bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Bayesian Analysis for Sociologists
Authors: WESTERN BRUCE
Published: March 2007

This article provides an applied introduction to Bayesian statistics for sociologists. Unlike frequentist statistics, which attaches repeated-sampling frequencies to test statistics, Bayesian statistics directly describes uncertainty about unknown statistical parameters with a probability distribution. With this foundation, much of Bayesian statistics follows from basic rules of probability theory. Three areas of Bayesian statistics are especially relevant for sociologists. First, hierarchical regression models allow several levels of uncertainty into an analysis. Second, Bayes factors provide a useful approach to the problems of model selection, model averaging, and posterior inference about model indexes. Third, recent breakthroughs in estimation methods offer valuable new tools for analysis of Bayesian models that were previously intractable.
Public genealogies: Documents, bodies and nations in Anglo-Indian railway family histories
Authors: Bear Laura
Published: March 2007

This article argues for an approach to archives and documents that focusses on their material effects. It traces the impact of the East Indian Railway Nationality Files on the intimate stories of family genealogies among Anglo-Indian railway workers. The procedures of proof and record-keeping associated with these files (kept from 1927-50) displaced Anglo-Indian family histories into a public realm of state documents and archives, making these the final arbiters and guardians of their origins. Anglo-Indian workers often protested their assigned status by writing to the bureaucracy, especially as family members were regularly classed differently by distinct institutions. They sought a continuous public genealogy for themselves. Their interest in doing this and the practices of the nationality archive reveal the new conjunctions between political rights and family origins in Indian civil society. Inereasingly, both the jati of nationalists and the enumer able community of colonial bureaucrats rested on a genealogical imperative, which excluded Anglo-Indians because of their 'mixed' origins from belonging to either India or Britain. The material effects of this historical moment and the archive are visible in contemporary conversations with Anglo-Indian railway families. They tell stories of disappearing documents, of ghosts disturbed by lack of an archive, of their bodies as treacherous records of identity and of the impossibilities of being an Indian community.
Power, culture and medicine: Ayurvedic pharmaceuticals in the modern market
Authors: Banerjee Madhulika
Published: March 2007

This article seeks to understand the encounter between Ayurveda and the modern market through an analysis of decisions regarding the product profiling, positioning and packaging of Ayurvedic medicines by its leading manufacturer, Dabur. These seemingly mundane, economic decisions are seen here as expressions of a deep operation of power, mediated through culture. The analysis takes us beyond the simplified picture of the rise of modern biomedicine as the inevitable and onward march of rationality, or that of Ayurveda as the helpless victim of modernity. It argues that the multiple strategies adopted by the Ayurvedic pharmaceutical companies, in response to the changing conditions of the market, can be viewed in larger terms as its response to the changing nature of the field of power. This identifies the 'moment of confrontation', the 'moment of withdrawal' and the 'moment of diversion' as some of the strategic responses. While these strategies did succeed in creating and retaining a foothold for Ayurvedic medicines in the modern market, this success came at a heavy cost: Ayurvedic medicine had to be cast in the mould of modern medicine and disconnected from its relationship to the knowledge system. The analysis brings out some of the ironies and dilemmas of this encounter.
The 'womanly vote' and women citizens: Debates on women's franchise in late colonial India1
Authors: Roy Anupama
Published: March 2007

This article explores the formation and gendering of Indian nationalist ideologies of citizenship through an examination of suffrage debates in India in the period 1917 to the 1940s. The article draws attention to citizenship as a terrain of struggle, where a multitude of socio-political forces and ideological formulations exist in unequal and conflicting relationships. It starts from the premise that the defining parameters of citizen ship in India emerged in the historical context of the anticolonial movement and the assertion of a national self-identity. The 'vote' assumed significance in this context as a claim to equality and to the political rights of citizenship that were denied to colonised subjects. However, the debates surrounding the vote as a measure of equality, disclose complex intersecting layers of socio-political forces-nationalist, colonialist, feminist, masculinist and conservative. This article focuses on the debates over women's franchise and the manner in which gendered meanings came to be attributed to the 'vote', with wide ranging implications for articulating women as citizens.
'Four makes society': Women's organisation, Dravidian nationalism and women's interpretation of caste, gender and change in South India
Authors: George Glynis
Published: March 2007

