bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The Impact of Social Context on the Identity-Formation Process of Norwegian Late Adolescents
Authors: DANIELSEN LENE M. , LOREM ASTRID E. , KROGER JANE
Published: March 2007

This study compares the identity-formation process for Norwegian adolescents across three vocational contexts: university students, employed youths, and unemployed youths. An adaptation of Marcia's Identity Status Interview was administered to the participants, aged 18 to 24 years. All groups indicated work to be of primary importance to their sense of identity. A narrative analysis of vocational and family interview domains found that three general factors initiate identity transitions in different ways across the vocational groupings: qualities of the vocational environment, the influence of significant others, and the experience of obstacles.
The Legacy of the Troubles on the Young People's Psychological and Social Development and their School Life
Authors: MULDOON ORLA T. , TREW KAREN , KILPATRICK ROSEMARY
Published: March 2007

Throughout the history of the Troubles in Northern Ireland, concern has been expressed for the generations that have grown up against a backdrop of political violence. Despite the interest of local and international researchers in the psychological effects of the conflict on children's and adolescents' development, a firm understanding as to the psychological cost of the Troubles has not been reached. This fact largely can be attributed to the complex nature of the issue and the resultant methodological problems that are encountered when attempting to explore the impact of the conflict on young people's psychological health. This article charts the progress and current state of knowledge and highlights the diverse social and psychological consequences of growing up in Northern Ireland.
Stages of Drug Use
Authors: FREE MARVIN D.
Published: March 2007

Three models reflecting stages of substance use (alcohol use/alcohol and marijuana use/polydrug use) were tested using path analysis to examine subsamples of 626 to 850 subjects. Overall, high school bonds contributed little toward an explanation of substance use. Religiosity and religious conservatism accounted for some of the variance in substance use, primarily underage drinking. Results suggest that explanations of substance use can be enhanced through development of models employing stages of drug involvement.
Households, Local Labor Markets, and Youth Labor Force Participation
Authors: KEITHLY DIANE C. , DESERAN FORREST A.
Published: March 2007

Drawing on studies dealing with the relationship between family and work, the authors develop a model of youth labor force participation incorporating household, local economic, and individual variables. Data are from the 1980 Public Use Microdata Sample D (PUMS-D) for 16-to 18-year-old males and females living with their parents. The findings suggest that household structural characteristics and family resources have a significant effect on youths entering the labor force. Implications of the findings are discussed.
Racial and Social Class Prevalence of Psychopathology among School-Age Youth in the United States
Authors: McDERMOTT PAUL A. , SPENCER MARGARET BEALE
Published: March 2007

This article assesses the relative base rates of common forms of youth psychopathology among Whites, African Americans, Hispanics, and rarer minorities and across social classes as defined by parent education levels. A nationwide sample of 1,400 participants aged 5 to 17 years was stratified demographically according to the U.S. census. Standardized teacher observational scales were applied and the most maladjusted youths identified in terms of attention-deficit hyperactive, provocative-aggressive, impulsive-aggressive, oppositional defiant, diffident, and avoidant disorders. Most psychopathology was distributed proportionately across race and class. Patterns displayed by maladjusted White participants were not uniformly common among minorities, with racial or ethnic groups manifesting variable propensity for pathology, depending on level of social advantage and specific type of disorder. Implications are explored as they relate to distinct cultural and social contexts, to popular contemporary perceptions, and to future research and policy development in youth psychopathology.
Environment and Interpretation
Authors: FIGUEIRA-McDONOUGH JOSEFINA
Published: March 2007

This paper explores the interpretation of experiences and worldviews of young people residing in extremely deprived inner-city neighborhoods. Focus group discussions are examined in order to understand how young people residing in these poor urban neighborhoods interpret their environment and how trouble, sexual behavior, education, and the future are shaped by their experiences. Propositions derived from cultural and structural theories guide the analysis. The findings do not fully support either explanation, suggesting an alternative approach that combines mainstream and ghetto specific norms. The relevance of the findings for interventions addressing youth problems in deprived settings is discussed.
Violence, September 11 and the Interpretations of Islam
Authors: Dalacoura Katerina
Published: March 2007

Katerina Dalacoura investigates the relationship between Islam, violence and just war principles. She argues, with examples, that the Islamic religion can be used both to support and oppose international norms on going to war (for example, defence of one's country) and right conduct in warfare (for example, discrimination between combatants and non-combatants). The interpretation of Islam with regard to these issues is determined by political factors, both domestic and international. In this context, Afghanistan and Iran are offered as two opposing examples of an authoritarian and a more liberal interpretation of Islam. The argument concludes that western and especially foreign policies towards the Middle East are an important - though not determining - factor in the way Islam is interpreted with regard to violence and war.
Intentionalistic Explanations in the Social Sciences
Authors: Searle John R.
Published: March 2007

