Distributive justice and willingness to pay for municipality child care

With the aim of investigating factors affecting willingness to pay for municipality child care, a survey was undertaken in Sweden of 1840 parents living in five municipalities of different sizes. On the basis of the greed-efficiency-fairness hypothesis (Wilke, 1991) which is supported by results from experimental social dilemma research, it was hypothesized that perceived fairness of how the quality of child care is distributed (equal, proportional to need, or proportional to payment) as well as of method of payment (collectively by taxes or proportional to use by fees) would be important determinants of willingness to pay. Results showed that perceived fairness of how quality of child care is distributed played some role but that other factors had stronger effects. Perhaps also reflecting fairness considerations, willingness to pay by fees was on average higher than willingness to pay by taxes. Predicted from previous research, willingness to pay by taxes was furthermore found to increase with income and degree of use. However, willingness to pay by taxes showed an increase rather than the predicted decrease with municipality size.     

PARENT-CHILD OBSERVATIONS IN CUSTODY EVALUATIONS

Child custody evalutors need to increase the scientific foundations of their work, both for the benefit of clients and to address criticisms of the field. Observations of parents with children potentially yield huge amounts of data, and it is important for evaluators to consistently apply scientific and professional principles to make sense of all that information. Recommendations for observation sessions are made that integrate theory, research, and practice. These recommendations include the most important interactional dimensions to focus on, which family members to have present, the optimal level of stress, the number of sessions needed, and considerations about home visits.     

Federal laboratories & American industry: Fueling innovation

With a little-used gold mine of federal technical resources available to American industry, and adequate networking structure to expedite the transfer of valuable information is needed. The US government's laboratories have assisted some corporations, particularly those in defense-oriented industries, through collaborative research activities. To face the competition from abroad, a greater segment of American industry, of necessity, must tap the technical information and assistance available within the maze of federal laboratories to convert new and existing research into tangible, marketable products. NERAC has designed and tested an accessing model that matches the technological needs of American industry with federal experts through an existing network of federal-laboratory technology-transfer officers. The process is uncomplicated and direct. As a knowledgeable liaison, NERAC has developed a communication network to facilitate the transfer of often-unique material from the federal laboratories to American industry.     

Domestic violence: Victimization, police intervention, and disposition

The data presented here are consistent with prior research conclusions and indicate that wives have been victims in domestic dispute incidents in the United States more frequently than other family or household members. Further, in specific instances where criminal complaints were initiated, it is shown that in these instances, arrest under the Domestic Violence Program produced the strongest association when wives were the victims. The police were likely to arrest offenders (1) when criminal complaints were initiated and (2) when intimate family members, rather than strangers, were victims. The data indicate that victims who did not initiate criminal complaints did not receive adequate protection or services from the criminal justice system, and criminal complaints initiated by wives received significantly more arrest-and-referral activity than did complaints initiated by other family or household members.