PROMOTING LAW ENFORCEMENT FOR CHILD PROTECTION: A COMMUNITY ANALYSIS

The Colorado Occupant Protection Project (COPP) intervention provided police with brief instruction concerning the importance of citations for drivers' failure to use child safety seats and special coupons to accompany citations. Coupons were exchangeable by drivers for a safety seat and brief training in its use, plus a waiver of the $50 citation fine. Over 4.5 years of archival records were employed, using an ABA design and a comparison community to evaluate the program. Few tickets were issued for nonuse of safety seats during the 3-year baseline in either community. Citations for nonuse of safety seats increased to over 50 per month during the intervention period at the test site, whereas rates remained essentially zero at the comparison site. After the COPP intervention was removed at the intervention site, citation rates for nonuse of safety seats decreased to about 15 per month. Differences between intervention conditions and settings were statistically significant. During the intervention, officers were 44 times more likely to write citations than were controls. Results suggested that a behavioral program can increase police citation writing for child protection purposes.     

A longitudinal study of the effects of various crime prevention strategies on criminal victimization,fear of crime,and psychological distress

Examined the effects of precautionary behavior on subsequent criminal victimization, fear of crime, and psychological distress. A sample of 538 adults was interviewed three times at 6-month intervals. Four different aspects of precaution were assessed: vigilance (alertness), locks (access control), neighbors (informal cooperation), and professionals (formal programs). In logistic regressions that controlled for 14 risk factors, precaution had no preventive effects on the occurrence of subsequent crimes. LISREL models revealed that use of neighbors was the only precaution not to increase fear of crime, although both locks and neighbors showed a capacity to buffer the effects of fear on generalized distress. It was concluded that the most promising strategy was protective neighboring. Altogether, however, the promotion of citizen-initiated prevention appears highly inadequate as a policy response to problems of crime and fear.     

Beliefs about condoms and accessibility of condom intentions in Hispanic and African American youth

The construct accessibility model (CAM) holds that constructs are most likely to influence behavior when they are accessible in memory. While the theory of reasoned action sees intention as an important determinant of behavior, the CAM predicts that the intention to act upon a given health behavior is not likely to be acted upon unless the intention is in an accessible state. Therefore, people who frequently talk about or think about using condoms are likely to have condom related constructs available and use them when needed. This paper reports findings from the pilot phase of a project to identify beliefs which influence condom use in Hispanic and African-American youth living in Detroit. 15 male and 15 female Hispanics and 17 male and 17 female African-Americans aged 15-21 years of mean and median age 18.5, were interviewed face-to-face in 1989 with the goal of identifying condom beliefs which may influence their condom use. 80-82% of male participants, 53% of Hispanic females, and 100% of Black females had experienced sexual intercourse, with age at first intercourse ranging between 13.1 and 16.5 years. 88% of Black women and 7% of Hispanic women were pregnant at the interview. Regarding participants' level of preventive knowledge, all but 1 recently immigrated Hispanic female knew HIV was transmitted by needles and sexual intercourse. 87% of Hispanics and 94% of African-Americans responded that condoms protect against AIDS, but only 13% of Hispanics and 47% of African-Americans knew that nonlatex condoms do not. Some participants expressed concern that condoms reduce sensitivity and/or break during intercourse. Controlling for sexual activity, 25% of Hispanic females, 83% of Hispanic males, 71% of African-American females, and 80% of African-American males had ever used a condom; no Hispanic and 14% of Blacks reported using them consistently in the 12 month period preceding the interview. With 100% of African-American males and 97% of Black females reporting thinking about using condoms compared to 80% of Hispanics, the study findings suggest that condom intentions are more accessible in African-Americans than among Hispanics.     

Development and validation of a standardized measure of employee turnover risk

This article describes the development, reliability, and initial validation of the Tenure Scale. The scale was designed as an attitudinal predictor of turnover risk to be used for pre-employment selection. Two validation studies are reported. In study one, significant results were obtained between Tenure Scale scores and self report measures of: a) past and present job tenure; b) intentions to quit; c) job search behaviors; and d) intentions to remain committed to one's job. In study two, significant relationships were established between Tenure Scale scores and on-the-job measures of turnover risk, including work performance, absenteeism rates, and length of employment. No adverse impact was found against any protected group in study two. The relationship of these results with job turnover theory is discussed, and future validation research is suggested.Portions of this research study were presented at the 1988 Annual Conference of the Association of Human Resources Management and Organizational Behavior, Long Beach, California, October 26–29.     

Electrophysiological correlates of semantic features

Analyses of averaged auditory evoked responses to a list of 10 positive and 10 negative words led to the identification of a restricted region in the brain response which reliably discriminated between words differing in the semantic features positive and negative. These data support the view that word meanings are composed of more basic components or features and are not stored simply as dictionary items in the brain.     

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