Sleep disturbance in adolescents: Sleep quality,sleep habits,beliefs about sleep,and daytime functioning

This study examined the prevalence and correlates of sleep disturbance in adolescents. Two hundred seventy-seven 9th- and 10th-grade students completed a questionnaire on sleep quality, sleep habits, beliefs about sleep, and daytime mood and functioning. Based on their responses, subjects were classified as good sleepers (66%), occasional poor sleepers (23%), and chronic poor sleepers (11%). Occasional and chronic poor sleepers reported being significantly more depressed, without energy, tense, moody, and irritable and less rested and alert than good sleepers. They were also more likely to describe themselves negatively. However, poor sleepers were not consistently more tired than good sleepers. Rather, they tended to be least tired in the evening, the time when most good sleepers reported feeling tired. There were few differences in the sleep habits and beliefs about sleep of good and poor sleepers. All subjects reported shifts in bedtimes and waketimes from weekdays to weekends, with occasional and chronic poor sleepers showing a tendency toward greater shifts, a possible factor contributing to their sleep disturbance. Occasional and chronic poor sleepers also reported more observable behaviors and feelings of stress than good sleepers. The need for early intervention with particular attention to teaching adolescents about good sleep habits and the need for stable bedtimes and waketimes and the possibility of joint intervention on daytime stress and sleeping problems are discussed.     

PUBLIC AND CORPORATE DUTIES: THE LLOYD CASE IN WESTERN AUSTRALIA

Abstract: In its broadest sense, this paper is about public and corporate accountability in Australia. In its narrowest sense, it examines the implications for senior public officers of the trial of Tony Lloyd in Western Australia. Lloyd was convicted in 1991 of acting improperly in his capacity as a director of Western Colleries Ltd during one of the last attempted rescues of Rothwells Ltd by the state government and the Bond Corporation in 1988. He successfully appealed, not against the conviction, but against the two-year sentence of imprisonment. The comments of the three judges of the Supreme Court are directly relevant to contemporary interpretations of the roles and relationships between business and government, and between public servants, government advisers and company directors.
The first section of the paper examines obligations and constraints imposed on individuals who have public duties, and how these are currently being interpreted in Western Australia. It refers to the uncertainties and imprecision which have developed in understandings of private and political interests, company and public duties, in both convention and the law. This discussion is the background for the detailed analysis which follows of the Lloyd case and its implications for Australian public servants.     

Feminist consciousness and candidate preference among American women, 1972–1988

Recent research has suggested that women with a feminist consciousness differ from nonfeminists in their attitudes and values. This paper investigates the impact of feminist consciousness on candidate preference and vote choice in presidential elections from 1972 to 1988. In those elections in which candidates took divergent positions on feminist issues, feminism was a significant predictor of candidate preference after controls for demographic variables, political attitudes, and partisanship. In elections in which the candidates took similar positions, however, feminism did not affect candidate preference. The 1980 election was the exception: in that election, feminists cast relucantant ballots for Carter, while rating John Anderson higher.     

The compleat advocate

Recognizing and analyzing a public policy problem is an important first step in impacting on its resolution. However, the more crucial and subtle steps are the subsequent ones of selection of means, implementation, evaluation and termination addressing the multi-phased policy decision process. The translation of knowledge created during the estimation phase of possible policy alternatives is a not very well appreciated activity, and this article sheds clear light on the essentials of how one might go about making this translation. Considered are some practical, hard-won lessons learned about becoming and being a public policy advocate. While the specific focus is on children's legislation, the principles invoked have more widespread applicability.     

Witnessing-Condition Heterogeneity and Witnesses' Versus Investigators' Confidence in the Accuracy of Witnesses' Identification Decisions

Undergraduate participants were tested in 144 pairs, with one member of each pair randomly assigned to a witness role and the other to an :investigator role. Each witness viewed a target person on video under good or poor witnessing conditions and was then interviewed by an investigator, who administered a photo lineup and rated his or her confidence in the witness. Witnesses also (separately) rated their own confidence. Investigators discriminated between accurate and inaccurate witnesses, but did so less well than witnesses' own confidence ratings and were biased toward accepting witnesses' decisions. Moreover, investigators' confidence made no unique contribution to the prediction of witnesses' accuracy. Witnesses' confidence and accuracy were affected in the same direction by witnessing conditions, and there was a substantial confidence–accuracy correlation when data were collapsed across witnessing conditions. Confidence can be strongly indicative of accuracy when witnessing conditions vary widely, and witnesses' confidence may be a better indicator than investigators'     

Communitarianism

This article presents 'Communitarianism' in political theory as a 'Blind Alley'. This is on the grounds that it is difficult to find a political theorist who is willing to be called a communitarian, because the literature lacks any well delineated concept of community, and because a number of awkward theoretical questions, notably about power, arise which are not clearly addressed within the literature. Furthermore, communitarianism has been a blind alley for feminists. Although feminism and so-called communitarianism share an opposition to some other varieties of social and political theory, the apparent affinities between feminism and communitarianism mask significant differences.