Demographic and political components in the decline of British class voting 1964–1979

The weakening of the British class alignment since the early 1960s has been extensively documented in past research. This article seeks to identify components contributing to the extent of class alignment, so as to clarify what is that has declined, and when; and to speculate about the reasons for the decline and its implications for the future of the British party system. In fact only one component shows any systematic change over a fifteen year period, and this change can be placed quite specifically between 1966 and 1970. Several more recent events in British politics appear to have causes that can be traced to this original change.     

THE IMPACT OF SOCIAL SUPPORTS ON POLICE STRESS*

Utilizing a theoretical perspective (the “social supports model”) increasingly applied by stress researchers in other fields, the present endeavor explores whether social supports operate to shield officers from the stresses emanating from police work To investigate this issue, 91 suburban officers were administered a questionnaire that contained scales measuring four job-related stressors, four types of social supports, and two forms of psychological stress—work and life. With regard to the stressors, the data analysis revealed that feelings of dangerousness were significantly and positively related to both stress scales, while shift change and court problems increased only general lye stress. It was also found that supervisory support mitigates work stress while family support helps to reduce more general psychological discomfort. These latter results rein force the assertion that future research could profit by systematically exploring the circumstances, such as social supports, which enable police to cope effectively with the more stressful features of their work.     

Drug and chemical related deaths: incidence in the State of Maryland--1975 to 1980

The incidence of drug and chemical related deaths was studied over a six-year period in the State of Maryland. Deaths were classified into the following categories: alcohol, carbon monoxide (CO), single drugs, multiple drugs, and narcotism. The last three categories were further subdivided as to the specific drugs or chemicals involved. Over the six-year period the number of alcohol and CO deaths remained steady, the number of barbiturate and propoxyphene deaths declined, while the number of tricyclic antidepressant drug deaths increased.     

Presidential prototypes

The American public expresses considerable consensus on those qualities of character and performance indispensable to a modern president. Contrary to expectations, however, such conceptions of an ideal president (or presidential prototypes) generally failed to provide standards by which actual presidential candidates were evaluated. Across five complementary tests, qualities that citizens thought important for an ideal president counted no more heavily in their evaluations of presidential hopefuls than did qualities thought less important—with one consistent and striking exception. Conceptions of an ideal president did set the standards by which the incumbent president was evaluated, and quite powerfully so. In the final section of the paper, we provide several interpretations of these results, suggest how public conceptions of an ideal president are acquired, and speculate about processes of presidential appraisal.