A comparative evaluation of a new generation jail

This study reports findings from an evaluation of a new generation jail in a large southwestern state. The jail is one component of a complex containing a traditional jail, an indirect supervision facility (barracks), and the new generation jail. Using survey and operational data, we compare the new generation jail to the other two facilities. The findings provide generally positive support for the effectiveness of the new generation jail. Inmates and staff were much more satisfied with the physical facilities. Staff perceived it as more secure, though they reported only limited advantages in safety and security. Violence and disciplinary problems were substantially lower. However, no savings in staffing levels were noted, nor were there differences in job satisfaction for staff in the new generation jail. We discuss the implications of the findings and suggest additional directions for jail evaluations.     

The relation between the ethics of personal conscience—social responsibility and principled moral reasoning

Three samples of college students were tested on Hogan's Survey of Ethical Attitudes (SEA) and Rest's Defining Issues Test (DIT), a test of moral reasoning ability in the Kohlbergian tradition. In addition, one of the samples took Collins's revision of Rotter's Internal-External Scale (I-E) while another sample took Snyder's Self-Monitoring Scale. There was a small but reliable tendency for subjects who endorsed the ethics of personal conscience, as measured by the SEA, to show greater maturity in moral reasoning, as assessed by the DIT. This result was seen as raising some interesting questions about the relation between liberalism-conservatism and moral maturity. The subjects who advocated the ethics of social responsibility tended to show more internal locus of control as measured by the I-E scale. There also was a tendency for subjects who preferred the morality of conventional role-conformity, as measured by the DIT, to have high scores on the Self-Monitoring Scale. The correlations between personal conscience and mature moral reasoning, while significant, were small enough to make it seem that people of various social and political attitudes are likely to achieve maturity in moral reasoning.Received his Ph.D. from Michigan State University in 1973. Current research interests include moral judgment, family interaction, and alcoholism.Received his Ph.D. from Temple University in 1972. Research interests include attribution theory, social comparison theory, moral judgment, and the relation between personality and cardiac health.     

Adolescent women's developing identity: A study of self-definition in the context of family relationships

This study generated adolescent women's perception of their identity in relation to family members spanning three generations and related these perceived relationships to their sex-role orientation. Subjects were 20 firstborn university women from intact families. The methodology used multiple sources of information, including open-ended interviewing procedures, rating scales, and standard research measures of sex-role identity. Significantly more constructs empirically differentiated family by generation than by sex. Congruence of young women with both the parent and grandparent generation, relative number of masculine stereotypes produced, and personality traits of males and females were significantly influenced by the presence of a brother in the sibling generation. There was no relationship between family constellation and sex-role orientation. Feminine women were significantly more congruent with other females in their family than androgynous women. There was a linear trend for androgynous women to be increasingly individuated across the generations.Received her Ph.D. from Yale University. Research interests include observation of children and families in natural settings, longitudinal research with at-risk infants, and rural consultation.Received her Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota. Research interests include development of social competence in family, school, and community environment.Received his Ph.D. from Yale University. Research interests include the socialization of values, professional development, and studies of the family in religious and ethnic community contexts.     

A longitudinal study of ego identity development at a liberal arts college

Ego identity development in the areas of occupational choice, religion, and political ideology was studied using Marcia's categorization system. The results indicated a significant increase in the frequency of the identity achiever status for occupational choice and corresponding decreases in the frequency of the moratorium and identity diffusion statuses. A significant decrease in the frequency of foreclosures on religion was also found. In those instances where students underwent an identity crisis, the probability of resolving it successfully was very high. High scores on the Cultural Sophistication scale of the College Student Questionnaire-Part 1 were found to be associated with presence in the identity achievement status. For students not in the achiever status as freshmen, an interest in various literary and art forms was predictive of becoming an achiever while in college.Received his Ph.D. from SUNY/Buffalo. Recent research has been mainly concerned with the development of ego identity and with techniques for resolving identity crises.Received his Ph.D. from Syracuse University. Recent research has been mainly concerned with personality moderators of human judgment.     

Correlates of self-concept among black early adolescents

This study examines the self-concept of Black eighth-grade students from the Midwest in relation to Black acceptance, social intimacy, locus of control, and sex-role type. Twenty-eight students high in self-concept were compared with 31 students whose self-concept was low. As predicted, the high self-concept group scored higher than the low self-concept group in intimacy, internality, and acceptance of black identity. As also predicted, the high self-concept group had a significantly greater number of adolescents with masculine and androgynous sex roles than the low self-concept group; Black females with high self-concepts included a larger proportion of individuals with androgynous sex roles than low self-concept females. However, the prediction that high self-concept males would have a larger proportion of masculine sex roles than low self-concept males was not supported. The difficult situation of the low self-concept adolescents is discussed, along with the implications for intervention.On clinic internship at Smolian Psychiatric Clinic in Birmingham, Alabama. Major interests are clinical psychology and Black identity.Received Ph.D. in social psychology from the University of Colorado. Major interests are the development of intimacy and identity in adolescence and young adulthood.