Should Abused Women's Reports of Partner Substance Abuse Be Accepted as Valid?

Current research suggests that a husband's substance abuse is correlated with severity of physical abuse and the woman's decision to leave a violent situation. Often, only the battered woman's report of abuse is available. This study compares women's reports of their partners' substance use/abuse with their partners' report using a brief measure of polydrug and alcohol abuse, the Substance Abuse Subtle Screening Inventory (SASSI) and the Conflict Tactics Scale (CTS). Data were analyzed for 25 recovery couples and 25 nonrecovery couples. The correlations for all 50 couples between the male's reported use and the female's report of her partner's use on the SASSI and the CTS were significant on all but one of the CTS scales. They ranged on SASSI from .73 to .33 and from .31 to .06 on the CTS. This suggests that the SASSI and possibly the CTS could be used as valuable tools for assessing women's reports of their partner's substance use/abuse.     

Relationships between psychosocial development and personality disorder symptomatology in late adolescents

The present study investigated the extent to which psychosocial development through the first five stages of Erik Erikson's theory of personality development is associated with Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (third edition, revised; DSM-III-R) Axis II personality disorder symptomatology in a late adolescent sample of undergraduate students. The Inventory of Psychosocial Development (IPD) and the Personality Diagnostic Questionnaire—Revised (PDQ-R) were administered to a mixed-sex sample of 106 undergraduate students. The results of this research were that IPD scores assessing negative resolutions of the first five Eriksonian developmental stages consistently predicted scores on the PDQ-R composite scale and the PDQ-R impairment/distress index—both measures of overall personality disorder symptomatology. The IPD subscales varied substantially in the extent to which they predicted scores on the 13 PDQ-R subscales that assess symptoms of specific DSM-III-R personality disorders—ranging from the trust vs. mistrust subscale, which predicted scores on 12 of the 13 PDQ-R subscales, to the initiative vs. guilt subscale, which predicted scores on only 6 of the 13 PDQ-R subscales. Implications of these findings for our understanding of the relationship between psychosocial development and psychopathology are discussed in the context of previous research in this area, and suggestions for future research are offered.Received Ph.D. from Temple University. Research interests include personality disorders, depression, and life events.     

CONTRACTORS' EXPERIENCE OF COMPULSORY COMPETITIVE TENDERING: A CASE STUDY OF CONTRACT CLEANERS IN THE NHS

Compulsory competitive tendering (CCT) has been an important instrument of Conservative government economic policy since 1979. Its effectiveness in generating cost-effective services depends on competition to supply the service in question.
The NHS domestic market is large and, prior to the introduction of CCT, promised to be profitable for contractors. Many contract cleaners with office cleaning experience entered. In the event the costs of entry were heavy, and the profit margins of established firms were reduced. When contracts have been awarded to firms, they tended to be to those with a track record. Many firms therefore withdrew; and the few that remained have profit margins in the NHS little different from those found elsewhere. Of more than by firms with a serious interest in entry, probably no more than a handful can have come out of the experience in net profit in the first seven years.
The experience of CCT in the market for NHS domestic services has shown that a degree of competition in the market can be achieved, arguably because of the presence of direct service organizations. Competition for this market, on the other hand, can be limited by the high costs of entry.     

Children in the environment: Forest day-care centers: Modern day care with historical antecedents

Some features of early child care are more prominent in Norway than in other countries, such as emphasis on the outdoor environment. Of general relevance and interest is the form of day care provided by forest day-care centers. Three ideas form the development of these centers placed in wild areas. First, throughout history, Norwegians have had a close attachment to nature and some parents want to provide their children with outdoor experiences at an early age. Second, urging children to play outdoors characterizes the image many parents have of a happy, healthy childhood. Third, provision of day care for children has always been restricted in western countries, forcing parents to invent types of service that can become part of an ecological system that promotes healthy development.The forest day-care centers developed recently represent a supplement to the wide typology of child care in the 21st century. The article outlines the connections between these ideas in general European and western history and Norwegian history and presents debate and decisions about a question dating from the last half of the 1980s. It concludes that the forest day-care centers are perhaps only a modern form of the original kindergarten concept, which started in Europe and America as gardens for children not gardens of children.     

Theoretical and empirical specification of a model of informal labeling

Recently criminologists have begun to explore the importance of disaggregating frequency measures of self-reported delinquency into the separate decisions of initiation and continuation. Given that labeling makes predictions concerning continuation, the purpose of this paper is twofold. The first is to test the ability of an informal labeling model to predict the decision to continue delinquent behavior once it is initiated. The second purpose is to address the broader question of whether disaggregation matters. The findings support the idea that the informal labeling model is predictive of the decision to continue delinquent behavior. The findings also suggest that, at least for a measure of general delinquency, there are some differences to be found by choosing the appropriate sample and form of the dependent variable.     

Ribosomal ribonucleic acid (rRNA) gene typing for species identification.

Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) typing of ribosomal ribonucleic acid (rRNA) genes was performed with a polymerase chain reaction (PCR) assay for species identification. A variable region of the 28S ribosomal RNA gene was amplified with primers complementary to flanking sequences phylogenetically well conserved. The products of twelve animal DNAs (human, Japanese monkey, dog, cattle, pig, cat, rabbit, mouse, rat, chicken, frog, and fish) were separated by polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis, each revealing a few bands ranging from 150 to 100 base pairs. The band patterns obtained from each DNA sample differed in number and size, which indicates the applicability of the method to species identification. Samples containing either as little as 1 pg of DNA or degraded DNA of 0.2 to 0.5 kb in length were able to give detectable bands. Postmortem human tissue DNAs were tested as an example. They showed a pattern identical to the human control one, which was distinct from those of the other animals examined.     

From abusive household to dating violence

Social scientists have theorized about the cycle of domestic violence in family abuse. Little research has addressed dating violence as a consequence to the experience of domestic violence by children. This article deals with the self-reported experience of dating violence by high school students from abusive and nonabusive households. A survey was conducted of 1,353 students in a rural area of North Dakota. Results indicated that students from abusive households showed significantly higher incidence of dating violence than those from homes where no abuse was evident. However, less than one in five of the students from abusive home reported dating violence, providing little support for the cycle of violence hypothesis. Students from abusive homes viewed violence as negatively as students from nonabusive homes. Thus, while there are significant differences between the two groups, there are also important similarities. Although there is apparently a greater risk of dating violence among students who have experienced violence at home, these data do not support the idea of an inescapable pattern of violence among adolescents who have experienced violence themselves.