Crime prevention participation:An exploratory analysis

Most past research on crime and crime prevention has focused on their occurrence in urban settings. Relatively little attention has been given to crime and citizen crime prevention in small town/rural areas. The present study uses secondary data from the National Crime Survey: Victim Risk Supplement, 1983 to investigate citizen participation in five crime prevention domains within large urban areas and small town/rural areas. The results suggest that, while there are some similarities in citizen participation, various factors have different degrees of impact in different locations. Further, differences in crime prevention participation are more a function of the type of crime prevention than of the size of the local population.     

Validity of self-reports of marital violence

The most commonly used and practiced method for assessing spouse abuse is the individual's self-report of engaging in or being a victim of physical aggression. However, the socially undesirable nature of relationship violence raises questions regarding the likelihood that it is accurately reported. The current investigation found that a socially desirable response set is related to willingness to report one's own aggression. However, it is not related to willingness to report a spouse's aggressive behavior. Social desirability was not related to reports of frequency or severity of one's own aggression for individuals admitting the use of any form of aggressive behavior.     

Global change in microcosm: The case of U.S. water institutions

Water is a resource that already has been affected by some aspects of global change and whose availability in time and place may be substantially further altered by global warming. As human demands and impacts on water resources have increased, institutions governing water use have evolved in response to pressures exerted by competing resource users. The record of such institutional evolution and its implications for the impacts of environmental change on human welfare can provide a glimpse of issues that are likely to arise as other natural resources are increasingly subject to the effects of global environmental transformations. Efforts to manage multiple interdependent water uses present informative analogies to the general problem of managing the many interrelated aspects of global change.     

Russian Jews in California

His study of Russian Jewish and Vietnamese refugees, Refugee Communities: A Comparative Field Study,is forthcoming.