Teaching Young Children to Discriminate Abusive From Nonabusive Situations Using Multiple Exemplars in a Modified Discrete Trial Teaching Format

Personal safety programs can teach young children knowledge and skills they can utilize to avoid or escape abduction and sexual abuse (Wurtele, 1990). An appropriate escape response will not occur, however, if the child is unable to discriminate an innocuous situation from a potentially abusive one. This study examines the crucial elements involved in training the recognition or discrimination phase in personal safety programs. A multiple probe design across three typically developing children, ages 5-years 7-months through 6-years 7-months, was used to determine whether rules and discrete trial training of discriminations of appropriate and inappropriate touch and situations generalized to puppet role-play scenarios. All participants showed increases in correct responding on generalization role-play probes and maintained these increases over a 3-and 6-week follow-up.     

Why do evaluation researchers in crime and justice choose non-experimental methods?

Despite the general theoretical support for the value and use of randomized controlled experiments in determining ‘what works’ in criminal justice interventions, they are infrequently used in practice. Reasons often given for their rare use include that experiments present practical difficulties and ethical challenges or tend to over-simplify complex social processes. However, there may be other reasons why experiments are not chosen when studying criminal justice-related programs. This study reports the findings of a survey of criminal justice evaluation researchers as to their methodological choices for research studies they were involved in. The results suggest that traditional objections to experiments may not be as salient as initially believed and that funding agency pressure as well as academic mentorship may have important influences on the use of randomized controlled designs.In August 2005, Dr. Lum’s affiliation will change to George Mason University.     

Fighting cutbacks: some issues for public sector administrators

AbstractAdministrators of many publicly funded organizations are facing the need to implement cutbacks in the light of current budgetary restrictions. An alternative or supplementary course of action to making cuts is to resist them. This article examines four organizations - a Montreal university, a Montreal social service centre and two British health authorities - to see how they dealt with this issue of resistance. Resisting cutbacks requires the use of political strategies which are effective in persuading funding agencies to increase or maintain budgets. The four case studies illustrate the components of a successful strategy in terms of identifying the relevant interest groups, building coalitions and creating legitimacy. In addition, the question of whether administrators should resist budget cuts is explored. The pitfalls of resistance that were encountered by the four organizations are identified, as are the advantages. It is shown that while resistance is a viable option for many public administrators, it is no simple matter. Those contemplating this course of action need to be aware of the issues involved so that they can assess and enhance their chances of success, while minimizing any detrimental effects that resistance may have on the organization and its employees.     

Hard truths for strategic change: Dilemmas of implementing affirmative action

This paper addresses some of the obstacles and dilemmas we face as we attempt to influence the ways in which affirmative action gets implemented in our universities. General obstacles to implementation discussed include: external initiation and regulation of the program, conflict of program goals with other organizational goals, the often overlooked distinction between stated and real goals, powerless organizational placement of the Affirmative Action Office, general resistance to a program dealing with sexism and racism, and the lack of self interest in the program on the part of many of those in powerful organizational positions.Two dilemmas for our influence attempts are then presented. The first is, how do we respond to the multiple goals of our organizations, especially when they appear to conflict with affirmative action? The second is how do we define our objectives clearly and straight-forwardly enough so that they can be achieved, while we avoid alienating potential allies? These dilemmas are discussed, with the understanding that there are no ‘right’ resolutions, but that resolution must be done within the context of our overarching goal and our own organizational realities.     

Psychological research on the police

As a context for this special section, we surveyed the published research literature on the psychology of law enforcement in four specialty journals that feature law and psychology studies and two more broadly targeted scholarly outlets. The volume of research studies was scant and concentrated on two targets: clinical services to the police and eyewitness identification studies. We call for social scientists to engage in empirical study of psychological variables that affect the full spectrum of police activities.     

Mixing God's Work and the Public Business: A Framework for the Analysis of Faith‐Based Service Delivery

Over the past thirty years, there has been a dramatic transformation in the way the American political process operates. There has been a growing public perception that traditional political institutions lack the capacity to meet existing challenges. This has led many observers to call for a rethinking of how government does its work. Numerous alternatives, including the use of faith‐based organizations, have been suggested. The current popular debate on the appropriate role of faith‐based organizations in public service delivery has shed little light on a number of important issues raised by engaging such actors in governance issues. The impact of using faith‐based institutions to design and implement public policy must be considered not only in terms of traditional evaluation standards, but also regarding potential long‐term impacts on the political process itself. This article outlines a theoretical framework for the evaluation of faith‐based organizations as “alternatives” to conventional governance structures. It identifies key practical and theoretical issues raised by such substitution, in both short and long range systemic terms.