California's Suicide Decline, 1970–1990

From 1970 to 1990 California experienced a 32% decline in suicide, which was particularly pronounced among women, non-whites, the young, and urban dwellers. Suicide declines of over 50% were recorded in San Francisco and Los Angeles, and large decreases occurred in other coastal counties. Additionally, California was the only one of 51 states to show a consistent decline in teenage and young-adult suicide (accompanied by an 88% decrease in teenage drug and other poisoning deaths). Initial investigation of death certification, accident and homicide trends, economic measures, and prevention efforts did not produce an explanation for a suicide decrease of California's magnitude. However, the state does display anomalous trends in certain social measures (reduced divorce, rising non-White population, and rising homicide) that point to multifactorial hypotheses including demographic changes and changed attitudes toward violence. Review of the accuracy of past suicide certification procedures nationally is also indicated.     

The mathematics of geographic profiling

We begin by describing some of the mathematical foundations of the geographic profiling problem. We then present a new mathematical framework for the geographic profiling problem based on Bayesian statistical methods that makes explicit connections between assumptions on offender behaviour and the components of the mathematical model. It also can take into account local geographic features that either influence the selection of a crime site or influence the selection of an offender's anchor point. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Social anxiety and perceptions of likeability by peers in children

The current study aimed to investigate the discrepancy between self-reported and peer-reported likeability among children, and the relation with social anxiety, depression, and social support. In total, 532 children between 7 and 12 years completed questionnaires about social anxiety symptoms, depressive symptoms, and social support, estimated their own likeability, and indicated how much they liked their classmates. Children with higher levels of social anxiety or depression overestimated their likeability less or even underestimated their likeability. Social anxiety symptoms, but not depressive symptoms, were significant predictors of the discrepancy. Social support was positively related to likeability and negatively related to social anxiety, but did not moderate the association between social anxiety symptoms and perception accuracy of likeability. These results are in line with cognitive theories of childhood social anxiety, and they stress the importance of using multi-informant measures when studying the relation between social anxiety and social functioning in children.     

Ask and ye shall receive: behavioural specificity in the accuracy of subjective memory complaints

A cross‐sectional sample of adults completed an extensive set of cognitive tasks and a set of questionnaires measuring depressive affect, memory complaint, and other variables. During an interview about their prescribed medications, the participants also reported whether they were having problems remembering to take the medication as prescribed (an everyday prospective memory problem). Their medication adherence at home was then monitored for one month using pill bottles which microelectronic caps. Cognitive tasks correlated with memory complaints, as measured by the Memory Functioning Questionnaire, but not with problems in remembering to take medications. The highest correlations were with a free recall task. Conversely, reported problems with medication adherence during the interview had good predictive validity for subsequent adherence problems, but not for cognitive tasks, including a measure of prospective memory. Depressive affect was related to both the questionnaire and the interview complaints about medication adherence, but a structural equation model showed that the relationships of cognition and medication adherence to the different memory complaints were independent of depressive affect. The results are interpreted in terms of a behavioural specificity hypothesis, which states that adults' self‐reports of memory problems are valid when they focus directly on specific memory‐related behaviours in everyday contexts. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.