The dispute between the empiricist and interpretivist conceptions of the social sciences is properly conceived not as a matter of reduction or covering laws. Features specific to the social sciences include the following. Explanations of human behavior make reference to intentional causation; social phenomena are permeated with mental components and are self-referential; social science explanations have not been as successful as those in natural science because of their concern with intentional causation, because their explanations must be identical with the propositional content of the mind of the actor, and because a social phenomenon exists only if people believe it exists. Elements of an apparatus necessary to analyze this problematic social ontology are given and include selfreferentiality, constitutive rules, collective intentionality, linguistic permeation of the facts, systematic interrelationships among social facts, and primacy of acts over objects.
How Must Relativism Be Construed to Be Coherent?
Authors: Fox John F.
Published: March 2007

This essay attempts to clarify certain notions that the author finds useful for the discussion of relativism and then to show what kinds of relativism about values, rationality, and truth are and are not coherent.
Schutz, Music, and Temporality: A Wittgensteinian Assessment
Authors: Costelloe Timothy M.
Published: March 2007

In his account of musical interaction and temporality, Schutz's outer-inner distinction appears to capture a component of everyday experience. But engagement with Wittgensteinian philosophy reveals Schutz's false contrast between literal and metaphorical components of language, a series of philosophical confusions stemming from reifications of mental verbs, and the attribution of genuine duration to phenomena that have life as linguistic objects. Consequently, Schutz's intended account of social interaction comes to rest upon a radically private concept of the subject. A sociology of time, it is concluded, can avoid these conceptual traps by attending to the linguistic component of temporality.
Some Problems of Rationality, Understanding, and Universalistic Ethics in the Context of Habermas's Theory of Communicative Action
Authors: Ajzner Jan
Published: March 2007

The arguments presented in this discussion point to some problems in the theory of communicative action considered as a starting point for a sociological theory with both normative and explanatory aspirations. It is argued that Habermas's notion of consensus is not sufficiently developed to constitute a foundation of the ethics of public debates; that both social action and communicative action are grounded in social actors' references to the same three worlds, which makes the coordination of actions by means of understanding achieved in speech possible; that the criteria of rationality underlying use of language in the communicative action are ultimately those that are made explicit and consciously worked out in science; and that, finally, it is Parsons' solution to the Hobbesian problem and his concept of social action that provide a possible foundation for universalistic ethics.
The End of Luhmann's Social Systems Theory
Authors: Wagner Gerhard
Published: March 2007

By advocating an enlightened method of theorizing committed to thinking in terms of a system of differences, Luhmann has contributed to the development of sociology in a manner that cannot be praised enough. Nonetheless, he does not succeed in giving an account of his own position that satisfies the very logical preconditions that he himself has formulated for it. Instead, his systems theory paradigm of sociology is based on metaphysical premises characteristic of the identity-logical thought of "Old Europe." In fact, the only way to make Luh mann's approach truly comprehensible is to reconstruct it as a new version of Hegel's dialectic.
Situational Logic and Its Reception
Authors: Jarvie I.C.
Published: March 2007

Popper holds to the unity of scientific method: any differences between natural and social science are a product of theory, not a pretheoretical premise. Distin guishing instead pure and applied generalizing sciences, Popper focuses on the different role of laws in each. In generalizing social science, our tools are the logic of the situation, including the rationality principle, and unintended conse quences. Situations contain individuals, but also social entities not reducible to individuals: conspiracy theory is the extreme form of individualism. Action in situations has unintended consequences. Both social and natural laws may be required to explain outcomes. The fate of Popper's ideas is a case study in the logic of the situation. Professional philosophers of social science lean toward individualism and a priorism (either intuitionist or rational choice). There are social and political explanations of this outcome, but little critical engagement with Popper's ideas.
Why in Planning The Myth of the Framework Is Anything but That
Authors: Faludi Andreas
Published: March 2007

In The Myth of the Framework, Popper attacks the doctrine that truth is relative to one's intellectual background. The same collection refers to his "situational analysis." This article explores the implications of both for spatial planning. Spatial planners have to justify proposals. The article first summarizes earlier work on planning methodology evolving around the rationality principle and the implications for it of Popper's work for how to do this. It then discusses the notion of the definition of the decision situation, which flows from this principle. This, of course, implies taking a leaf out of Popper's book where he discusses situational analysis. The article then gives an account of the author's work on Dutch planning doctrine, relating it to the definition of decision situations in planning and confronting it with Popper's strictures against The Myth of the Framework. The conclusion is that, whereas in the sciences that are after explain ing reality in terms of universal laws, Popper's argument holds, in planning it does not. Planning is about the search for the right course of action. In it, Popper's concern with fighting relativism and what he calls "justification" is misplaced. The quality of decisions depends on the position and the concerns of the decision taker. Relativism is in-built and so is the need to justify decisions.
Improper Solutions in Structural Equation Models
Authors: CHEN FEINIAN , BOLLEN KENNETH A. , PAXTON PAMELA , CURRAN PATRICK J. , KIRBY JAMES B.
Published: March 2007