The proliferation of women's organisations, particularly those attached to larger social movements or state initiatives, necessitates ethnographically situated examinations of the way women's issues and gendered experiences are constituted and understood within specific cultural contexts. This article examines a women's organisation in South India, which is linked to a Dravidian social movement. I explore the way the movement repro duces and challenges the social terrain on which some women are expected to participate in reforming Tamil society. The reformist character of the movement evokes ambivalent responses by women to key elements of its ideology, which calls for the dismantling of caste, and an end to Hindu hegemony characterised by religious dogmatism and Brah minical superiority. The incorporation of feminist discourse into their ideology signals the transnational character of regionally based movements, and provokes further con sideration of the way feminist discourse itself is deployed cross-culturally, and its effect in challenging social inequalities and/or maintaining social and economic differences.
The social and ecological effects of industrialisation in a tribal region: The case of the Rourkela Steel Plant
Authors: Meher Rajkishor
Published: March 2007

Learningfrom the Western experience of economic development, the developing countries of the world, after their liberation from colonial rule in the 1940s and 1950s, pinned their hopes on industry and urbanisation to stimulate accelerated economic growth and the social transformation of backward regions. However, in many cases industrialisation of backward regions has generated unintended social and ecological consequences resulting in the involuntary displacement of human populations, the loss of traditional sustainable livelihoods, the marginalisation of the locals, especially the tribals, and the increasing environmental pollution of the region. As the process of development is usually designed at the top, it mostly serves the social and economic interests of the elite and privileged sections of society at the cost of the poor and downtrodden. The present art icle analyses the processes of industrialisation and economic development as causal factors in ecological degradation in Rourkela, the site of the India's first public sector steel plant and a region which, in the past, was predominantly inhabited by indigenous peoples.
Machiavelli's Sisters
Authors: ZERILLI LINDA M. G.
Published: March 2007

If one is a woman, one is often surprised by a sudden splitting of consciousness, say in walking down Whitehall, when from being the natural inheritor of that civilization, she becomes, on the contrary, outside of it, alien and critical.

Virginia Woolf
Fundamentalist Intolerance or Civil Disobedience?
Authors: GRUNDMANN REINER , MANTZIARIS CHRISTOS
Published: March 2007

Sollen und Sein klaffen bei uns weiter auseinander als bei anderen, weil eben das Sollen sehr hoch gesetzt ist.

Thomas Mann, Doctor Faustus
Emotional and Evaluative Consequences of Inappropriate Leader Displays
Authors: BUCY ERIK P.
Published: March 2007

This study manipulated the appropriateness of presidential reactions to images of compelling news events to investigate how a political leader's nonverbal behavior evokes emotional responses and trait attributions. A repeated-measures experiment examining the combined effects of valence and arousal on viewers' affective reactions and trait evaluations was conducted on two voting-age subject pools in different states. Participants were shown a series of four news story-presidential reaction message sequences and were asked to rate a series of felt emotions and communicative traits. Results indicate an evocative function for leader displays that nonperson-specific news images do not share, suggesting a critical role for appropriate nonverbal communication in politics. Inappropriate message sequences elicited negative emotions more intensely than positive emotions and produced uniformly lower trait evaluations, whereas appropriate sequences elicited positive emotions more intensely. Moreover, negative displays were evaluated as significantly more honest, credible, trustworthy, and appropriate than positive displays.
The Bias Toward Discussing Shared Information
Authors: WITTENBAUM GWEN M.
Published: March 2007

Decision-making groups tend to bias discussion toward (shared) information that all members know at the expense of discussing (unshared) information that a single member knows. The present study sought to understand processes associated with high-status members' (i.e., those with prior task experience) attenuation of this discussion bias. Participants read applications for an assistant professor position and, in 4-person groups, chose between two candidates. Members who had prior experience working on the personnel selection task were less likely to mention shared information than members without prior task experience. The tendency for experienced members to mention shared and unshared information equally seems due not to their having acquired real task competence but rather to perceptions of task competence from themselves and others. Results from impression ratings and recognition task performance are consistent with this conclusion. Implications for understanding the collective information sharing process are considered.
Relationships Between Self-Construal and Verbal Promotion
Authors: ELLIS JENNIFER BUTLER , WITTENBAUM GWEN M.
Published: March 2007

This study examined the relationships between self-construal and verbal promotion. U.S. American college students (N = 196) completed Kim and Leung's (1997) self-construal scale. Forty-three students with extreme scores on the scale's two dimensions of independence and interdependence subsequently participated in a brief phone interview for the possibility of receiving an award of recognition and money. Participants' interview responses were content coded for the amount of self-promotion (extolling one's own attributes) and others-promotion (extolling significant others' contributions to self-success). Self-promotion was positively associated with an independent self-construal but negatively related to an interdependent self-construal. Others-promotion was positively associated with an interdependent self-construal but negatively related to an independent self-construal. The results highlight the importance of self-construal in predicting verbal promotion.
Storytelling Neighborhood
Authors: BALL-ROKEACH SANDRA J. , KIM YONG-CHAN , MATEI SORIN
Published: March 2007

