Reflections upon charitable giving: A comparison of individuals from business, ‘manual’ and professional backgrounds

This paper compares three groups of individuals in their beliefs about charitable giving. Focusing upon their preferences for different kinds of needy recipients, the paper compares the views of 49 people from (a) business, (b) professional and (c) ‘manual’ backgrounds. Their justifications of need provided the basis for comparisons on the basic themes of emotional response to requests for funds, to local versus overseas aid and to the relative roles of charity and state provision. It is argued that distinctions between the groups show the need to examine specific beliefs as well as generally held ideologies about charity. In addition, a further comparison of the groups is used to argue that they exemplify differences in the actual form of the gift relationship. These differences in form show the importance of examining charitable giving within specific social contexts, as well as with reference to the various ways of raising funds.     

A note on russell's paradox in locally cartesian closed categories

Working in the fragment of Martin-Löfs extensional type theory [12] which has products (but not sums) of dependent types, we consider two additional assumptions: firstly, that there are (strong) equality types; and secondly, that there is a type which is universal in the sense that terms of that type name all types, up to isomorphism. For such a type theory, we give a version of Russell's paradox showing that each type possesses a closed term and (hence) that all terms of each type are provably equal. We consider the kind of category theoretic structure which corresponds to this kind of type theory and obtain a categorical version of the paradox. A special case of this result is the degeneracy of a locally cartesian closed category with a morphism which is generic in the sense that every other morphism in the category can be obtained from it via pullback.The financial support of the Royal Society in London is gratefully acknowledged.     

Telescoping is not time compression: A model

A model of telescoping is proposed that assumes no systematic errors in dating. Rather, the overestimation of recent occurrences of events is based on the combination of three factors: (1) Retention is greater for recent events; (2) errors in dating, though unbiased, increase linearly with the time since the dated event; and (3) intrusions often occur from events outside the period being asked about, but such intrusions do not come from events that have not yet occurred. In Experiment 1, we found that recall for colloquia fell markedly over a 2-year interval, the magnitude of errors in psychologists' dating of the colloquia increased at a rate of .4 days per day of delay, and the direction of the dating error was toward the middle of the interval. In Experiment 2, the model used the retention function and dating errors from the first study to predict the distribution of the actual dates of colloquia recalled as being within a 5-month period. In Experiment 3, the findings of the first study were replicated with colloquia given by, instead of for, the subjects.     

The Children's Firesetting Interview with psychiatrically referred and nonreferred children

This study evaluated the Children's Firesetting Interview (CFI). The measure was developed to operationalize multiple domains of functioning derived from a riskfactor model of firesetting. The model poses that child, parent, and family characteristics promote firesetting and continuation of a pattern of firesetting. Major factors include curiosity about fire, involvement in and exposure to firerelated activities, and knowledge about first safety The CFI, consisting of 46 questions reflecting six a prioridimensions, was administered to 519 children (ages 6–13) recruited from nonpatient, outpatient, and inpatient samples. Internal consistency and testretest reliability of the measure were satisfactory. Criterion validity was supported by the findings that firesetters showed greater curiosity about fire, involvement in firerelated activities, exposure to models/materials, and knowledge about things that burn than did nonfiresetters. These findings did not vary as a function of the child's patient status or level of antisocial behavior. Implications for the evaluation of firesetting risk are discussed.This study was supported by grant MH-39976 from the Antisocial and Violent Behavior Branch of the National Institute of Mental Health and by a Research Scientist Development Award (MH00353) from the National Institute of Mental Health. The authors acknowledge the constructive suggestions of two anonymous reviewers.     

Identifying depression in children: A comparison of alternative selection criteria

This study evaluated commonly used methods of identifying depressed children and examined the extent to which the conclusions about correlates of dysfunction vary among different selection criteria. Child psychiatric patients (N=237,ages 7–12) and their parents participated and completed measures to permit identification of depressed children on the basis of three separate criteria, including selfreport scores on the Children's Depression Inventory, parent-reported scores for the same measure, and a DSM-III diagnosis of major depression. The study examined whether depressed and nondepressed children, defined separately by the different criteria, differed in a variety of depression-related symptoms, cognitive processes, and social activity. The results indicated little overlap in the persons identified as depressed on the basis of child-or parent-completed CDI scores or DSM-III diagnosis. Depressed and nondepressed children tended to differ across all domains (depression-related symptoms, cognitive processes, and social activity) for each selection criterion. However, significant differences were evident in these domains only when the selection criterion and other domains were assessed with the same informant (e.g., self-report) and hence shared a common method (rater) component. The findings underscore the potential influence that method factors may have in influencing the conclusions that are drawn regarding the correlates of childhood depression.Completion of this research was supported by a Research Scientist Development Award (MH00353) and by a grant (MH35408) from the National Institute of Mental Health. The author is grateful to Debra Bass, Antoinette Rodgers, and Todd Siegel for assistance with this project.     

Overt integrity tests versus personality-based measures of delinquency: An empirical comparison

This study examined the ability of both an overt integrity test and a personality-based measure of delinquency to predict on-the-job theft and counterproductivity. A heterogeneous sample of 105 employees anonymously completed both tests and a criterion checklist that included a 9-item theft subscale and a 12-item counterproductivity subscale. Results indicated that the overt integrity test was a superior predictor of both on-the-job theft and drug abuse compared to the personality-based measure. The overt integrity test was also a slightly better predictor of general counterproductivity. These findings and their implications are discussed.