In this article, the authors examine the most common type of improper solutions: zero or negative error variances. They address the causes of, consequences of, and strategies to handle these issues. Several hypotheses are evaluated using Monte Carlo simulation models, including two structural equation models with several misspecifications of each model. Results suggested several unique findings. First, increasing numbers of omitted paths in the measurement model were associated with decreasing numbers of improper solutions. Second, bias in the parameter estimates was higher in samples with improper solutions than in samples including only proper solutions. Third, investigations of the consequences of using constrained estimates in the presence of improper solutions indicated that inequality constraints helped some samples achieve convergence. Finally, the use of confidence intervals as well as four other proposed tests yielded similar results when testing whether the error variance was greater than or equal to zero.
Comment on “Estimating the Extent of Racially Polarized Voting in Multicandidate Contests” by Bernard Grofman and Michael Migalski
Authors: ZAX JEFFREY S.
Published: March 2007

Double regression figures prominently in the analysis of racially polarized voting. Grofman and Migalski attempt three extensions of this technique: the application to multimember districts, the calculation of standard errors for the parameters of interest, and validation through comparisons with seemingly unrelated regression (SUR). All three extensions fail. The first is based on an arithmetical error. The second is based on an incomplete specification of the underlying statistical model. The third is based on a mistaken application of SUR in a context in which it is guaranteed to yield the same results as the ordinary least squares estimates of double regression.
Locating Community Boundaries: an Integration of Theory and Empirical Techniques
Authors: Seiler Lauren H. , Summers Gene F.
Published: March 2007

Utilizing the Kaufman (1959) and Sutton-Kolaja (1960a, 1960b) conceptualization of community, empirical techniques are developed to identify community boundaries. These techniques are unique because they allow simultaneous consideration of boundary and interaction aggregation problems. A sociological conceptualization of community is coordinated with layman respondent's perceptions so empirical data, faithful to both perspectives, may be gathered from community residents. Community boundaries are identified from conditional probability matrices applied to residents identified as business, education, and government leaders in ten rural areas of Illinois. Township boundaries regularly coincide with community boundaries. Techniques developed here appear widely applicable to identifying community and other boundaries.
Analyzing Measures of Association Derived From Contingency Tables
Authors: Kritzer Herbert M.
Published: March 2007

This paper describes a technique for the rigorous analysis of probabilistic measures of association derived from contingency tables. The technique uses the approach to contingency table analysis first described by Grizzle, Starmer, and Koch and extended by Forthofer and Koch. This approach permits the user to obtain estimates of gamma, Yule's Q, Kendall's taub and tauc, Somer's D, and Goodman and Kruskal's taus, plus estimates of the variances and covariances of those measures of association. With the variance-covariance estimates, the user can examine a wide range of hypotheses for statistical significance.
Maintaining Response Rates In Longitudinal Studies
Authors: Freedman Deborah S. , Thornton Arland , Camburn Donald
Published: March 2007

A recognized problem in mounting longitudinal surveys concerns the costs and difficulties in maintaining response rates over time. This article details the techniques used to minimize response loss in a longitudinal study which maintained an 89% response rate over five interviews covering a fifteen-year period. These techniques centered on two problems common to all longitudinal studies: the difficulties involved in relocating respondents for subsequent interviews, and the necessity of maintaining respondent cooperation over repeated interviews.
Sex Differences in Measurement Error in Status Attainment Models
Authors: Corcoran Mary
Published: March 2007

This article investigates sex differences in the accuracy of young adults' retrospective reports of parental status using Joreskog's general framework for the simultaneous covariance structure analysis of multiple populations. Results indicate that young women's reports of maternal education are significantly more reliable than are young men's reports and that the reliabilities of reports ofpaternal traits are similar for young men and women.
Detecting Changes of Level and Slope in Repeated-Measures Data
Authors: FOX JOHN
Published: March 2007

This article examines the following situation: A variable is measured for a sample of subjects on several occasions before and after an experimental intervention thought to affect the variable. This situation had broad application in the social sciences and elsewhere. The article introduces MANOVA tests for changes in level and slope that arise as a consequence of the intervention. These methods are illustrated using data from a social-psychological study. The approach may be extended to studies in which there are several groups of subjects.
Strategies for Collating Diverse Scientific Evidence in the Analysis of Population Health Characteristics
Authors: MANTON KENNETH G. , LIU KORBIN
Published: March 2007