This article develops and tests a communication infrastructure model of belonging among dwellers of urban residential environments. The concept of a communication infrastructure—a storytelling system set in its communication action context—is discussed. Storytelling neighborhood, the communication process through which neighborhood discussion transforms people from occupants of a house to members of a neighborhood, is proposed as an essential component of people's paths to belonging, an attachment to a residential area that is evidenced in everyday exchange behaviors. A multimethod research design is employed to study seven residential areas in Los Angeles through the use of multilingual data collection to discover the relevant factors that determine belonging in new and old immigrant communities. A communication infrastructure model that posits storytelling as an intervening process between structural location and belonging is proposed and tested. Overall, the most important factor in creating belonging was found to be an active and integrated storytelling system that involves residents, community organizations, and local media. The diagnostic potentials of the communication infrastructure approach and the policy implications of the findings are discussed.
Effects of Media Dependencies
Authors: Becker Lee B. , Whitney D. Charles
Published: March 2007

A review of existing research shows some evidence that persons dependent on television news for public affairs information are more likely to have negative attitudes toward government and to be less well informed about that government than persons dependent on newspapers Such a relationship between dependency and evaluations and knowledge of government was replicated here, though only where local government was concerned The meaning of the dependency concept is explored and empirical evidence is offered that dependency is distinct from simple exposure to the media
A Rhetorical Perspective for HIV Education with Black Urban Adolescents
Authors: Bowen Sheryl Perlmutter , Michal-Johnson Paula
Published: March 2007

This essay encourages communication researchers to understand better the rhetorical situation that challenges acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) educators working with out-of-school, African American adolescents in urban centers. Using Bitzer's (1968) schema and research from public health and allied fields, the authors identify those culturally based experiences and attitudes that rhetors (health educators) must integrate into lines of argument and appeals for AIDS prevention campaigns for this particularpool of perceivers. They illustrate the factors that impinge on channel selection, credibility and effectiveness of the rhetor, and message construction.
GRATIFICATIONS SOUGHT AND MEDIA EXPOSURE An Expectancy Value Model
Authors: PALMGREEN PHILIP , RAYBURN J. D.
Published: March 2007

The results of this investigation of television news support an expectancy value conceptualization that gratifications sought from a media object are a function of a person's beliefs that the object possesses certain attributes mediated by the subjective evaluations of these attributes. The findings parallel those in the expectancy value literature in that the addition of attribute importance to the model adds little to its predictive power. The data also support a prediction (derived from Fishbein's theory) that a belief x evaluation index will have an indirect impact (through gratifications sought) on media exposure. Implications for a uses and gratifications theory of media consumption are discussed.
CREATING FICTION FOR WOMEN
Authors: CANTOR MURIEL G. , JONES ELIZABETH
Published: March 2007

This article describes how the contents of two magazines, Redbook and True Story, differ and how fiction is selected for publication. The main body of the article focuses on the writers, their differences and similarities, and how they fit in the commercial system to which they are essential. In conclusion, the role of fiction writers in providing popular culture in America, especially popular culture for women, is discussed.
MERGING USES AND GRATIFICATIONS AND EXPECTANCY-VALUE THEORY
Authors: RAYBURN J. D. , PALMGREEN PHILIP
Published: March 2007

This investigation provides support for a process model of uses and gratifications based upon an expectancy-value approach. Results of the study supported the hypothesis that gratifications obtained are strongly related to the beliefs about media attributes but are not related to evaluations of those attributes. Also, the belief X evaluation products are correlated with gratifications obtained. When controls were instituted for certain intervening variables posited by the model, the hypothesized reductions in various relationships occurred. The model has significant implications for media consumption processes. Further, the results demonstrated that gratifications sought and obtained may be measured at the same level of abstraction, contrary to earlier speculation.
METRO DAILY PULLBACK AND KNOWLEDGE GAPS
Authors: DONOHUE GEORGE A. , TICHENOR PHILLIP J. , OLIEN CLARICE N.
Published: March 2007

