Depressive symptoms and coping strategies among Chinese adolescents in Hong Kong

Depressive symptoms and coping strategies of 161 Chinese adolescents were assessed and described using the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) and the Ways of Coping Questionnaire (WCQ). Using the BDI cutoff scores of 9/10 and 29/30, respectively, over 64% of the adolescents would be in the depressed range, and 9% would be in the severely depressed range. For general depressive symptom level, Chinese adolescents appeared to have higher mean BDI score than U.S. adolescents and Chinese young adults. Their depressive symptom levels were found to relate to avoidant coping strategies as well as low self-es-teem and reduced social support. Implications for promoting adaptive coping, peer support network, and self-esteem enhancement were discussed.This study was supported in part by a Chinese University of Hong Kong UPGC direct grant for research.Received Ph.D. from the University of Western Ontario in 1978. Research interests include self-esteem, stress, coping, health, and psychopathology.     

Who benefits from minority business set-asides? The case of New Jersey

Race-based remedies often are justified by evidence of prior discrimination. They work when they benefit groups previously disadvantaged. This article examines one such remedy—minority business set-asides—and its application in the award of public procurement and construction contracts by the state of New Jersey. Analyzed are contract awards to minority and non-minority/non-women-owned business enterprises in 1990, as well as in periods before, during, and after the imposition of a state minority set-aside program. Using a conventional decomposition approach, the article reveals significant discriminatory gaps in the success of minority- versus non-minority-owned firms in obtaining contracts from the state of New Jersey. The analysis suggests that minority contracting success rates fell from the pre-set-aside era to the set-aside era and that discriminatory outcomes persisted. The particular remedy chosen—while justified based on evidence of prior discrimination—appears not to have reduced the original discrimination nor did it unambiguously benefit minority businesses.     

Bureaucratic control and information processing: An institutional comparison

Standard models of bureaucratic control argue that politicians vulnerable to asymmetric information rely on third‐party monitoring to expand information supply. This solution to information asymmetry assumes that politicians can process all information that comes their way. However, advocates strategically oversupply information to crowd out rivals, making such a solution counterproductive. Using data on administrative reorganization in Hong Kong, we examine the alternative proposition that bureaucratic control is contingent not only on how information is obtained but also on how it is processed under two different institutional arrangements: one that splits attention across domain‐specific streams and one that concentrates attention in a single sequence. In both cases, bureaucrats refrain from major changes when politicians break from these arrangements. Moreover, bureaucratic action is significantly more likely to respond to changes in attention allocation when politicians process information in multiple streams.     

Examining Relationships Between Legislative and Presidential Influences and Organizational Probity: Evidence from South Korean Central Government Agencies

In public management, few empirical studies have been conducted on the effects of the most influential political authorities—the legislature and the president—on government organizations, despite the theoretical and practical significance of these effects. This study tests the relationships between legislative and presidential influences and organizational probity in South Korean central government agencies, on the basis of political transaction-cost and principal–agent theories. We use three measures of legislative influence—inspectional influence (total annual days of legislative inspection), statutory influence (rules-to-laws ratio), and budgetary influence (ratio of reprogramming budget to total budget), and one measure of presidential influence (annual number of substantive meetings with the president). Then, these independent variables are linked to the organizational probity measure from audited archival data. The two-time-point panel data analysis reveals a positive link between legislative inspectional influence and probity but a negative relationship between the presidential influence measure and probity; the results support theoretical arguments for control over administrative agencies. Thus, the evidence suggests that governments should be cautious of implementing reforms that increase organizational or managerial autonomy.     

Housing for an Aging Population

We use the American Housing Survey to examine the distribution and occupancy of homes that have, or could be modified to have, accessibility features that allow seniors to successfully remain in the community as they age. Despite the aging population and the growing need for accessible housing, the U.S. housing stock is woefully inadequate: fewer than 4% of housing units could be considered livable by people with moderate mobility difficulties, and a miniscule fraction are wheelchair accessible. Recent construction is no more likely to be accessible than homes built in the mid-1990s, suggesting that the housing market is not responding to the aging demographic profile. Only a small fraction of seniors, even among those with mobility difficulties, and even among recent movers, live in suitable homes. Modifications that potentially improve accessibility are more likely undertaken by households with a senior, but only once that senior develops mobility difficulties.     

Policy Advocacy in Transitioning Regimes: Comparative Lessons from the Case of Harbour Protection in Hong Kong

Current research on policy advocacy relies exclusively on established regimes where instability is largely contained. Using the harbour protection advocacy in Hong Kong as an exploratory case, the article documents how conservationists exploited the unique opportunities arising from the transfer of sovereignty to advance heritage protection policy. Three new strategic choices in policy advocacy are identified. First, policy advocates strategically switched between issue frames instead of becoming strongly identified with any issue frame. Second, they avoided prolonged involvement by pursuing modest, programme-level adjustments. Third, they circumvented the restrictions on scope and focus by creating new venues outside of the policy subsystem.     

The statistical variability of blood alcohol concentration measurements in drink–driving cases

Like many other places in the world, Hong Kong has drink–driving legislation which prohibits a driver from having in his blood alcohol exceeding a prescribed limit while in control of a motor vehicle. The accuracy of measuring this alcohol concentration is obviously of prime concern as an erroneous result can avert the administration of justice. The common practice is to deduct all errors from the measured value and compare the deducted value with the prescribed limit, so that the benefit of all errors of the measurement is given to the driver. It is therefore important for any laboratory responsible for measuring blood alcohol concentrations to identify and quantify all errors associated with the measurement. The present study examined 900 blood alcohol determinations carried out by the Hong Kong Government Laboratory (HKGL) on cases of suspected drink driving. The determinations were performed by 5 different analysts with two different sets of instruments during 1995–1997. Statistical analysis indicated that the instruments had no bearing on the random error or variability and that even though analyst was a significant factor on variability, the deviation from the mean so caused was only 0.3% and of no practical significance. When the systematic error introduced by the tolerance limits of the certified alcohol standards (purchased from the Laboratory of Government Chemists, UK) was taken into account, the total uncertainty (random plus systematic errors) of an alcohol determination at 99.5% confidence level was found to be 4%. It is recommended that laboratories engaged in blood alcohol determination should adopt similar statistical treatment of their analytical results to find out the error and to ensure that the results are independent of analyst and instrument used.     

Parental Demandingness and Executive Functioning in Predicting Anxiety among Children in a Longitudinal Community Study

Journal of Youth and Adolescence - Theoretical models and empirical studies of anxiety have predominately focused on the main effects of various predictors such as executive functioning deficits on...