Adolescent Attachment Questionnaire: A Brief Assessment of Attachment in Adolescence

The Adolescent Attachment Questionnaire (AAQ), a brief questionnaire to assess attachment characteristics in adolescents, was developed and validated in a large normative sample (n = 691) and a sample of 133 adolescents in psychiatric treatment. The AAQ is a self-report questionnaire consisting of 3 scales of 3 statements each, with Likert-type responses from strongly disagree to strongly agree. The Availability scale assesses the adolescent's confidence in the availability and responsiveness of the attachment figure. TheGoal-Corrected Partnershipscale assesses the extent to which the adolescent considers and is empathetic to the needs and feelings of the attachment figure. The Angry Distress scale taps the amount of anger in the adolescent–parent relationship. All scales demonstrate satisfactory internal reliability and agreement between scores for adolescents (n = 91) from the normative sample who completed the AAQ twice. Adolescents in the clinical sample also completed the Adult Attachment Interview (AAI); the AAQ demonstrated high convergent validity with the AAI.     

Reviews

Barrington Moore Jr, Authority and Inequality under Capitalism and Socialism—USA, USSR and China. Oxford: OUP and Clarendon Press, 1987, x + 142 pp. £15.00.

Allen Lynch, The Soviet Study of International Relations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987, xii + 197 pp., £25.00 h/b. $34.50.

Frederick C. Barghoorn and Thomas F. Remington, Politics in the USSR. Third Edition. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1986, xiii + 530 pp., £8.95.

Charles E. Ziegler, Environmental Policy in the USSR. Amherst: The University of Massachusetts Press, 1987, xiii + 195 pp., £18.50. $25.00.

Mary Buckley, ed. Soviet Social Scientists Talking. An Official Debate about Women. Basingstoke and London: Macmillan, 1986, 107 pp. £25.00 h/b, £8.95 p/b.

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Paul R. Rogers, Insurance in the Soviet Union. New York: Praeger, 1986, 211 pp., £31.99.

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Roman Serbyn and Bohdan Krawchenko eds. Famine in Ukraine 1932–1933. Edmonton: University of Alberta, Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, 1986, 192 pp. No price.

Richard J. Crampton, A Short History of Modern Bulgaria. London, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987, 221 pp. £20.00, $34.50 h/b, £7.95, $12.95 p/b.

Alena Heitlinger, Reproduction, medicine and the socialist state. Basingstoke and London: Macmillan, 1987, 318 pp., £29.50.

Vladimir Wozniuk, From Crisis to Crisis. Soviet‐Polish Relations in the 1970s. Iowa State University Press‐Ames, 1987, x + 176 pp., $12.95.     

Reviewing regulation of assisted reproductive technology in New South Wales: the Assisted Reproductive Technology Act 2007 (NSW)

In November 2007, the Assisted Reproductive Technology Act 2007 (NSW) was passed to deal with a number of issues under the spectrum of reproductive technologies. The legislation was the outcome of a review conducted by the New South Wales Health Department and adopts a different approach to other Australian statutory regulation. This article considers the approach of the new legislation and whether there are some issues that require further consideration under the new regulatory regime. In particular, discussion is focused on the failure of the new legislation to address eligibility for reproductive treatments as well as the use of pre-implantation genetic diagnosis for the creation of tissue-matched children.     

Futile choices: Wooing doctors to acknowledge the law in Queensland

End-of-life decision-making continues to challenge health care providers, patients, families, regulators and judges. The Queensland State Coroner's findings in the 2009 inquest into the death of June Woo resulted in a submission from concerned clinicians to the Queensland Law Reform Commission's review of the State's guardianship regime, claiming that the judgment held problematic implications for future practice. This column summarises the State Coroner's findings and recommendations, and critically analyses the clinical response, focusing on consent requirements that, while peculiar to Queensland, illustrate continuing tensions surrounding decision-making conflicts at the end of life.     

Spycatcher’s little sister: the Thatcher government and the Panorama affair, 1980–1981

This article investigates the Thatcher government’s attempts to suppress or censor reporting on secret intelligence issues in the early 1980s. It examines official reactions to a BBC intrusion into the secret world, as the long-running Panorama documentary strand analysed the role and accountability of Britain’s clandestine services. It also assesses the extent of collusion between the government and the BBC’s senior management. The Panorama affair was an important waypoint on the journey towards the dramatic Spycatcher episode of the mid-1980s. The key players on the government side – Thatcher and Cabinet Secretary Robert Armstrong – failed to learn the lessons of the 1980–81 affair, that it was often more dangerous to attempt suppression than to simply let events run their course.     

Political Finance Regulation and Reform in New South Wales: Towards a Fairer System?

In recent years the regulation of political finance in Australia has moved from systems of laissez‐faire to systems of enhanced regulation, which aim to curb the scale and influence of donations. This article examines political finance regulation in New South Wales — the jurisdiction that has seen the most significant transformation of its regulatory setup — to assess whether and how the new regulations have affected donations to political parties in the state. We find, based on analysis of the pattern of donations before and after the reforms, that the regulations have made the financing system fairer and thus improved the quality of democracy in the state.