Adolescents' perceptions of their attachment relationships with their mothers,fathers, and friends

This study explored changes in New Zealand adolescents' perceptions of their attachment relationships with their mothers, fathers, and friends. The main findings revealed that from early to late adolescence: Males and females remained stable in their quality of affect toward their mothers. With increasing age, females utilized their mothers for support and proximity more, whereas males utilized their mothers for support and proximity less. With increasing age, males and females rated their quality of affect toward their fathers as lower and utilized their fathers for support and proximity less. Females had a higher quality of affect toward friends than males regardless of age, but both males and females increased their utilization of friends for support and proximity over age. Further analyses revealed that Pacific Island adolescents utilized their mothers less for support and proximity than European/Pakeha adolescents. Adolescents from one-parent families utilized their fathers less for support and proximity and had a lower quality of affect toward him than adolescents from two-parent families. These findings suggested that substantial changes take place in attachment relationships from early to late adolescence and highlighted the need for research to differentiate between the sex of adolescent and sex of parent dyads in order to examine adolescents' affective relationships effectively.This research is based on the first author's doctoral dissertation at the University of Auckland.Received Ph.D. from the University of Auckland. Research interests are in life span developmental psychology and in the parenting of children and adolescents.Received Ph.D. from the Australian National University. Research interests lie within life span developmental psychology and early cognitive development.Received Ph.D. from the University of Canterbury. Her main interests are in life span developmental psychology and the development of low birth weight babies.     

Negative affect and hormone levels in young adolescents: Concurrent and predictive perspectives

The purpose of this study was to test hypotheses regarding (1) relations among negative affect and hormones of gonadal and adrenal origin in young adolescents, at three times of measurement, over a one-year period; and (2) stability of negative affect. The sample consisted of 10- to 14-year-old boys (N=56) and 9- to 14-year-old girls (N=52). The adolescents were assessed three times at 6-month intervals over one year. Serum levels of gonadotropins, gonadal steroids, adrenal androgens, and cortisol were assessed, as well as stage of pubertal development (Tanner criteria). The negative affect assessments consisted of self-report questionnaire and interview measures of anxiety and depressive affect, as well as mother reports of internalizing behavior problems. In the concurrent (cross-sectional) analyses, boys reporting higher levels of negative affect tended to be those at higher genital stage or older age, with lower testosterone and cortisol levels and lower dehydroepian-drosterone sulphate levels. In the longitudinal analyses, negative affect, and to a lesser extent hormone levels at the first time of measurement predicted negative affect 12 months later. The findings suggest that puberty-related hormone levels should be considered along with psychological characteristics in examining the processes involved in the development of negative affect during the pubertal years.Received Ph.D. from The Pennsylvania State University. Research interests include hormone-behavior interactions and emotional development.Received Ph.D. from The Pennsylvania State University. Research interests include neuroendocrinology and adolescent depression.Recieved M.D. from Athens University. Research interests include hypothalamic releasing factors and stress.     

Adolescent depression: Why more girls?

Although there has been evidence for some time of a sex difference in depression, relatively little research has examined the developmental process by which women come to be at greater risk than men for depression. In this paper, the developmental pattern of depressed affect is examined over early and middle adolescence, with a special focus on the patterns of boys as compared to girls. In addition, a developmental model for mental health in adolescence is tested for its power in explaining the emergence of gender differences in depression. Longitudinal data on 335 adolescents randomly selected from two school districts were used to test the hypotheses. Results revealed that girls are at risk for developing depressed affect by 12th grade because they experienced more challenges in early adolescence than did boys. The sex difference in depressed affect at 12th grade disappears once early adolescent challenges are considered.This research was supported in part by grants MH30252/38142 to A. Petersen. We gratefully acknowledge the contributions of study participants and staff. Portions of this material were presented in a symposium at the 1988 meeting of the Society for Research on Adolescence, and one at the 1989 meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development.Received Ph.D. from University of Chicago in 1973. Research interest in biopsychosocial development in adolescence, with a focus on sex differences in mental health.Research interests include adolescent mental health, and parent and peer relationships.Received Ph.D. in psychology from The Pennsylvania State University. Research interests include development of affective and conduct disorders, especially sex differences in these problems.     

The policy movement as a policy problem

The policy movement is unified by a common interest in the improvement of policy decisions through scientific inquiry. The movement is differentiated, however, because this common interest is highly ambiguous and subject to interpretation from different perspectives. This paper applies a policy sciences perspective to the movement's disappointments over the last few decades, and in particular, the failure to realize earlier aspirations for rational, objective analysis on the more important and controversial policy issues. The paper offers a definition and diagnosis of the underlying problem, and suggests what can be done about it as a matter of individual and collective choice.     

Transactions costs and the optimal instrument and intensity of air pollution control

Conclusions To what extent do the transactions costs of implementing alternative instruments for pollution control affect the choice of the optimal instrument and the efficient intensity of control under that instrument? In a comparison of Least-Cost Regulatory Standards and Revenue-Neutral Pigouvian Taxes, it is the higher transactions costs of implementing the taxes that make Pigouvian Taxes the more costly of the two instruments. However, a more practical comparison of instruments is between Politically Feasible Standards, Marketable Discharge Permits, and Revenue-Raising Pigouvian Taxes. Here, the relationship between the transactions costs of implementation and total pollution costs are in an almost linear inverse relationship. The lower the pollution costs associated with a particular instrument, and therefore the more desirable the instrument, the higher the transactions costs of implementation. Other factors such as political distortion and welfare gains prove to be more important than the transactions costs of implementation.Assuming that variable transactions costs decrease with the optimal level of pollution for regulatory standards but increase with the optimal level for market oriented instruments, an accounting of transactions costs results in less stringent control in the case of regulatory standards and more stringent control in the case of market oriented instruments. However, the percentage effect is very small. Moreover, it is smaller in both cases if marginal pollution damage rises with the level of pollution, as it is usually presumed to do, rather than remain constant as assumed in this paper for purposes of aggregation. A major conclusion of this paper is that Pigouvian Taxes are the superior instrument for pollution control when the raising of public revenues is a desired objective. However, the various conclusions of this paper should be viewed as tentative because the data on which they are based are no longer current. Moreover, the critical estimates of transactions costs are somewhat dubious. It is hoped that new data will be collected for answering the questions raised in this paper. When this is done, a more powerful approach, one that obviates the need for the artificial, one-dollar-damaging, aggregate pollutant, would be an expanded linear programming model in which the transactions costs are treated as separate coefficients of the individual pollution control methods. Separate sets of such coefficients, each corresponding to a different policy instrument such as Least-Cost Regulatory Standards, Revenue-Neutral Pigouvian Taxes, etc., would enable the investigator to directly derive solutions that specify the optimal policy instrument as well as the optimal set of pollution control method activity levels.I am grateful to William Ascher, Murray Weidenbaum, and two anonymous referees for helpful guidance on the paper.     

Popular science,social science,metaphor and deception

He written widely on a variety of topics and is author or co-author of many books and articles. Among his books are Address Unknown: Homelessness in America; Homelessness and Health; After the Clean-Up: Long Range Effects of Natural Disasters; Armed and Considered Dangerous: A Survey of Felons and Firearms; Under the Gun: Weapons Crime and Violence in America;and The State of the Masses.His current research focusses on adolescent violence and on treament programs for homeless alcohol and drug abusers.