In a study of metro daily pullback, analyses of metro and regional daily newspaper penetration were conducted in 87 Minnesota counties. Readership data for metro and regional daily newspapers and small-town weekly and semiweekly papers were studied in 28 communities. Metro daily newspaper penetration has declined sharply in nonmetropolitan areas, with the sharpest drops occurring in agricultural counties. Although change in circulation of regional daily newspapers is negatively related to change in metro circulation, the “compensation” is only partial, because regional gains do not completely offset metro losses, either in circulation or in the amount of content provided. In outlying communities, education is more strongly associated with reading the metro paper than with reading the local paper, a finding that underscores the differential opportunity for access among higher status groups in the community. Among regional communities with daily papers, the relationship between education and reading the metro paper is greater where the pullback has been greater. This difference does not occur in the more rural communities with weeklies. Also, in rural communities, the low opportunity structure for media appears to have consequences similar to universal availability in the metro communities. In both metro and small communities, a change in penetration has little effect on what status groups will have access to the metro newspaper.
Media Use, Issue/Image Discriminations, and Voting
Authors: CHOI HYEON CHEOL , BECKER SAMUEL L.
Published: March 2007

A test of a causal model provided support for the generalization that media use affects voting confidence indirectly. Newspaper reading increased voters' ability to discriminate between the issue positions and images of candidates in a gubernatorial election and that, in turn, increased confidence in voting decisions. Television news viewing had neither a direct nor indirect effect on confidence. Evidence was also found that newspaper reading increases the probability of viewing television news, but television news viewing appears to have little or no effect on probability of reading newspapers.
An Analysis of the Contexts of Antisocial Acts on Prime-Time Television
Authors: POTTER W. JAMES , WARE WILLIAM
Published: March 2007

Prime-time commercial television content is analyzed to determine the frequency and the context of antisocial activity enacted by heroes, villains, and secondary characters. All three types of characters were found to commit a great deal of antisocial activity. Furthermore, the context in which such activity is portrayed is very antisocial. It is almost always shown as being rewarding to and justified by the perpetrators. The study also indicated that a great deal of the antisocial activity is portrayed as being internally motivated.
Goal Types, Gender, and Locus of Control in Managing Interpersonal Conflict
Authors: CANARY DANIEL J. , CUNNINGHAM ELLEN M. , CODY MICHAEL J.
Published: March 2007

This article examines how actors' goals, gender, and locus of control affect conflict strategy behaviors. Extending a research program that investigates influence goals, conflict episodes were categorized into subsets of proactive and reactive goal types. Moreover, a measure of conflict locus of control (CLOC) was developed to assess actors' internal and external control orientations toward their interpersonal conflicts. Results revealed that distributive strategies were used more when defending oneself, whereas integrative tactics were used more to change one's relationship. Females were more likely than males to use personal criticism and anger strategies, whereas males were more likely to use denial tactics. In addition, CLOC internality was positively associated with integrative tactics, whereas CLOC externality was positively associated with avoidance and sarcasm strategies.
Can Information Loss Be Reversed
Authors: KURKE LANCE B. , WEICK KARL E. , RAVLIN ELIZABETH C.
Published: March 2007

As people transmit information through a communication chain, they drop details, add interpretations, and alter implications. To answer the question, are these losses and alterations reversible, subjects completed a serial reproduction task and then sent the simplified result through the system a second time to see if the lost features would be regained. Subjects restored the edited material, and their reconstruction closely approximated the original input. Implications for uncertainty absorption, organizational learning, adaptability, and information processing are discussed.
Television-Evoked Thoughts and Their Relation to Comprehension
Authors: HÖIJER BIRGITTA
Published: March 2007

Two studies of thoughts in relation to viewing of expository television programs are presented. In one study, in-depth interviews were conducted with 14 subjects immediately after watching a program about acid pollution of the environment. In the other study, 62 subjects answered a questionnaire in writing after watching a program about natural science. Comprehension as well as thoughts were measured in both studies. The expository programs gave rise to a good number of thoughts, which were classified into different categories. The studies show a close relationship between comprehension and thoughts and demonstrate that viewers can be engaged in deep cognitive activities by expository television discourse. Further, different reception profiles among the viewers were found, which correlated closely with topic-relevant previous knowledge.
Advertising and Children
Authors: ROBERTSON THOMAS S. , WARD SCOTT , GATIGNON HUBERT , KLEES DONNA M.
Published: March 2007

This is a cross-cultural study of the television-viewing behavior of children in three age groups and the generation of both product requests to parents and parent-child conflict. A model of viewing and response patterns is hypothesized, and cultural factors are investigated across U.S., Japanese, and English families. Results are relevant in the current public policy debates in the United States, Europe, and Japan concerning advertising to children.
Multilevel Analysis in Mass Communication Research
Authors: PAN ZHONGDANG , McLEOD JACK M.
Published: March 2007

