Desperately Seeking Mother

Poem tracking suicide of adult son on his mother.     

Integrative Complexity of Public Beliefs Toward Wildfire Management: Development of a Scale

Integrative complexity is a useful tool for examining the complex way people think about dichotomous, highly charged issues. However, the qualitative nature of this research is lengthy and requires much work from respondents and investigators alike. This paper presents the process by which a combination open‐ended and fixed‐item scale was developed to measure the complexity of thought that is consistent with integrative complexity. We used the controversial issue of wildfire management in developing the scale because it has become a pervasive natural resource concern that has divided the public's perceptions regarding its management. The resulting scale is designed for use in large surveys across any number of natural resource issues.     

Cooperative Learning Contingencies: Unrelated versus Related Individual and Group Contingencies

College students operating under related cooperative contingencies (students had to earn individual credit before being considered for group credit) showed more consistent individual and group improvement on exam performance than students operating under unrelated contingencies (individual credit and group credit were independently determined). A balanced ratio between individual and group credit proved to be the most productive ratio under the related contingency, whereas a ratio favoring group credit over individual credit proved most productive under the unrelated contingency. In general, a ratio favoring individual credit over group credit was the least productive in promoting both individual and group improvement under both unrelated and related contingencies. The findings showed less difference in improvement of exam scores for students of different performance levels than had been evident in previous research.     

The not-so-crypto crypto-Jews of New Mexico: update on a decades-old debate

For over two decades an academic debate has raged over a possible crypto-Jewish presence in New Mexico. On one side are scholars who advance two claims: first, that many of New Mexico’s early colonists were crypto-Jews and second, that practices associated with some Hispano families in modern New Mexico reflect crypto-Jewish traditions originating in the colonial period. On the other side are scholars who question the evidentiary basis of both claims. This article provides an update on this debate by (1) reviewing scholarly reviews of two key monographs published since the debate first erupted in the mid-1990s and (2) by presenting new data relevant to the possibility that modern claims of ‘crypto-Judaism’ derive from Adventist proselytizing. The article concludes with an assessment of the many reasons why the original hypothesis has been, and will likely continue to be, popular despite the doubts that many scholars have raised.