The analysis of many social and health policy issues requires the use of multiple data sources from a diverse body of scientific and technical studies. Although individual data sets are rigorously analyzed, integration of the results of these analyses to resolve policy questions is often accomplished by informal or subjective strategies based on procedures designed to generate consensus among scientific experts. In this article we discuss a model for conducting a more formal integration of multiple data sources (including subjective or theoretical judgments). The advantages of such models over consensus generation by informal means are that (1) they can produce very specific quantitative measures of the implications of alternative policies; (2) their assumptions are more readily reviewable; (3) they can be validated against data; and (4) they formally link experimental and survey data, organizing our knowledge base so that priorities for improving the knowledge base can be determined systematically. These advantages suggest that the use of formal models can be a valuable adjunct to informal consensus-generating procedures. An example of how such a modeling strategy is applied to the monitoring of population health is presented and discussed.
An Application of the Item-Response Model to Psychiatric Epidemiology
Authors: REISER MARK
Published: March 2007

This article presents the item-response model and an application of the model to variables representing symptoms of anxiety and depression. The model is presented as having features in common with a multivariate logistic regression where the independent variable is continuous, real-valued, and unobservable. Some connections to dichotomous variable factor analysis and the latent class model are also discussed. In the application, data are used from the National Institute of Mental Health Epidemiologic Catchment Area Survey. The model is most successful with symptoms of anxiety, where the variables are small in number and satisfy the assumption of unidimensionality. It is less successful with the symptoms of major depressive disorder, where the unidimensionality does not seem to hold.
Monte Carlo Evaluations of Goodness of Fit Indices for Structural Equation Models
Authors: GERBING DAVID W. , ANDERSON JAMES C.
Published: March 2007

This article reviews proposed goodness-of-fit indices for structural equation models and the Monte Carlo studies that have empirically assessed their distributional properties. The cumulative contributions of the studies are summarized, and the variables under which the indices are studied are noted. A primary finding is that many of the indices used until the late 1980s, including Jöreskog and Sörbom's (1981) GFI and Bentler and Bonett's (1980) NFI, indicated better fit when sample size increased. More recently developed indices based on the chi-square noncentrality parameter are discussed and the relevant Monte Carlo studies reviewed. Although a more complete understanding of their properties and suitability requires further research, the recommended fit indices are the McDonald (1989) noncentrality index, the Bentler (1990)-McDonald and Marsh (1990) RNI (or the bounded counterpart CFI), and Bollen's (1989) DELTA2.
Articulation of physical and social bodies in Kerala
Authors: Osella Filippo , Osella Caroline
Published: March 2007

This paper uses ethnography from Kerala to examine the concept of sneham, simultaneously an oily bodily fluid and the quality of nurturant affection. Sneham, which flows and circulates within and between persons in intimate moral relations, is the joint lubricant essential to the health of both physical and social bodies. Connections between sneham's two meanings are traced, and sneham's role in the foundation of a powerful metaphor—patronlemployer as father— is examined, drawing upon two domains of ethnography:—popular knowledge about bodily health and physical characteristics; and gift exchanges within the family and between landowners and labourers.
Filial devotion in Tamil culture and the Tiger cult of martyrdom
Authors: Roberts Michael
Published: March 2007

The popular responses to the first instance of cyanide suicide in the Jaffna Peninsula, that of Ponnadurai Sivakumaran in 1974, highlight the value that is accorded to devotional sacrifice in Tamil culture on both sides of the Palk Strait. The circumstances of Tamil dissatisfaction with Sinhalese society and the state apparatus provided an ideal scenario for the crystallisation of this emphasis. The LTTE have seized the opportunity and built up a cult of martyrdom as a mobilisational device, cementing force and precise weapon. Such instrumental usages should not obscure the likelihood that, among the Tiger leadership, the cyanide vial is both instrument and faith.

Speculatively it is suggested that the varied expressions of Tamil sentiment in northern Sri Lanka during the 1960s and 1970s-before the Tigers secured their dominance—will reveal an emphasis on filial devotion in ways which draw on Caizkam and bhakti traditions. The article therefore draws attention to certain continuities in the popular folk cults in Tamil lands—traditions which provide a seedbed of evocative symbols that, in specific contexts, can impel, or be made to impel, individuals in sacrificial directions.