This article presents an epistemological view of levels of analysis. According to this view, four types of relationships need to be differentiated: macro-macro, macro-micro, micro-micro, and micro-macro. The two within-level relationships are linked by the two cross-level relationships that, in turn, are explicated by various theories of organizational, institutional, and social processes. Mass communication is thus conceived of as a process from production to consumption that occurs at both micro-individual and macro-social levels. The contributions of this multilevel view of mass communications to theoretical development in the field is illustrated by analyzing three prominent theories in our field: the knowledge gap, cultivation, and the spiral of silence. Finally, the article discusses the available research techniques and strategies for dealing with multilevel research questions.
History and Homogeneity
Authors: STOREY DOUGLAS
Published: March 2007

This article investigates the influence of two perceived membership-group characteristics (history and value homogeneity) on levels of attributional confidence and deindividuation of group members; on two interaction strategies, interrogation and self-disclosure; and on the likelihood of personal-level and group-level communication about current events. A completely crossed, two-factor, within-subjects experimental design was developed for this study. Perceived group history and perceived group value homogeneity were both manipulated variables. Homogeneity was positively related to attributional confidence, deindividuation, interrogation, and self-disclosure, whereas history was positively related to attributional confidence. The study indicates that perceived group value homogeneity eases the process of intragroup interaction and that perceived group history also positively influences intragroup processes, although perhaps more indirectly and to a lesser degree than does group homogeneity. Implications for public communication campaigns that aim to increase personal involvement in public and community affairs or to tap social / cultural identity as a first step in changing socially undesirable behaviors are discussed in light of these results.
An Information-Processing Model of Jury Decision Making
Authors: BOSTER FRANKLIN J. , HUNTER JOHN E. , HALE JEROLD L.
Published: March 2007

An experiment was designed to test a model of jury decision making. This model, the linear discrepancy model, is an information-processing model which posits that when jurors hear an argument during deliberation, they adjust their opinion toward the message. The amount of change is a linear function of the discrepancy between the opinion expressed in the message and the jurors' opinions. An unequal-speaking version of this model, contrasting the speaking frequency of the foreperson and other jury members was constructed. Trial outcomes and postdeliberation variances were predicted accurately by the model in an experiment employing impaneled jurors.
Children's Reported Investment of Mental Effort When Viewing Television
Authors: BORDEAUX BARBARA R. , LANGE GARRETT
Published: March 2007

This cross-sectional survey of 116 Black second-, fourth-, and sixth-grade children and their parents included examining children's active, conscious cognitive processing of television program information during home viewing. During in-school interviews, children reported their investment of mental effort when watching child and adult types of programs. The results offer support for the view that children's mental-effort investment varies as a function of viewer age and the type of program being viewed. Children's reported investment of mental effort when viewing child programs significantly decreased from second to sixth grade. Although there appeared to be age-related increases in mental-effort investment for certain adult-program subcategories, overall investment scores for adult programs were not significantly different among the three grades. Measures of parental participation bore low but reliable relationships to children's reports of mental-effort investment for child types of programs. However, children's home-viewing variables and program familiarity explained little of the observed variation in mental-effort investment.
Children's Cognitive Representations of Discourse
Authors: BADZINSKI DIANE M.
Published: March 2007

This study examined the role of vocal cues in children's cognitive representations of texts. Specifically, vocal cues were expected to affect children's selection of a representation and the speed with which such mental images were drawn. A total of 80 children from two grade levels (first vs. third) listened to stories told with vocal expressions that either strongly or weakly cued the emotional states of the story characters. The children's comprehension of the narratives was assessed through free recall, cued recall, and recognition tasks. In general, vocal cues influenced the speed and likelihood of constructing inferences. Contrary to prediction, the cues failed to enhance memory for explicit text concepts. The findings are discussed in terms of developing a model specifying the relationship between vocal cues and text understanding.
Person-Centered Comforting in the Hospice Interdisciplinary Team
Authors: ZIMMERMANN STEPHANIE , APPLEGATE JAMES L.
Published: March 2007

This study examined person-centered comforting communication among members of hospice interdisciplinary teams. Five teams were studied in one hospice organization. The results indicate that hospice team members employ sophisticated comforting strategies in responding to another team member who appears emotionally distressed. Training in hospice was negatively associated with person-centered comforting message strategies. Results from the analysis of survey items indicate that satisfaction with perceived comforting communication from other team members was positively related to satisfaction with the team's communication and evaluation of the team's success in accomplishing its tasks.
Characteristics of Vocal Communication Between Young Adults and Their Parents and Grandparents
Authors: MONTEPARE JOANN M. , STEINBERG JILL , ROSENBERG BARBARA
Published: March 2007

