administrator - A person whose primary responsibilities are in the areas of staff supervision, fiscal management, etc. Examples of job titles include Project Director, Executive Director, Project Coordinator and Assistant Director. Professional, Direct-Service Worker - A person who has responsibility for the delivery of direct-services to individual clients. Typically, persons in this position have a bachelors or masters degree. Examples of job titles include Counselor, Foster-Care Worker, Outreach Worker and Counseling Supervisor. 131 Para-professional, Direct-Service Worker - A person who assists in the delivery of direct services to clients, but who does not have the sole responsibility for individual clients. Examples of job titles include Youth Worker, Recreation Worker and Group Worker. Shelter Worker - A person whose primary job responsibilities involve the provision of food and shelter to clients, or the on-going supervision of clients while they are in shelter. Examples of job titles include House Parent, House Manager and Night Worker. Other - (please describe) Examples of job titles include Community Education Coordinator, Training Coordinator, Program Developer and Evaluator. If you have any questions or comments please feel free to write them below. LIST OF REFERENCES LIST OF REFERENCES Ambrosino, L. Runaways. 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Public Poiigx. 1978,_2§, 185-228. ~Etzioni, A. Modern organizations. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1964. Federal Bureau of Investigations. Uniform crime reports. Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office, 1980. Friedman, J., & Hudson, B. Knowledge and action: A guide to planning theory. Journal of the American Institute of Planners, 1974, 49(1), 2-16. Glass, J.J. Citizen participation in planning: The relationship between objectives and techniques. American Planning Association Journal, 1979, 45(2), 180-189. 132 133 Gold, M., & Reimer, D.J. Testimony presented on the "Runaway Youth Act" to the Subcommittee on Equal Opportunity of the United States House Committee on Education and Labor, May 2, 1974. Gold, M., & Williams, J.R. The effect of getting caught: Apprehension of the juvenile offender as a cause of subsequent delinquencies. Prospectus: A Journal of Law Reform, 1969, 3(1), 1-12. Grabow, S., & Heskin, A. Foundations for a radical concept of planning. Journal of the American Institute of Planners, 1973,.33(2), 106-114. Gross, E, Universities as organizations: A research approach. American Sociological Review, 1968, 33(4), 518-544. Gross, E. The definition of organizational goals. British Journal of Sociology, 1969, 39(3), 277-294. Guskin, A.E., & Ross, R. Advocacy and democracy: The long view. American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 1971,.4l(1), 43-57. : Hage, J., & Aiken, M. Routine technology, social structure, and organiza- tion goals. In Y. Hasenfeld and R.A. English (Eds.), Human service organizations. Ann Arbor, Michigan: University of Michigan Press, 1974. Harris, 8. Forward. In I.M. Robinson (Ed.), Decision-makinggin urban planning. Beverly Hills, California: Sage Publications, 1972. , Hasenfeld, Y., & English, R.A. Human service organizations: A conceptual overview. In Y. Hasenfeld and R.A. English (Eds.), Human service _gpganizations. Ann Arbor, Michigan: University of Michigan Press, 1974. Hauschildt, J., & Winfred, H. Methodology of empirical goal research: On its way into a blind alley. Theory and Decisions, 1978, 3(2), 173-186. Heskin, A.D. Crisis and response: A historical perspective on advocacy planning. American Planning Association Journal, 1980,.4§(1), 50-63. Hildebrand, J.A. Why runaways leave home. Journal of Criminal Law, Criminology, and Police Science, 1963, 54(2), 211-216. Hudson, B.M. Comparison of current planning theories: Counterparts and contradictions. American Planning Association Journal, 1979, 43(4), 387-398. Jenkins, R.L. The runaway reaction. American Journal of Psychiatry, 1971, 333(2), 168-173. Klosterman, R.E. Foundations for normative planning. Journal of the American Institute of Planners, 1978, 44(1), 37-46. Kriesberg, L. Centralization and differentiation in international non- governmental organizations. Sociology Social Research, 1976, 61(1), 1-23. 