The essqy argues that the understanding of such subjectivities and these essentialising moves among the Tamil militants requires a measure of essentialisation in our approaches. It elaborates this view through a critical review of Pandian's instrumental and semiotic analysis of the MGR phenomenon, a review which enables the author to introduce the hermeneutic approach of the early Taussig and his own subjectivist emphasis on the manner in which some Tamils merge their being with that of the icon of their hearts, be it MGR, Eelam or Prabhakaran.
The politics of moral practice in psychotherapy and religious healing
Authors: Kleinman Arthur , Seeman Don
Published: March 2007

T.N. Madan made the study of comparative moral systems into an important mainstay of Indian sociology. In this essay, we will be using the idea of 'moral practice' to compare notions of effi cacy in psychotherapy and various forms of religious healing. We argue that the realm of 'the moral' in ethnographic analysis consists not of abstract rules or ideologies, but of whatever has overwhelm ing practical relevance in the lives of the people and communities we study. Both psychotherapy and religious healing systems define efficacy in terms of culture-specific understandings of personhood and moral order; these, however, are mediated by the irreducible contingencies of social position, political strategy, and life histories of both sufferers and healers, as well as by large scale economic and political forces. Healing efficacy emerges from this study as a shifting, multi-vocal, and sometimes unattainable value. By turning our attention from the language of moral concepts to that of moral stakes, therefore, we are attempting to accommodate a concern with the concrete experience of suffering and healing as they are embedded in lived worlds of human experience.
What did Bernier actually say? Profiling the Mughal empire
Authors: Tambiah Stanley J.
Published: March 2007

Bernier's text Travels in the Mughal Empire; A.D. 1656-1708 was a primary source for certain European writers from Montesquieu to Marx for their representation and characterisation of oriental despotism. The distinctive features of oriental despotism in their eyes were absolutist and tyrannical monarchs who ruled over polities that lacked a hereditary nobility and private property in land. In this paper I have attempted to demonstrate that, when read closely, Bernier's text discloses particulars that can be shown to yield a quite different patterning. The Mughal empire of the 17th and 18th centuries, the period I am discussing, was characterised by a devolutionary distribution of authority among multiple lesser sovereignties, by a complex hierarchy of land tenure and appropriation of product, by a developed system of commerce, and by a tolerance and coexistence of pluralistic subcultures. The contours of the empire seem to conform to a model of what I have previously conceptualised in my writings as the 'galactic polity'.

The current trend in theorising about post-colonial societies is that the representation of pre-colonial societies at the time of contact as oriental despotisms was a proto-colonial and colonial construction which served as a reason and justification for political intervention, conquest and exploitation. That was so. But I want to emphasise that the stereotypical image of oriental despotism also importantly served as a polemic for an internal political debate and advocacy in France as a warning against and attack on the alleged absolutist ambitions of French monarchy and a defense of feudal nobility as a break on such tendencies. Montesquieu in particular exemplifies this posture.

Bernier's formulaic gloss on the Mughal empire, despite what he actually reports, is one kind of tendentious representation. My own reading of Bernier's text is no doubt informed by my present day intellectual and political concerns.
Diamonds and Patels: A report on the diamond industry of Surat
Authors: Engelshoven Miranda
Published: March 2007

In Surat, the second largest city of Gujarat and one of its main industrial centres, approx imately 150,000 workers are earning a living in the diamond industry. Especially in the 1960s and 1970s, when the industry grew tremendously, the working and living conditions of diamond cutters were bad. Workshop owners used extreme violence, torture and even murder to discipline workers. After the mid-1980s the situation improved, but even today for many diamond cutters life in Surat's diamond workshops is hard. Despite these condi tions there have never been any strikes or organised forms of mass protest in the history of the diamond industry of Surat. In this article a number of possible reasons for this absence are discussed. One of these is recent developments within the caste to which both diamond cutters and workshop owners belong.
Carl Schmitt
Authors: WOLIN RICHARD
Published: March 2007

Carl Schmitt's polemical discussion of political Romanticism conceals the aestheticizing oscillations of his own political thought. In this respect, too, a kinship of spirit with the fascist intelligentsia reveals itself.

Jürgen Habermas, “The Horrors of Autonomy: Carl Schmitt in English”

The pinnacle of great politics is the moment in which the enemy comes into view in concrete clarity as the enemy.

Carl Schmitt, The Concept of the Political (1927)
“Public Man” and the Critique of Masculinities
Authors: CARVER TERRELL
Published: March 2007

Who writes? For whom is the writing being done? In what circumstances? These, it seems to me, are the questions whose answers provide us with the ingredients making for a politics of interpretation.

E. Said
Evolutionary Narratives and Ecological Ethics
Authors: THIELE LESLIE PAUL
Published: March 2007

We are in trouble just now because we do not have a good story. We are in between stories. The old story, the account of how the world came to be and how we fit into it, is no longer effective. Yet we have not learned the new story.... We need a story that will educate us, a story that will heal, guide, and discipline us.