This study examined characteristics of young adult children's vocal communication with parents and grandparents. Seven young adult women telephoned their parents and grandparents, had a brief conversation with them, and described a collage to them. Voice samples of the conversations were rated by groups of 12-15 male and female judges on scales reflecting vocal qualities and interpersonal attitudes. Judges also guessed with whom the speakers were talking. Finally, collage descriptions were coded for message complexity. The major findings were that although speakers did not manifest differences in the use of complex linguistic forms, their voices were generally higher in pitch and sounded more babyish, feminine, and unpleasant when conversing with grandparents versus parents. Moreover, speakers were judged to be more deferential and congenial when speaking to grandparents. Variations in the nature of young adult grandchildren's vocal behavior were interpreted more as reactions to familial obligations than to the perceived cognitive capacities of elderly grandparents.
Initiatives and Ownership
Authors: HANSON JARICE , CONROY THOMAS J. , DONNELLY DAVID
Published: March 2007

Throughout the 1980s, the development of high-definition television (HDTV) was discussed as the possible savior of the communications manufacturing sector of the U.S. economy, the bargaining chip for global information distribution, and the one technological development that held the key to both the telecommunications and defense industries for the 21st century. With such promise, it is surprising that HDTV did not become a reality sooner. Instead, it has become a case for shifts in both U.S. industrial policy and economic theory. Winston (1989) remarked that “HDTV has become the newest symbol of America's supposed industrial decline, with the networks, the electronics manufacturers and Hollywood all accused of participating in the failure” (p. 124). A flurry of research activity late in 1990, however, prompted Federal Communications Commission (FCC) chair, Alfred C. Sikes, to comment, “The conventional wisdom is that we are a poor third [internationally] in HDTV.... It's my view that U.S. companies are on the leading edge” (Andrews, 1990, p. A1).2
On the “Isolation” of Humanists
Authors: WEEDMAN JUDITH
Published: March 2007

The invisible college has been shown to be an important part of the information environment in several scientific specialties, but humanists have been thought to work in comparative isolation. This study of 123 scholars of children's literature found an invisible college within a specialty in the humanities. Members were more highly connected than others in the field, more senior, had published more, and were more likely to have their written work listed as influential. More than 50% of all respondents indicated that at least 50% of the time they discussed their work in its early stages, discussed the specific primary sources about which they were planning to write, and found ideas for their scholarship arising out of informal communication.
Effects of Censorship Disclaimers in Persian Gulf War Television News on Negative Thought Elaboration
Authors: NEWHAGEN JOHN E.
Published: March 2007

An experiment investigated how viewers process censorship disclaimers in 1991 Persian Gulf war television news stories. Gilbert's two-stage verification model was used to test whether images of death and suffering would affect the assessment of censorship disclaimers. Results supported predictions that the mere presence of a disclaimer increases cognitive load on the viewer, thus reducing thought elaboration about it. Further, when the disclaimer is assessed for its narrative meaning, capacity is increased, and more thought elaboration about the story takes place. Disclaimers at the beginning of stories were more effective in promoting thought elaboration than disclaimers at the end. Results suggest disclaimers may be an effective device in messages that are not complex or cognitively demanding. However, their effects may be neutralized by the kinds of images that populate violent television programming.
Value-Affirmative and Value-Protective Processing of Alcohol Education Messages That Include Statistical Evidence or Anecdotes
Authors: SLATER MICHAEL D. , ROUNER DONNA
Published: March 2007

This study of persuasion processes in a value-relevant context tests effects of the presence or absence of statistical evidence and the presence or absence of anecdotal evidence, crossed across three base messages regarding different alcohol use issues. Results suggest that a variant of central processing as described by Petty and Cacioppo (1986) was used: Involvement predicted greater message-relevant responses only when the message was congruent with recipients' own values regarding alcohol use. Among recipients for whom the message was value-congruent, messages with statistical evidence were rated more persuasive, more believable, and better written; anecdotal evidence had no effect. Among recipients for whom the message was value-discrepant, messages with anecdotal evidence were rated more persuasive, more believable, and (marginally) better written, and statistical evidence had no effect. Path analyses also suggest that peripheral-processing strategies are employed when the message is value-discrepant, and central-processing strategies are used when the message is value-congruent.
The Determinants of International News Flow
Authors: KIM KYUNGMO , BARNETT GEORGE A.
Published: March 2007

