The association between divorce and late adolescent grandchildren's relations with grandparents

While researchers have documented the possible effects of divorce on children's interpersonal relationships with significant others (e.g., parents, siblings, peers), research efforts examining the role of grandparents within these children's social networks are limited. For the present study, 588 late adolescent college students (266 males, 322 females) completed the Network of Relationships Inventory (W. Furman and D. Buhrmester [1985] Children's Perceptions of the Personal Relationships in Their Social Network, Developmental Psychology, Vol. 21, pp. 1016–1024) and frequency of contact estimates on each available biological grandparent. One hundred sixty-eight students were from families in which their biological parents had been divorced for more than two years. The remaining late adolescents were from intact families (i.e., biological parents still married). As hypothesized, late adolescent grandchildren from divorced families indicated less satisfactory relationships with paternal grandparents. In addition, granddaughters from divorced families indicated poorer relationships with parental grandparents when contrasted to grand-daughters in intact families and grandsons from divorced families. However, visible and phone contact with grandparents played a major role in sustaining relationships with grandparents for grandchildren from divorced families. Granddaughters, in general, also reported stronger relations with maternal grandmothers, regardless of group status. Explanations are offered for these results, as well as suggestions for future research.Received Ph.D. in developmental psychology from Virginia Commonwealth University. Current research interests include the study of intergenerational relationships, and the development of coping skills throughout the life span.     

Business, State, and Community: 'Responsible Risk Takers', New Labour, and the Governance of Corporate Business

In December 1998, Peter Mandelson MP, one of the principal architects of the Labour Party's victory in the May 1997 general election, dramatically resigned as Secretary of State for Trade and Industry. Nevertheless, despite his relatively brief period in that office, Mr. Mandelson left his imprint on policy through the publication in November 1998 of a major White Paper, 'Our Competitive Future: Building the Knowledge Driven Economy'. The White Paper sets out the New Labour analysis of the national political economy in a globalized world economy and is very much influenced by Mr. Mandelson's experience of the entrepreneurial spirit during his fact-finding visit to the United States of America. This article seeks to chart the relationship between New Labour's desire to foster the development of the corporate sector within a vibrant entrepreneurial culture and the need to ensure that the integrity of the market is preserved in an arena which is seen as inimicable to strong regulatory intervention by the state. As well as mapping New Labour's political rhetoric onto contemporary debates in corporate governance, the analysis will involve an examination of the interface between business practice and morality. In particular, the article will focus upon the role of the conception of company directors as 'responsible risk takers' and the upon the use of name-and-shame sanctions in the development of an entrepreneurial culture in which all corporate enterprises are seen as having a legitimate societal 'licence to operate'.     

Fingerprint Comparison and Adversarialism: The Scientific and Historical Evidence

This article suggests that lawyers and courts are largely oblivious to scientific insights regarding the value and limitations of latent fingerprint evidence. It proceeds through a detailed historical analysis of the way fingerprint evidence has been reported and challenged. It compares legal responses with mainstream scientific research. Our analysis shows that fingerprint evidence is routinely equated with categorical proof of identity notwithstanding scientific warnings that such an approach is ‘indefensible’. We find that legal challenges to latent fingerprint evidence have been uniformly focused on adjectival issues (e.g. compliance with enabling legislation), leaving the validity and accuracy of this subjective comparison technique virtually unexamined since its first reception at the very beginning of the twentieth century. Lack of legal engagement with validity, error and scientific research suggest that adversarial procedures have not worked effectively to secure scientifically reliable expert evidence and that legal personnel struggle with elementary scientific reasoning.     

Vernon Bogdanor: Beyond Brexit: Towards a British Constitution

Liverpool Law Review -     

Factor Structure and Criterion Validity of the Five Cs Model of Positive Youth Development in a Multi-University Sample of College Students

Journal of Youth and Adolescence - There is growing recognition that clinical and developmental outcomes will be optimized by interventions that harness strengths in addition to ameliorating...     

Empirical versus Theoretical Claims about Extreme Counterfactuals: A Response

Langche Zeng Department of Political Science, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92093 e-mail: lazeng{at}ucsd.edu In response to the data-based measures of model dependence proposedin King and Zeng (2006), Sambanis and Michaelides (2008) proposealternative measures that rely upon assumptions untestable inobservational data. If these assumptions are correct, then theirmeasures are appropriate and ours, based solely on the empiricaldata, may be too conservative. If instead, and as is usuallythe case, the researcher is not certain of the precise functionalform of the data generating process, the distribution from whichthe data are drawn, and the applicability of these modelingassumptions to new counterfactuals, then the data-based measuresproposed in King and Zeng (2006) are much preferred. After all,the point of model dependence checks is to verify empirically,rather than to stipulate by assumption, the effects of modelingassumptions on counterfactual inferences. Author’s note: Easy-to-use software to implement the methodsdiscussed here, called "WhatIf: Software for Evaluating Counterfactuals,"is available at http://gking.harvard.edu/whatif. All informationnecessary to replicate the analyses herein can be found in King and Zeng (2008).Conflict of interest statement. None declared.     

Not again! Public perception,regulation, and nanotechnology

It is often argued that immediate government action regarding nanotechnology is needed to ensure that public opinion does not mistakenly view nanotechnology as dangerous, to restore public trust in government, and to increase the legitimacy of government action through increased public participation. This article questions whether governments can achieve these goals. As the world lurches toward regulation of nanotechnology, we should ask Why the rush? Can anticipatory action, perceived as the government doing something, fulfill the competing hopes to “restore trust,”“pave the way” for nanotechnology, “increase awareness,” and “satisfy democratic notions of accountability”? Or is government action more likely to increase existing divisions over nanotechnology's future?     

Explaining Lone Wolf Target Selection in the United States

The rise in lone wolf terrorist attacks worldwide in recent decades makes understanding the types of targets lone wolves choose a crucial locus of research, yet this topic remains understudied. In light of this lacuna, this article analyzes 84 lone wolf terrorist attacks that occurred in the United States between 1940 and 2012, identifies patterns in lone wolf target selection, and proposes and tests causal explanations for these patterns. I find that (1) a majority of lone wolves select civilian targets in familiar areas and (2) this is due to their relative weakness and their ideology.