Thomas Berry, The Dream of the Earth
Family Political Communication and Social Values
Authors: Tims Albert R.
Published: March 2007

The relationship between parental social value priorities and the family communication environment is examined in three recent surveys: two in West Germany and one in the United States. Value priorities were shown to be systematically related to interpersonal communication about politics, public affairs media use, attitudes about family communication and parenthood, and norms of family communication. The evidence supports a socialization model in which parental social value priorities influence concept-oriented family communication patterns, which, in turn, have a normative impact on the political communication environment in the home.
PERIOD, COHORT, AND AGING EFFECTS
Authors: DANOWSKI JAMES A. , RUCHINSKAS JOHN E.
Published: March 2007

This research investigated effects of audience generational composition, aging, and period on exposure to televised presidential campaign information from 1952 to 1980. A categorical regression cohort analysis, controlling for sex and education, revealed that cohort effects explained 40% of the variance in such television exposure. The hypothesis was supported that the cohort in midlife when television initially diffused used television in later life at a higher rate than did other cohorts. Period effects explained 36% of the variance. As hypothesized, the more closely contested the election campaign, the higher the audience's television exposure. Aging showed no significant relationship to campaign television exposure. Previous investigators may have mistakenly assumed that age differences observed in cross-sectional studies were maturational rather than generational.
WORKING-CLASS READERS
Authors: NORD DAVID PAUL
Published: March 2007

This article argues that a genuine social history of reading in the nineteenth century requires more direct attention to audiences in addition to the traditional attention to producers and product. It suggests that historians of literacy have been more creative than mass media historians in using individual-level historical data (such as censuses, deeds, wills, government surveys) to study past reading behavior. One type of individual-level data that may be of use to mass communication historians is the series of family cost-of-living surveys conducted by state and federal bureaus of labor statistics in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. These studies of working-class family budgets, some of which were published in nonaggregated form, include detailed information on family structure, income, and expenditures, including expenditures on newspapers and books. Through an analysis of a sample of cotton textile worker budgets from an 1889-1890 federal survey, this study found that expenditures for newspapers and books were associated in interesting ways with family income patterns, region of residence, and ethnicity. The study also found some evidence that reading among working-class families may have been related to the changing nature of community life in the new industrial society of late nineteenth-century America.
SOCIOCULTURAL EVOLUTION IN THE COMMUNICATION INDUSTRIES
Authors: DIMMICK JOHN
Published: March 2007

The article suggests that sociocultural evolution and the processes of variation and selective retention provide a theoretical perspective for understanding past and future changes in communication industries resulting from intrapopulation competition. Data from the history of communication industries are used to illustrate the processes of variation and selective retention. The operation of r-K (rate-capacity) selection is illustrated in motion picture theaters and the daily newspaper industry. The final section of the article offers speculation on future selection patterns based on contemporary trends in communication industries.
Interpretive Viewers and Structured Programs
Authors: LIVINGSTONE SONIA M.
Published: March 2007

Viewers' interpretations of television programs must mediate the effects of viewing. These interpretations result from the constructive application of everyday social knowledge to a structured text. They thus depend on the relative power of cognitions and programs to determine the nature of the interpretations. The present research investigates regular viewers' representations of soap opera characters to discover (a) the nature of these representations, (b) the extent to which they reflect the application of social knowledge, and (c) the extent to which they reflect the structure of the program. Studies 1 and 2 indicated that character representations are a constructive integration of program information and viewers' knowledge about other people. The characters in Coronation Street were represented according to three major themes: morality/power, gender (matriarchal), and approach to life (modern/traditional). There were few differences according to the age or sex of viewers. Study 3 pursued the finding that viewers appeared to ignore the role of social class in the program. Together, the results support both the active “role of the viewer” and the guiding role of the structure of the program in the construction of meaning. Issues concerning the analysis of television programs, the nature of social knowledge, and the relation between character and narrative were also addressed.
Face-to-Face Communication in an Office Setting
Authors: ZAHN G. LAWRENCE
Published: March 2007

The effects of hierarchical relationships and physical arrangements on face-to-face communication in an office environment were investigated. Mutual exposure, physical distance between offices, chain-of-command distance, and status distance were compared as predictors of communication time. A path model was developed using exposure as a mediating variable between the distance measures and communication time. Exposure was a sufficient predictor of communication. Chain of command, status, and office distance all related to exposure, with chain-of-command distance having the strongest association with exposure. Distance between offices was primarily associated with chain-of-command distance, with status distance having a smaller but significant effect. Results suggest ways in which organizations might manage exposure in order to influence face-to-face communication.
Testing the Health Belief Model in a Field Study to Promote Bicycle Safety Helmets
Authors: WITTE KIM , STOKOLS DANIEL , ITUARTE PHILIP , SCHNEIDER MARGARET
Published: March 2007

