The Role of Woman's Explanations for Refusal on Men's Ability to Discriminate Unwanted Sexual Behavior in a Date Rape Scenario

This study examined the impact of types of women's verbal refusals, and the timing of her refusal, on men's discrimination of when a female wants her partner to stop making sexual advances. Male students were randomly assigned to 1 of 6 conditions (Explanations × Intimacy Levels). Before listening to an audiotape of a date rape, participants were told they would be listening to an interaction between a man and a woman who had just returned from a date. They were instructed to indicate when the woman wanted the man to stop making sexual advances by pressing a switch that synchronously stopped a timer (yielding the measure of latency). In the vignette, the woman provided an explanation for not engaging in sexual intercourse on the date either during kissing or when the man attempted to touch her breasts. She offered one of three reasons for refusing his sexual advances; fear of pregnancy, waiting until marriage, too early in the relationship. Results revealed an interaction in which participants in the too early in the relationship explanation at the level of breast contact condition displayed significantly longer latencies than individuals in the other groups. The implications of the findings are discussed.     

Social security reform in Central and Eastern Europe: variations on a Latin American theme

After Chile reformed its social security system in 1981, several other Latin American countries and certain Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries implemented the Chilean model, with some variations: either a single- or multitier system, or with a period of transition to take care of those in the labor force at the time of the change. The single-tier version consists of individual accounts in pension fund management companies. Multi-tier systems retain some form of public program and add mandatory individual accounts. Most of the CEE countries did not want to incur the high transition costs associated with the Chilean model. The switch to a market economy had already strained their economies. Also, the countries' desire to adopt the European Union's Euro as their currency--a move that required a specific debt ceiling--limited the amount of additional debt they could incur. This article describes the CEE reforms and makes some comparisons with the Latin American experience. Most of the CEE countries have chosen a mixed system and have restructured the pay-as-you-go (PAYGO) tier, while the Latin American countries have both single- and multi-tier systems. Some CEE countries have set up notional defined contribution (NDC) schemes for the PAYGO tier in which each insured person has a hypothetical account made up of all contributions during his or her working life. Survivors and disability programs in CEE have remained in the public tier, but in most of the Latin American programs the insured must purchase a separate insurance policy. Issues common to both regions include: Administrative costs are high and competition is keen, which has led to consolidation and mergers among the companies and a large market share controlled by a few companies. Benefits are proportionately lower for women than for men. A large, informal sector is not covered by social security. This sector is apparently much larger in Latin America than in the CEE countries. Issues that are unique to some of the CEE countries include: Individual accounts in Hungary and Poland have proved more attractive than originally anticipated. As a result, contributions to the public PAYGO system in Hungary and Poland fell short of expectations. In several countries, laws setting up the programs were enacted without all the details of providing benefits. For example, in some countries laws must now be drawn up for establishment of annuities because they do not yet exist. Setting up a coherent pension policy has been difficult in some countries because of frequent and significant changes in government. This situation has affected the progress of reform in various stages of development. In general, a definitive assessment of individual accounts in these countries will not be possible until a cohort of retirees has spent most of its career under the new system.     

Judicial Behavior and Public Opinion: Popular Expectations Regarding the Factors That Influence Supreme Court Decisions

This article examines the mass public's perceptions of the factors that actually influence Supreme Court decisions as well those that ought to influence such decisions. We expect significant discrepancies between what the public believes ought to be the case and what it perceives to actually be the case with regard to Supreme Court decision making and that these discrepancies have a significant negative impact on the public's assessment of the Court. More specifically, we hypothesize that the public believes that political factors have more influence on the Court than ought to be the case and that the public perceives traditional legal factors to be less influential than they should be. We find that the expected discrepancies do exist and significantly detract from popular regard for the Court.     

A Linear Poisson Autoregressive Model: The Poisson AR(p) Model

Time series of event counts are common in political scienceand other social science applications. Presently, there arefew satisfactory methods for identifying the dynamics in suchdata and accounting for the dynamic processes in event countsregression. We address this issue by building on earlier workfor persistent event counts in the Poisson exponentially weightedmoving-average model (PEWMA) of Brandt et al. (American Journalof Political Science 44(4):823–843, 2000). We developan alternative model for stationary mean reverting data, thePoisson autoregressive model of order p, or PAR(p) model. Issuesof identification and model selection are also considered. Wethen evaluate the properties of this model and present bothMonte Carlo evidence and applications to illustrate.     

Multifactorial analysis of firearm wounds to the head with attention to anatomic location.

Firearm wounds to the head are often fatal and are routinely encountered in the practice of forensic pathology in the United States. Often, the anatomic site of the entrance wound is used to support or refute the manner of death indicated by the scene investigation and/or circumstances of the case. The present retrospective study of 120 fatalities resulting from 140 firearm wounds to the head correlates the anatomic region of the entrance wound and range of fire with the manner of death. Other demographic data analyzed include age, race, and gender of the decedents, as well as evidence of drug and/or ethanol use. It is hoped that this study will provide concrete data to support the largely anecdotal associations between the specific site of entry of firearm injuries to the head and the manner of death.     

Schizophrenia and sudden death: a medical examiner case study.

This study reviews the causes of sudden death of 66 schizophrenic patients who presented to the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner (OCME) for the State of Maryland over a 3-year period from 1994 through 1996. We identified an increased incidence of suicide compared with the general population of OCME cases. This observation is consistent with reports by other investigators. The majority of the deaths were the result of natural diseases, mostly atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease. Accidents, suicides, and 1 homicide were also present in this group.     

What happens after the lone ranger rides away?

A community policing program consisting of citizen input and problem solving techniques often results in a decision to police places and translates into lower crime rates at the policed locations. Proponents of community policing programs believe that they build social capital, which invests neighborhood citizens in the crime reduction efforts and reduces the simultaneous occurrence of potential offenders and victims required for crimes to be committed.     

Use of the MMPI-2 and the Inwald personality inventory to identify the personality characteristics of dropouts from a state police academy

The MMPI-2 and the Inwald Personality Inventory were employed to investigate the personality characteristics of dropouts from a state police academy. A traditional model of training borrowed from military models was used at the academy rather than a police generated model. Sensitive and independent individuals, more compatible with modern community policing methods may have rejected police work as a result of the experience. 15 academy completers and 9 dropouts were used in the sample. Analyses of the scales of the MMPI-2 and the Inwald Personality Inventory identified variables upon which the two groups differed. The hypothesis that more sensitive, empathic and independent individuals were leaving the academy appeared to be supported.     

The Service Sector's Acquisition and Development of Information Technology: Infrastructure and Productivity

The paper explains why the productivity of information technology (IT) in the service sector of the U.S. economy is increased by the provision of infratechnology. The size and growth of the service sector and its investment in IT are discussed, and a key fact and a key inference are developed. The fact: The absorption costs of IT are the vast majority of the IT investment costs to the service sector. The inference: Infratechnology investments are an efficient way to increase both private and social benefits of incurring the cost of implementing IT.