This research examines the structure of international news flow and its determinants, using network analysis. International newspaper and periodicals trade data in Commodity Trade Statistics published by the United Nations are used to describe the international news flow network. NEGOPY reveals the inequality of international news flow between the core and the periphery. The Western industrialized countries are at the center, dominating international news flow. Cluster analysis reveals that the international news flow network is also structured into eight geographical-linguistic groups. In sum, the periphery is not only dominated by the unequal vertical news exchange between it and the core, but also marginalized by the news exchange among the core. Regression analysis indicates that the structure of international news flow is influenced by a country's economic development, the language(s) its people speak, its physical location, political freedom, and population. Among them, economic development is the most important factor.
Coherence Patterns in Alzheimer's Discourse
Authors: ELLIS DONALD G.
Published: March 2007

This article reports on linguistic features and patterns of coherence in two levels (mild and advanced) of discourse produced by Alzheimer's patients. It argues and demonstrates that as the disease progresses, the discourse of Alzheimer's patients becomes pregrammatical in that it is vocabulary driven and reliant on meaning-based features of discourse rather than grammatically based features. Theories of pregrammatical and grammatical modes of processing and comprehension are discussed and used as an explanatory framework for understanding 4 fundamental coherence requirements. These are grounding, temporal coherence, spatial coherence, and thematic coherence. Data collected from Alzheimer's patients are used to illustrate how these types of coherence vary from earlier to later stages of the disease.
The Role of Efficacy and Outcome Expectations in the Decision to Withhold Relational Complaints
Authors: MAKOUL GREGORY , ROLOFF MICHAEL E.
Published: March 2007

A growing body of research demonstrates that intimates do not always confront their partners with grievances. Although useful, the extant research has not looked to the fundamental, goal-oriented nature of confrontation for factors that explain why intimates are unwilling to confront their partners. This study examines the extent to which an individual's outcome expectations (i.e., confidence that a given behavior will yield a particular outcome) and efficacy expectations (i.e., confidence that he or she can enact the relevant behavior) predict the likelihood that a confrontation will take place.
Rethinking the Social Distance Corollary
Authors: EVELAND WILLIAM P. , NATHANSON AMY I. , DETENBER BENJAMIN H. , McLEOD DOUGLAS M.
Published: March 2007

Researchers have proposed a social distance corollary to the third-person perception to explain the common finding that as comparison groups become more different from the self or more generally described, the size of the third-person perception increases (i.e., media messages are perceived to have greater negative impact on others than self). The two studies presented here investigate whether third-person perceptions are influenced by social distance or perceived likelihood of exposure. We differentiate three ways of operationalizing social distance and examine whether perceived impact increases along each dimension of social distance. The results of our studies demonstrated that perceived likelihood of exposure was a strong predictor of perceived impact, whereas the perceived social distance of the comparison group was not. These findings indicate that previous social distance findings may actually be an artifact of inferences about how likely comparison groups are to be exposed to the media content in question.
Neuropsychological Function, Drug Abuse, and Violence
Authors: FISHBEIN DIANA
Published: March 2007

Delineation of the biological substrates of violence in substance abusers would be valuable in developing therapeutic interventions for substance abusers who tend to be refractory to conventional treatments. Substance abusers with chronically violent behavior show more severity and poorer prognosis of their substance abuse disorder and more criminal activity. Violence may share many of the same underlying mechanisms as substance abuse, given the comorbidity and commonalities in behavioral dimensions, including childhood and personality disorders with biological underpinnings. Neuropsychological dysfunction consistently characterizes both drug abuse and violence and may contribute to traits often cited as precursors to both, for example, impulsivity, poor decision-making ability, disinhibition, and inability to assess consequences. Deficits in executive cognitive functioning subserved specifically by the prefrontal cortex are implicated in substance abusers with violent behavior.
Community Response to Crime in a Sun Belt City
Authors: SCHAEFER ROGER C. , NICHOLLS WILLIAM W.
Published: March 2007

This research examines a crime-specific program designed to mobilize citizens to provide information to the police about crimes in exchange for money and a guarantee of anonymity. The Crime Line program is nongovernmental and derives its greatest financial support from the business community. An analysis of the data shows that the program tends to reflect the source of its contributions.
Inmate Classification Systems
Authors: CARBONELL JOYCE LYNN
Published: March 2007

Following a suggestion by Warren (1971) two inmate classification systems were cross-tabulated to examine the concordance between them. Jesness Sequential I-level ratings and MMPI types were obtained on a sample of inmates admitted to a Federal Corrections Institution. I-level subtypes and MMPI types were collapsed into subsets and cross-tabulated. Although there was a significant chi-square, the only groups that appear to be concordant between the systems are those that each system labels as most pathological. Regression analysis provided support for this finding, as only a small proportion of the variance in I-level is accounted for by MMPI. It appears that MMPI and I-level, while both capable of classifying inmates, perform their classifications on different dimensions.
Perceptions of Appropriate Services for Juvenile Offenders
Authors: MULVEY EDWARD P. , REPPUCCI N. DICKON
Published: March 2007