Calls for communitywide interventions to promote bicycle safety helmet usage among children abound, yet little is known about the factors that cause parents to purchase helmets and consistently insist on their usage. The health belief model proposes that cues to action are important influences on self-protective behaviors. A communitywide field study was conducted to test the effectiveness of six different kinds of cues to action. Parents of children between the ages of 5 and 18 were selected via random-digit-dialing techniques for participation in the study. The results indicated that cues to action affected perceptions of threat but were unrelated to attitudes, intentions, or behaviors. However, perceptions of threat were found to be important influences on bicycle helmet attitudes, intentions, and behaviors.
Individual Differences and Changes in Nonverbal Behavior
Authors: STIFF JAMES , CORMAN STEVE , KRIZEK BOB , SNIDER ERIC
Published: March 2007

Investigations of deceptive communication have examined a number of nonverbal behaviors as potential correlates of deception; however, reviews of this literature reveal only a handful of behaviors that consistently distinguish deceptive messages from truthful ones. Procedural limitations apparent in some of these studies and an underspecification of individual and discursive factors that affect the production of nonverbal behavior were offered as potential explanations for these findings. The present study sought to reduce the procedural limitations of some prior studies and employed time series analysis to model individual and discursive influences on the response latencies of deceivers and truthtellers. A decay impulse model provided a good description of the data. This model reflects a decaying series of momentary increases (spikes) in the response latency series that were associated with an interviewer's critical questions, and the size of these spikes decreased with each successive critical question. Message veracity and self-monitoring were two variables that combined to affect the fit of the decay impulse model. Implications of these findings are discussed along with suggestions for future research.
Assessing the Social Influence of Television
Authors: SHRUM L. J.
Published: March 2007

Cultivation effects are discussed and assessed within the context of mental processing strategies. Specifically, an information-processing perspective is taken to illustrate how television viewing may affect social judgments. Heuristic processing is posited as a mechanism that can explain why heavier television viewing results in higher first-order cultivation judgments (i.e., those requiring estimates of set size, such as the incidence of violent crime or percentage of doctors in the workforce). Past cultivation findings are integrated into this framework, and new directions for research are proposed.
Managing Threats to Identity
Authors: SHEER VIVIAN C. , WEIGOLD MICHAEL F.
Published: March 2007

Individuals generate accounts to deflect threats to identity posed by undesired events or outcomes. The triangle model of accountability proposes that an actor's accountability is a function of the combined strength of three linkages: a prescription-event link (the clarity of the rules of conduct for the event), a prescription-identity link (the applicability of the rules to the actor), and an identity-event link (the perceived control the actor has over the event). Subjects were asked to choose among various accounts related to each of the three linkages. We predicted that when only one link was weak or ambiguous, preferred accounts would focus on the ambiguous link. Results were consistent with our hypotheses. The strengths of individual linkages of the accountability triangle are an important determinant of strategic accounting.
The Effect of Request Form and Content on Constructing Obstacles to Compliance
Authors: PAULSON GAYLEN D. , ROLOFF MICHAEL E.
Published: March 2007

In this article, we explore the degree to which the language used in a request affects both the way it is perceived and the refusals that it prompts. Accordingly, we conducted an experiment in which we manipulated the form and the content of date requests. Request forms that addressed an obstacle were perceived to be more conventional and more polite, and were met with more polite refusals than were request forms that did not specify an obstacle. Furthermore, when the request content included a specific time for the date, refusers generated more unstable obstacles than when no time was proposed. Conversely, time-ambiguous requests were met with more stable obstacles than were time-specific requests. Contrary to our expectations, the amount of face work in the discourse of a refusal was unaffected by request form and was marginally related to request content. Implications for requesters and refusers are discussed.
Correctional Intervention Programs and Cost-Benefit Analysis
Authors: WELSH BRANDON C. , FARRINGTON DAVID P.
Published: March 2007

A program is economically efficient if its monetary benefits outweigh its monetary costs. Discussions of the economic efficiency of correctional intervention and other crime and offender prevention programs can be very persuasive and have gained wide appeal in political, policy, and academic settings. However, little is known about the economic efficiency of crime prevention strategies. This article examines the contribution, both methodological and empirical, of cost-benefit analyses of correctional intervention programs designed to reduce reoffending in the community. A review of the literature revealed only seven published studies that have presented information on monetary costs and benefits. Future cost-benefit research on correctional intervention should be concerned with standardizing the measurement of costs and benefits, especially in well-designed studies comparing experimental and control groups with before and after measures of offending. A standard list of monetary costs and benefits that should be measured in all studies is needed.
Risk Factors for Juvenile Criminal Recidivism
Authors: HEILBRUN KIRK , BROCK WILLIAM , WAITE DENNIS , LANIER AYONDA , SCHMID MARTIN , WITTE GRETCHEN , KEENEY MICHELLE , WESTENDORF MELISSA , BUINAVERT LUIS , SHUMATE MICHAEL
Published: March 2007

