Correspondence between parents' reports on the Behavior Problem Checklist

Interparent agreement on the Behavior Problem Checklist (BPC) was assessed in relation to several potentially influential variables. Major findings indicated parent agreement to be of a moderate level, generally higher in nondistressed than distressed samples, lower on Personality Problem items than Conduct Problem items, very low regarding presence of specific behaviors, and importantly related to type of reliability index employed. Issues deserving additional research effort are discussed.This research was supported in part by NIMH Grant No. 2R01 MH25802 and by NIAAA Research Scientist Development Award No. 1K01 AA00027 to the first author.     

Threat,Knowledge, and Support for a Collective Response to Urban Flooding1

The most realistic solution to recurring urban flooding in most American cities is some form of land use planning (zoning), i.e., an integrated, collective response to this type of threat to the community. Yet there is frequently little public support for such action. The present study surveyed persons living in and around a notorious urban floodplain to assess support for such land use planning as a function of (a) threat, i.e., the motivational effect of proximity to the floodplain, ownership of property at risk, personal flooding history, perceived likelihood of one's home being flooded in the next 5 years, and the presence of small children in the home; and (b) amount of knowledge about variables affecting flooding, i.e., the cognitive element. Although proximity was related strongly to expressions of concern, none of the measures of threat was related to support for land use planning. Knowledge of the variables involved, however, was positively related to support for a planning solution. The findings are discussed in terms of theoretical implications of the cognitive element in collective responses to environmental hazards.     

Systematic Monitoring of the Implementation of a Case Management Model

A systematic approach for monitoring case management service provision and the results obtained when this approach was applied to a program for community-dwelling elders with severe mental illness are presented. A detailed, closed-ended, daily service log was used to collect data on 713 client-contact days. Participants (N = 24) were predominantly female (71%), were White (63%) or African American (37%), and tended to have diagnoses of either schizophrenia (42%) or major depression (21%). Services were delivered most frequently in the client's home (47%), the program office (35%), or by phone (27%); most frequent activities were monitoring psychiatric symptoms/medications (62 %), and monitoring physical symptoms or medications or both (54%). Service characteristics did not differ with regard to demographics but did vary with living situation and psychiatric diagnosis. The findings point to the need for flexible programs capable of meeting diverse service needs as well as the utility of a daily service log in studying case management.     

What's happening on Music Television? A gender role content analysis

This study analyzed 40 Music Television (MTV) music videos across gender role based content categories. Videos were rated at 30-second intervals by four trained raters using a consensus model. Results included the following: (a) men appeared nearly twice as often as women; (b) men engaged in significantly more aggressive and dominant behavior; (c) women engaged in significantly more implicitly sexual and subservient behavior; and (d) women were more frequently the object of explicit, implicit, and aggressive sexual advances. Overall, MTV video content primarily included implicit sexuality, objectification, dominance, and implicit aggression. Implications of these findings with respect to sex role stereotyping and the development of negative attitudes toward women were discussed.     

Learning Styles of Mexican American and Anglo-American Elementary School Students

The learning style characteristics of Mexican American and Anglo-American elementary school children are identified and the implications for counseling and learning are discussed.     

The juncture of law and morality in prohibitions against torture

Conclusion The right to be secure from torture, a right that encompasses moral as well as legal strictures against the practice, is supported by increasingly stringent human rights instruments. In this essay, I have discussed the principal instruments and their place in the anti-torture field considered broadly. The phenomenon of these international instruments foreshadows an ever-widening range of legal initiatives against torture, and is emblematic of the increasing importance attached to respect for human life and human dignity. The diversity of international treaties providing against torture such as, for example, The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (1948), The Supplementary Convention on the Abolition of Slavery (1956), The International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (1965), and The International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid (1973), indicates the interconnectedness of a wide range of human rights issues.The boundaries that have been drawn around the violation constituted by torture are clearer at present than are those bounding many other rights. Rights commonly categorized as of an economic nature - the right to food and to development, for example - are undergoing processes of definition and implementation. One challenge of this paper is to generate procedures presently attached to such specific human rights violations as torture to rights with less clear parameters. In this way, the growing effectiveness of procedures against torture can serve in the long term to strengthen the bases of international human rights law while in the short term helping to expand the armory of procedures for the protection of less clearly-defined, rights. International human rights law offers a practical tool towards eliminating torture from states' instruments for governing and provides a model for the development of procedures in other categories of rights, while bringing universally declared moral aspirations and legal authority into closer alignment.     

Family processes,resourcefulness, coping,and stress: A prospective study

A review of the family therapy literature indicates that few studies have investigated the complex relationship among family processes, coping, and stress in understanding how people manage stressful events and conditions. The purpose of the present study was to utilize a prospective research design to systemically explore the impact of family processes on an individual's ability to use effective coping responses when faced with a stressful situation. The results did indicate that individuals experienced greater strain at Time 1 (awaiting exam). However, no differences were found between family process variables and an individual's coping responses between Time 1 and Time 2 (awaiting results). Suggestions for further research on intergenerational family systems theory and implications for family therapy practice are provided.     

Gender and success-related attributions: Beyond individualistic conceptions of achievement

Two hundred male and 42 female senior public administrators responded to a questionnaire that explored gender differences in self- and social attributions for career success. Attributions to professional, personal, and political contacts were examined in addition to ability, hard work, and luck. Ability and hard work were found to constitute a central factor, labeled the “Alger factor,” in attributions for oneself as well as for colleagues of both sexes. Professional contacts were seen as more important than nonprofessional contacts or luck by both sexes; women, however, perceived the Alger factor as more important to their own success than to that of male colleagues, and viewed professional contacts as more important to male colleagues than even the Alger factor. There were gender differences in the relationship of luck to the Alger factor: self-attributions to luck and to the Alger factor were positively correlated for women but negatively correlated for men, perhaps because of a differential sense of entitlement for the sexes. While affirming the centrality of the Alger factor in causal attributions, this research underscores the need to reconceptualize current research paradigms based on individualistic conceptions of achievement.