The discovery of acquaintance rape: the salience of methodological innovation and rigor

Over the past 20 years, research has uncovered the many types of sexual victimizations women experience. Findings regarding the victim-offender relationship in such incidents have undoubtedly been among the most striking. Particularly salient is the revelation that the sexual abuse of and violence against women-including rape-most often are perpetrated not by a stranger but by someone known to the victim. Without the innovation and implementation of victimization surveys with behaviorally specific questions, this knowledge may have remained unknown. Instead, armed with such knowledge, prevention and education efforts can be fashioned to address sexual victimizations committed by someone known to the victim. In this article, we address these issues related to key developments in sexual victimization research.     

Willingness to shoot: Public attitudes toward defensive gun use

A survey of 539 residents of Cincinnati is used to examine the willingness to use guns in self-defense against crime. Support for using deadly force against lawbreakers is largely contingent upon the threat of physical harm. In contrast to previous research, firearm owners and non-owners do not differ in their willingness to shoot offenders or in their support for using violence for defensive purposes. Such findings question the distinctiveness of these two groups. Support for firing at criminals, however, did have a cultural component. Willingness to shoot is positively related to childhood socialization into a gun culture and to holding violent attitudes. It also is positively related to the belief that crime is rising, perceived risk of victimization, being nonwhite, and being male.     

Predictions, Patterns, and Policymaking: A Regional Study of Devolution

This article examines state welfare policy choices since thepassage of the Personal Responsibility and Work OpportunityReconciliation Act(PRWORA) of 1996. IT argues that neither priorpredictions nor existing explanations of welfare policymakingfully capture the realities of reform. Using data from nationalstudies and comparisons of policymaking in six states, thisstudy demonstrates that diversity, not uniformity, characterizesstate responses to devolution. Accounting for these choicesrequires an understanding of the context of policymaking. Conventionalanalyses of welfare reform have ignored the institutional structuresthrough which policy is formulated and thus miss an importantdeterminant of choices: the actions of administrative officials.Analyses that ignore institutional settings, and the actionsof administrators within such settings, will continue to missmuch that is crucial to our efforts to understand policy decisions.