This study focused on the outcomes of juvenile delinquents ( N = 140) following their conviction, commitment for residential placement, and return to the community on parole. Participants were followed for a period of 1 year postrelease. A random stratified sampling procedure was used to select participants from urban, suburban, and rural sites. Ratings of poor parole adjustment (73%), as well as observed rates of parole violation (73%) and reoffending (40%) across the entire sample reflected a substantial proportion of unfavorable outcomes during follow-up. Stepwise regression yielded significant predictive capacity for offense, school, and family variables toward parole violation ( R = .30) and parole adjustment ( R = .41), and a trend toward significance in the prediction of reoffending ( R = .31), although the modest size of these coefficients would limit practical utility. The results are discussed in the context of intervention and risk-reduction planning throughout residential placement and postrelease community living.
Female Criminals
Authors: HEILBRUN ALFRED B.
Published: March 2007

This study first considered the assumption that female crime is more impulsive than male crime. Impulsivity ratings of 351 female crimes were compared with male criminal norms. Only female crimes involving physical violence (murder, manslaughter, assault) were more impulsive than the same crimes committed by males. Contrary to expectation, nonviolent crimes committed by women (burglary/theft, forgery, drug offenses) were less impulsive than was true for men. The issue of differential treatment for the two sexes was then considered, since more leniency for women might be expected given the assumption of female impulsiveness. Length of imprisonment and time on parole following conviction for the same nominal crime were compared for 678 male and 618 female criminals. Women were generally treated more leniently than men, with those convicted of robbery, burglary/theft, and forgery spending less time in prison, and those convicted of murder, assault, robbery, burglary/theft, and forgery given less time on parole. Sex differences in impulsive crime can account for less severe treatment shown to female criminals following crimes involving physical violence, but they fail to explain greater leniency following a nonviolent crime.
The Murder of Police Officers in American Cities
Authors: LESTER DAVID
Published: March 2007

The rates at which police officers were murdered in American cities were calculated. City characteristics and police department characteristics were correlated with these rates, and a number of significant correlates were identified. City characteristics were more often associated with the police officer murder rate than were police department characteristics. Various multiple correlational techniques accounted for between 32% and 74% of the variation in the rates at which police officers were murdered.
Correction Officer Job Performance as Predicted by the IPI and MMPI
Authors: SHUSMAN ELIZABETH J. , INWALD ROBIN E. , LANDA BETH
Published: March 2007

The predictive validity of two psychological inventories, the MMPI and the IPI, was examined for 716 male correction officer recruits for retention or termination as well as incidence of absence, lateness, and formal disciplinary interviews (Study I). Discriminant function equations developed from IPI scales correctly classified a greater percentage of officers as to “positive” or “negative” job performance than did prediction equations developed from the MMPI scales. Mean scores on IPI scales indicating past adjustment difficulties and “acting out” behaviors were higher for officers exhibiting “negative” job behaviors. A cross-validation analysis of three on-job performance criteria was then conducted (Study II). Prediction equations, developed on a random analysis sample of 400 officers, were then applied to a new cross-validation sample of 265 officers. On both the analysis and cross-validation samples, the IPI more accurately classified individuals as to absences and disciplinary interviews than did the MMPI; lateness was predicted equally well by both tests.
Vietnam Veterans and the Criminal Justice System
Authors: BECKERMAN ADELA , FONTANA LEONARD
Published: March 2007

This article considers the incidence of criminal activities and incarceration among Vietnam veterans in the United States. Results are presented from published and unpublished studies. Most studies indicate that Vietnam-era veterans do not have significantly higher arrest rates than nonveterans but that Vietnam theater veterans do have higher rates. These arrests are primarily for nonviolent offenses. Available evidence gives no indication how common Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and other delayed-stress conditions are among the incarcerated Vietnam veteran populations, or of the relationship between such conditions and criminal activities. We need more and better descriptive data on those incarcerated, as well as those on probation and parole, so that appropriate legal and interventive services can be offered.
A Confirmatory Factor Analysis of the Tennessee Self-Concept Scale
Authors: WALSH JAMES A. , WILSON GREGORY L. , McLELLARN ROBERT W.
Published: March 2007

The Tennessee Self-Concept Scale (TSCS) has been widely used to examine systematic differences in self-concept between incarcerated and nonincarcerated populations and to assess the effects of treatment programs for incarcerated groups. Fitts (1965) originally constructed the TSCS to measure five external aspects of self-concept, three internal aspects, and 15 “facets” created by crossing the internal and external dimensions. Over a period of some years, methodological questions have been raised about the validity of the TSCS. Most of these studies have used factor analytic approaches designed to provide optimal condensations of response data, and their results have not supported Fitts's structure. The present study used confirmatory factor analysis, a technique specifically designed to test hypothesized dimensionality, to examine the TSCS and provides some support for its hypothesized structure.