Peer and school problems in the lives of urban adolescents: Frequency, difficulty, and relation to adjustment

This study examined the occurrence of problem situations in the peer and school domains and their relation to adjustment among urban adolescents. Students from three urban middle schools (N = 176) serving a predominantly African American population rated 61 problem situations identified in a previous qualitative study and completed measures of adjustment. Ratings of frequency and difficulty confirmed the relevance of these situations for this population. Confirmatory factor analyses suggested that covariation in the frequency and difficulty of problem situations could be represented by separate factors representing peer situations involving friends, other peer situations, and school situations. The number of different problem situations experienced was significantly correlated with physical and relational aggression, delinquency, depression, anxiety, and self-worth. Several of these relations were strongest for peer situations that did not involve friends. There were few gender differences in the strength of these relations.     

The Economic Benefits of Increased Treatment Duration and Intensity in Residential and Outpatient Substance Abuse Treatment Settings

This study presents estimates of the economic benefits to society from community-based substance abuse treatment. The analysis focused on the impact of length of stay and frequency of counseling on clients' crime-related and health care costs, welfare receipts, and income taxes. The results indicate that the benefits from an additional day of treatment were on average $21 for short-term residential treatment (or 29% the cost of a day of care), $13 for outpatient drug-free treatment (or 94% the cost of a day of care), and $5 for long-term residential treatment (or 9% the cost of a day of care). No benefits were found from additional counseling provided by a client's primary therapist. Withthe exception of short-term residential care, estimated increases in client earnings from longer lengths of stayexceeded the benefits to society. Our estimates do not include benefits realized during treatment or beyond the year after treatment.     

Methods for Practising Ethics in Research and Innovation: A Literature Review,Critical Analysis and Recommendations

This paper provides a systematic literature review, analysis and discussion of methods that are proposed to practise ethics in research and innovation (R&I). Ethical considerations concerning the impacts of R&I are increasingly important, due to the quickening pace of technological innovation and the ubiquitous use of the outcomes of R&I processes in society. For this reason, several methods for practising ethics have been developed in different fields of R&I. The paper first of all presents a systematic search of academic sources that present and discuss such methods. Secondly, it provides a categorisation of these methods according to three main kinds: (1) ex ante methods, dealing with emerging technologies, (2) intra methods, dealing with technology design, and (3) ex post methods, dealing with ethical analysis of existing technologies. Thirdly, it discusses the methods by considering problems in the way they deal with the uncertainty of technological change, ethical technology design, the identification, analysis and resolving of ethical impacts of technologies and stakeholder participation. The results and discussion of our literature review are valuable for gaining an overview of the state of the art and serve as an outline of a future research agenda of methods for practising ethics in R&I.     

Semantic versus phonological false recognition in aging and Alzheimer's disease

Patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD) have been found to exhibit lower levels of false recognition of semantic associates compared with healthy older adults. Because these patients may show impaired performance of episodic and semantic memory tasks, this finding could be explained by deficits in episodic memory, semantic memory, or both. The authors adapted a paradigm for comparison of semantic versus phonological false recognition. They found that: (a) patients with AD exhibited lower levels of corrected false recognition of semantic, phonological, and hybrid (mixed semantic and phonological) lists than older adults, and (b) patients with AD showed very similar levels of false recognition for all list types. These results suggest that only episodic memory deficits are necessary to explain the lower level of false recognition of semantic associates observed in patients with AD when compared to older adults. Additionally, (c) older adults showed greater levels of semantic, phonological, and hybrid false recognition than younger adults, extending previous false recognition research of semantically related words and categorized colored photographs to phonologically related words.     

Gender,gender role,and body image

The relationship between gender role and body image was examined in this research. Females and males who differed in their gender roles (i.e., masculine, feminine, androgynous, or undifferentiated) completed the Body-Self Relations Questionnaire (B. A. Winstead & T. F. Cash, Reliability and Validity of the Body-Self Questionnaire: A New Measure of Body Image, paper presented at the meeting of the Southeastern Psychological Association, New Orleans, Louisiana, 1984) and a measure of self-esteem. Results indicated that feminine females evaluated their physical appearance less favorably than androgynous females, although physical appearance was equally important to both groups. The importance of the masculine component of gender role was reflected in the favorable body-image ratings of androgynous and masculine females in all domains (i.e., physical appearance, physical fitness, and physical health), and in the unfavorable ratings of feminine males in the physical fitness domain. Regression analyses to predict body-image ratings indicated that while self-esteem was an important predictor, it did not account for the relationships between gender, gender role, and body image. Implications of the findings for future research on the relationships between gender role, body image, and indices of mental health are discussed.The authors would like to thank the consulting editor for her invaluable comments on earlier drafts of this article.