Cognitive appraisal of major and daily stressful events during adolescence: A multidimensional scaling analysis

Multidimensional scaling analysis was used to examine adolescents' cognitive appraisals of major and daily stressful events. The desirability of events was the only salient feature for early adolescents. Middle and late adolescents also appraised events in terms of their desirability; in addition, the amount of impact that events exerted on their lives and the generality of the causes of events were salient dimensions for these age groups. These results suggest increased complexity with age in adolescents' cognitive appraisals of stressful events. Correlational analyses also indicated that perceptions of personal coping capabilities are associated with high event desirability, high frequency of occurrence, stable causes, and decreased ability of others to be of help in coping.This research served as a portion of the doctoral dissertation of the first author and was supported in part by an institutional award from the University of Vermont to the second author.Received his Ph.D. from University of Vermont. Research interests include stressful events during adolescence.Assistant Professor of Psychology at the University of Vermont where he is investigating stress and coping among children and adolescents. Received his Ph.D from UCLA in 1980.     

Assessing the Impact of Knowledge and Location on College Students’ Perceptions of Gun Control and Campus Carry Policies: a Multisite Comparison

American Journal of Criminal Justice - Recent incidents of mass shootings in schools have raised questions about the availability of “military-style” firearms and need for campus carry...     

The robustness of quadratic voting

Combining local council election data with fiscal data on grant allocations in a German state, we study partisan favoritism in the allocation of intergovernmental transfers within a quasi-experimental framework. We hypothesize that state governments pursue two distinct goals when allocating grants to local governments: (1) helping aligned local parties win the next election and (2) buying off unaligned municipalities that may obstruct the state government’s policy agenda. We argue furthermore that the relative importance of these two goals depends on local political conditions. In line with this argument, we show empirically that the effect of political alignment on grant receipts varies depending on the degree of local support for the state government. While previous contributions find that aligned local governments always tend to receive larger transfers, our results imply that the political economy of intergovernmental transfers is more intricate.     

Commercializing air traffic control: Have the reforms worked?

Abstract: Air navigation service providers (ANSPs) play a critical role in the operation of a modern economy. Many countries have restructured their ANSPs by granting managerial and financial autonomy and creating new mechanisms for regulation and accountability to major consumers of air navigation services. These reforms have exemplified principles often associated with the New Public Management. The United States is the major exception to this international trend. Commercialization has allowed significant improvements in service quality without substantial increases in cost of service or erosion of safety standards. Other public interest considerations have also been protected. These performance benefits can be attributed to key decisions on the governance of new air navigation service organizations. Sommaire: Les fournisseurs de services de navigation aérienne jouent un rôle crucial dans le fonctionnement d'une économie moderne. De nombreux pays ont restructuré leurs fournisseurs de services en leur accordant une autonomie financière et de gestion, et en créant de nouveaux mécanismes de réglementation et d'imputabilité envers les principaux consommateurs de services de navigation aérienne. Ces réformes ont illustré les principes souvent associés à la Nouvelle gestion publique. Les États‐Unis sont la principale exception à cette tendance internationale. La commercialisation a permis d'apporter d'importantes améliorations à la qualité des services sans entraîner pour autant d'augmentations substantielles des coûts de services, ou une érosion des normes de sécurité. D'autres considérations d'intérêt public ont également été protégées. Ces avantages en termes de performance peuvent être attribués à des décisions clés en matière de gouvernance des nouveaux organismes de services de navigation aérienne.     

Provinces create centralized system for assessing new drugs

Provincial health ministers have created a common drug-review process for assessing whether new drugs should be place on provincial formularies. The new system will save money, but will it improve access?     

Regulators deny access to experimental hepatitis C drug

An application for access to an experimental hepatitis C drug under Canada's Special Access Programme has been turned down. In the process, Canada's drug regulators have created discomfort and uncertainty about how the Special Access Programme is managed.     

Metaphysics Postponed: Liberalism, Pluralism, and Neutrality

Many recent liberal theorists have argued that state neutrality is supported by a metaphysical thesis about value, namely pluralism , which asserts that there are some conceptions of the good life which neither form a hierarchy nor represent versions of a single good. It is however doubtful whether neutrality is supported by pluralism; indeed, it may in some cases be precluded by it. Arguments for pluralism can, in many cases, be reconciled with a monistic metaphysics of value, and pluralism itself fails to support neutrality. This is particularly true of traditional liberal policy positions such as religious toleration and opposition to censorship, where attention to diverse conceptions of the good may favour, or demand, non–neutral policies. The political problems which neutrality addresses arise before we accept the metaphysical 'truth' of pluralism, and often remain even if the parties to a political conflict have false conceptions of value. A sharp question for the pluralist neutralist is why conflicting conceptions of the political cannot themselves feature in plural conceptions of the good life. Dispensing with pluralism may not, however, be enough to rescue neutrality, since the disputes which neutrality was designed to deal with may not be resolvable neutrally; and more particularly, some of the traditional liberal policies may be incapable of neutral justification. If so, liberals may find a more traditional form of non–neutral liberalism more attractive.     

Exploring cynicism toward prison administrations as a mediator of the association between quality of treatment and inmate misconduct

This study explores the ability of inmate cynicism to mediate the relationship between perceptions regarding quality of treatment and inmate misconduct in a prison setting. Using a sample of inmates from prisons in South Korea, the generalizability of the process-based model is tested. Also, the indirect effect of quality of treatment on inmate misconduct through cynicism is estimated using a bias-corrected bootstrapped mediation analysis. The findings show that quality of treatment was negatively and significantly associated with inmate misconduct in South Korean prisons. Additionally, results indicate that the quality of treatment and social support are significant predictors of inmate cynicism. Finally, a regression-based path analysis reveals that cynicism mediates the relationship between quality of treatment and inmate misconduct. While quality of treatment was found to predict inmate misconduct significantly, mediation analyses support the hypothesis that inmate cynicism partially mediates this association. The findings suggest that correctional policies should pay more attention to reducing inmates’ cynicism.