My place,your place,and no place: Behavior settings as a risk factor for HIV-related injection practices of drug users in Baltimore,Maryland

Information is sparse on the social context of illicit drug injection behaviors and their relationship to HIV infection. This study examined relationships between injection settings, injecting with others, and HIV risk behaviors of sharing needles and not cleaning contaminated needles in a sample of 630 inner-city injecting drug users in Baltimore, MD. Through open-ended interviews, five primary settings of injection behavior were identified. These settings included one's own, friends' and mother's residence, shooting galleries, and semipublic areas. Most participants reported injecting in their own residence (92%) and friends' residence (86%) in the prior 6 months. In a multiple regression analysis, injecting at friends' residence, in shooting galleries, and in semipublic areas and frequency of injecting with others were significantly associated with frequency of sharing uncleaned needles, “slipping” (i.e., failure to disinfect shared needles), and not always cleaning used needles before injecting. Results suggest that interventions may benefit from targeting settings as well as behaviors to reduce the spread of HIV. This research was supported by grants DA04334, DA05911, DA06313, and DA08985 from the National Institute on Drug Abuse.     

“Subordination” and sensitivity to nonverbal cues: A study of married working women

Sex Roles - Women's superiority in decoding nonverbal cues of emotion has often been discussed as an adaptation to low status. To examine the relation of status to nonverbal sensitivity,...     

Interpersonal Correlates of Narcissism in Adolescents

Researchers investigated the relationship between measures of interpersonal behavior and narcissism. Eight octant measures of interpersonal behavior were constructed, and validity and reliability estimates were obtained. High school and junior high school students (N = 333) completed five measures of narcissistic vulnerability, eight octant measures of interpersonal behavior, and a measure of social desirability. Canonical correlational analysis indicated a specific pattern of interpersonal behaviors for individuals with differing levels and types of narcissistic vulnerability. A multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) indicated that scores on several of the scales were found to differ significantly by sex and by treatment for emotional, behavioral, or educational difficulties. Implications for counseling are considered.     

Illusions of Safety in a Risky World: A Study of College Students' Condom Use

The role that costs, benefits, and perceptions of invulnerability play in condom use was examined in a sample of students ( N = 211) at 4-year and 2-year colleges. In multiple regression analyses, past condom use was related to relative invulnerability, low present risk, and inexperience. Less intended condom use was associated with high perceptions of relative invulnerability and low perceptions of present risk. It appears that many college students feel protected from HIV because they judge their current sexual environment to be safe due to monogamy, sexual history taking, and the ability to tell a partner's HIV status. Independent of that, feelings of relative invulnerability are associated with more condom use—perhaps an accurate judgment of past risky behavior.     

Aggression Observation Scale for Group Psychotherapy

An observational scale to record aggressive behaviors, defenses, and interventions that occur during a psychotherapy group has been developed. Content and process items were included. The content items focus on the spoken material and are on a continuum of increasing group members' awareness of and responsibility for their anger. The process items are directed to underlying psychodynamic issues on a continuum from avoiding anger, to indirect and then expression of anger. Leader interventions (responses) are also included. The development of the scale, the Aggression Observation Scale for Group Psychotherapy (AOSGP), is described including pilot testing and reliability and validity findings.     

Anger of women incest survivors

Adult women survivors of incest (n = 68) were compared to other women (n = 93) with respect to several questionnaire measures of manifest anger. The vast majority of the research participants were white, middle class, heterosexual, and Michigan residents. Incest survivors were angrier than other women, both in general and at their parents. Anger toward mother and anger toward father were comparable. Few incest survivors blamed either parent for the incest, except in those speciflc cases where the parent was a perpetrator. Not surprisingly, incest survivors were particularly angry at parent perpetrators when they were held responsible for the abuse. Incest occurred in families where other traumas were present, and the extent of these other traumas was also associated with increased anger at parents. Women who identified with feminism and who had participated in therapy were angrier at their parents than were other women. Therapy implications of these results were discussed.This paper is based on a doctoral dissertation submitted to the University of Michigan by the first author, under the supervision of the second author. The help and encouragement of committee members Margaret Buttenheim, Kathleen Faller, and Sheryl Olson are gratefully acknowledged. Howard Gottlieb, Judith Ballou, Donna Silbert, and Robert Daniels also contributed substantially to this research.Financial support was provided by the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues, the Horace D. Rackham School of Graduate Studies, and the Department of Psychology at the University of Michigan.     

Gender,Interpersonal Orientation,and manipulation tactic use in close relationships

Investigations have focused on influence tactic pattern use in relation to socialized power differences due to gender. We carried Swap and Rubin's (1987) Interpersonal Orientation (IO) variable into the Buss, Gomes, Higgins, & Lauterbach (1987) framework for manipulation tactic use. Subjects were male and female undergraduates (N= 53) who scored either in the upper or lower quartiles of the IO scale. At testing, high and low IO subjects completed a demographic questionnaire and the Manipulation Tactics index with regard to a close, opposite-sex friend. We found that high IO females reported more frequent use of manipulation tactics than low IO females. Males' reported use of manipulation tactics was unrelated to their IO status. The results were discussed in terms of possible adaptive patterns developed by females to deal with perceived chronic powerlessness.     

S&T indicators for strategic planning and assessment of public research institutions

This article presents an approach we have developed for the assessment of public research institutions in the natural sciences and engineering. The method consists in the exploitation of available S&T databases and indicators, including bibliometrics (databases of scientific as well as technical literature), patents, and internal data. Results are therefore derived through multiple databases. The objective is to profile a specific national R&D community in order to assess the positioning of a public institution or program within the community to which it belongs. It involves obtaining the profile of the evolution of an R&D area, the R&D performers, the financing and support institutions, the users of R&D results, and the interactions between all these actors. A case-study of Canadian research in polymers is presented. Part of this research was financed by the National Research Council of Canada, and by a strategic grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. The research benefited from the expertise of Robert Letellier, Robert H. Marchessault, Jacques Martel, and Marielle Piché, and from the technical assistance of Maryse Prud’homme, Marcel Parent, and Benoit Longpré.