This study provides a descriptive view of juvenile justice gatekeepers' perceptions of appropriate services for juvenile offenders. These personnel do not appear to have a high regard for alternative services without a therapeutic orientation. As these gatekeepers are lynchpins of both the referral process and the establishment of alternative services in juvenile justice, this predilection is important to note as a factor that may motivate accommodations by these personnel to changes in juvenile justice policy. Professionals in this system seem most likely to believe in therapeutic treatment for juvenile offenders, and this fact could go further than the intents of any policy mandates toward determining the actual practice of juvenile justice.
A Scale to Measure Attitudes toward Prisoners
Authors: MELVIN KENNETH B. , GRAMLING LORRAINE K. , GARDNER WILLIAM M.
Published: March 2007

The construction and validation of the Attitudes toward Prisoners (ATP) scale are described. Factor analysis resulted in a 36-item Likert scale with the items correlating at least .47 with a general factor. The ATP scale possesses moderate to high split-half (r= .84 to .92) and test-retest (r= .82) reliability. No evidence of response distortion was found. A number of comparisons between selected groups provided considerable evidence of validity. Groups of prisoners, as well as persons engaged in prisoner rehabilitation or prison reform, scored highest on the scale. Intermediate-scoring groups consisted of students, a community sample, and correctional officers. As predicted, the group with lowest average ATP scores consisted of law enforcement officers.
Implementing a Community Policing Model for Work with Juveniles
Authors: BELKNAP JOANNE , MORASH MERRY , TROJANOWICZ ROBERT
Published: March 2007

Based on extensive, structured interviews with 59 police officers, an effort was made to explain police behavior and to analyze issues relevant to the conceptualization and implementation of a community policing model. Theories of role identity were used to determine officers' ideal, actual, and behavioral identities in interactions with teenagers, complainants, and supervisors when dealing with a case of “rowdy teens.” A purposive sample was drawn representing foot and motor patrol, as well as race (black and white) and gender. The findings support the implementation of the community police model as was intended by the staff, and suggests the validity of the foot patrol concept. The results did not find gender, race, education, and years on the force predictive of police identity orientation or behavior. However, differences between foot and motor patrol in terms of role identity orientation and behavior were found. The research also suggests the importance of role identity orientation as a useful concept in explaining police behavior, and the discussion pinpoints areas and methods that would be fruitful in future research.
Cognitive Problem-Solving Skills in Antisocial Rapists
Authors: GRIER PRISCILLA E.
Published: March 2007

Claims have been made that sexual offenders are deficient in interpersonal problem-solving skills. This study examined whether incarcerated sexual offenders ( N=30) differed in means-ends thinking when compared to a nonoffender control group ( N=30). Overall, there were no differences between the two groups on problem-solving skills as measured by the Means-Ends Problem-Solving procedure. On one dependent variable, involving a task that asked the individual to conceptualize a means of reconciliation in a heterosexual relationship, sexual offenders generated fewer means for solving problems than nonoffender controls.
Delinquency as a Creative Enterprise
Authors: AGNEW ROBERT
Published: March 2007

This article provides a critical review of the literature on delinquency and creativity, focusing on (1) the definition of creativity and its relation to the concepts of “constraint” and “free-will,” (2) the relationship between creativity and delinquency, and (3) the factors that determine whether creativity is exercised in a positive or negative way. While this literature contains many gaps, it is important because it challenges the positivist explanations of delinquency that currently dominate the field. Such explanations argue that adolescents are constrained to engage in delinquency by biological, psychological, and—most commonly—social forces. The creativity literature, however, suggests that the emphasis on constraint may be overstated and that delinquency may best be viewed as a creative enterprise for many adolescents.
The Clinical Assessment and Prediction of Violent Behavior:
Authors: JACKSON MARGARET A.
Published: March 2007

An argument is made that many recent studies on the clinical prediction of dangerous behavior have been, given the methodological complexities involved, overly consumed with questions of validity. It is suggested that while issues of accuracy of outcome will and should remain central, there is also value in concentrating on the sheer description of the activities involved in the making of clinical decisions, on the use of contrived experimentation under controlled conditions, and on attempts to establish interclinical agreement with regard to the ascription of dangerousness. It is proposed that studies on accuracy of outcome require edification through the examination of how individual clinicians and members of interdisciplinary groups arrive at their extrapolations and how they infer causality. Several studies, two based upon the author's own work, are reviewed in an attempt to show how a firm base can be laid for future research on the gauging of clinical expertise.