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Abstract Probation officers and other juvenile court staff complain that paperwork limits the time spent working directly with youth. The alleged effect of paperwork is compared with that of interpersonal influence resulting from time spent talking with youth about their problems. Multiple regression of data from a juvenile court staff indicated that the time spent on paperwork has no independent effect. This group's paperwork complaints are ideological. But interpersonal influences do have considerable impact.

Although vouth workers frequently undergo in-service training, methodological shortcomings in evaluations of these programs often obscure the effects. This article reports on a field experiment that randomly assigned school counselors, juvenile court staff, and a variety of other youth workers to a training (experimental) or control group. Results support five of eight hypotheses comparing trainees with controls in terms of (1) tech niques such as reinforcement and (2) certain attributes of interpersonal relations with the youths in caseloads as well as with these youths' parents and friends. Shortcomings in the content of the training program appear responsible for inconclusive results on one hypothesis and lack of verification of two others.