134 Leventhal, T. Control problems in runaway children. Archives of General Psychiatry, 1963, 3(2), 122-128. Leventhal, T. Inner control deficiencies in runaway children. Archives of General Psychiatry, 1964, 33(2), 170-176. Lindblom, C.E. The intelligence of democracy: Decision making through mutual adjustment. New York: The Free Press, 1965. TLitwak, E. Models of bureaucracy which permit conflict. American Journal of Sociology, 1961, 33(2), 177-184. Lorei, T.W., & Caffey, E.M. Goal definition by staff consensus: A contri- bution to the planning, delivery, and evaluation of mental health services. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 1978, 43(6), 1284-1290. Magnusson, 0. Test theory. Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley Publishing Co., 1967. McGregor, D.M. The human side of enterprise. Management Review, 1957, ‘43(11), pp. 22-28; 88-92. Miller, 0., and others. Runaways--illegal aliens in their own land: Implications for service. New York: Praeger, 1980. Mohr, L.B. The concept of organizational goal. The American Political Science Review, 1973, 33(2), 470-481. Mueller, C. Pocket guide to Title XX. Washington, D.C.: Child Welfare League of America, Inc., 1976. Nie, N.H., Hull, C.H., Jenkins, J.G., Steinbrenner, K., & Bent, D.H. Statistical Package for the Social Sciences. New York: McGraw- Hill Book Co., 1975. Parsons, T. Suggestions for a sociological approach to the theory of organizations. Administrative Science Quarterly, 1956, 3(1), 64-85. Perrow, C. The analysis of goals in complex organizations. American Sociological Review, 1961, 33(6), 854-866. Perrow, C. Organizational analysis: A sociological view. Belmont, California: Wadsworth, 1970. Pugh, D.S., Hickson, D.J., Hinnings, C.R., and Turner, C. The context of organization structures. Administrative Science Quarterly, 1969, 34(1), 91-114. Rothblatt, D.N. Multiple advocacy: An approach to metropolitan planning. Journal of the American Institute of Planners, 1978, 44(2), 193-199. Rubin, A. Theyoungest outlaws: Runaways in America. New York: Messner, 1976. 135 Schimpeler, C.G., & Grecco, W.L. Systems evaluation: An approach based on community structure and values. Highway Research Record 238, Washington: Highway Research Board, 1968. Shellow, R., Schamp, J.R., Liebow, E., & Unger, E. Suburban runaways of the 1960's. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Develop- ment, 1967, 32,(3, Serial No. 111). Simon, H.A. On the concept of organizational goal. Administrative Science Quarterly, 1964, 3(1), 1-22. Stuart, D.G. Rational urban planning: Problems and prospects. Urban Affairs Quarterly, 1969, 3(2), 151-182. Suddick, D. Runaways: A review of the literature. Juvenile Justice, 1973, 34, 46-54. Thompson, J.D. Organizations in action. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1967. Thompson, J.D., & McEwen, W.J. Organizational goals and environment: Goal setting as an interaction process. American Sociological Review, 1958, 33(2), 23—31. United States Senate, United States Congress. The Runaway Youth Act Report. (Calendar No. 951) Report No. 92-1002. 92nd Congress, 2nd Session, July 27, 1972. . Vinter, R.D. Analysis of treatment organizations. In Y. Hasenfeld and R.A. English (Eds.), Human service organizations. Ann Arbor, Michigan: University of Michigan Press, 1974. Warner, W.K. Problems in measuring the goal attainment of voluntary organizations. Adult Education, 1967, 33(5), 3-14. Warner, W.K., & Havens, A.E. Goal displacement and the intangibility of organizational goals. Administrative Science Quarterly, 1968, 33(4), 539-555. Warriner, C.K. The problem of organizational purpose. Sociological Quarterly, 1965,_3(2), 139-146. Washton, K. Running away from home. Journal of Social Issues, 1974, 33(1), 181-188. Young, R.C. Goals and goal-setting. Journal of the American Institute of Planners, 1966,_33(2), 76-85. Zald, M.N. The comparative analysis and measurement of organizational goals: The case of correctional institutions for delinquents. Sociological Quarterly, 1963, 4(3), 206-230. Zastrow, C., & Navarre, R. Help for runaways and their parents. Social Casework, 1975,_33(2), 74-78. Copyright by JOHN RANDOLPH KOCH 1982 "IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII