Occupational stress among professional local government managers: introspections and a prognosis

The area of stress research is broad and not well understood. Little is known about the ways in which workers cope with job related stress .This article explores this element of stress related behavior for local government managers. Among the most important findings are that local managers perceive their stress levels to be equal to or greater than many other professions often associated with high demand. It appears that local managers see other professional managers as facing increased levels of stress over the past decade. Managers also see their stress levels as equal to or greater than that of previous occupations or occupations they might wish to hold in th future. While age and length of experience appear to have little association with percieved levels of stress, increased education does appear to reduce such perceptions.     

Collection of Delinquent Fines: An Adaptive Randomized Trial to Assess the Effectiveness of Alternative Text Messages

The collection of delinquent fines is a vast and ongoing public administration challenge. In the United Kingdom, unpaid fines amount to more than 500 million pounds. Managing noncompliant accounts and dispatching bailiffs to collect fines in person is costly. This paper reports the results of a large randomized controlled trial, led by the UK Cabinet Office's Behavioural Insights Team, which was designed to test the effectiveness of mobile phone text messaging as an alternative method of inducing people to pay their outstanding fines. An adaptive trial design was used, first to test the effectiveness of text messaging against no treatment and then to test the relative effectiveness of alternative messages. Text messages, which are relatively inexpensive, are found to significantly increase average payment of delinquent fines. We found text messages to be especially effective when they address the recipient by name.     

Symbolic Racism and Whites’ Attitudes Towards Punitive and Preventive Crime Policies

This study analyzes the determinants of Whites' support for punitive and preventive crime policies. It focuses on the predictive power of beliefs about race as described by symbolic racism theory. A dataset with 849 White respondents from three waves of the Los Angeles County Social Survey was used. In order to assess the weight of racial factors in crime policy attitudes, the effects of a range of race-neutral attitude determinants were controlled for, namely individual and structural crime attributions, perceived seriousness of crime, crime victimization, conservatism and news exposure. Results show a strong effect of symbolic racism on both types of crime policies, and in particular on punitive policies. High levels of symbolic racism are associated with support for tough, punitive crime policies and with opposition to preventive policies. Sub-dimensions of symbolic racism qualified these relationships, by showing that internal symbolic racism (assessing perceived individual deficiencies of Blacks) was most strongly predictive of punitiveness, whereas external symbolic racism (denial of institutional discrimination) predicted opposition to structural remedies. On the whole, despite the effects of race-neutral factors, the impact of symbolic racism on policy attitudes was substantial. Thus, White public opinion on both punitive and preventive crime policies is at least partially driven by racial prejudice.     

Structured Assessment of Correctional Adaptation (SACA): a measure of the impact of incarceration on the mentally ill in a therapeutic setting

Clinicians have observed that psychiatric patients with correctional histories evidence attitudes and behaviors that seem adaptive in penal environments but are maladaptive in mental health settings. This study sought to assess the reliability and concurrent validity of a rating scale designed to measure correctional adaptation using a sample of 64 patients from a state psychiatric hospital. Scale ratings were obtained through structured interviews, whereas predictor variables were gleaned from chart review and self-report. The scale demonstrated good interrater reliability (ICC = .83) and acceptable internal consistency (alpha= .67). Of the variables evaluated, two were significantly correlated with Structured Assessment of Correctional Adaptation (SACA) total scores, total months sentenced to prison or jail (r = .26), and frequency of disciplinary tickets while in prison or jail (r = .31). Stepwise regression analyses revealed only the latter variable significantly predicted SACA score (R = .31), F(1, 58) = 6.27, p < .05. Clinical implications of these findings, the scale, and the construct of correctional adaptation are discussed.     

An analysis of factors contributing to a series of deaths caused by exposure to high environmental temperatures

Autopsy reports at the Forensic Science Centre, Adelaide, South Australia, were reviewed for the 8 years from January 1991 to December 1998 for cases with unusual features in which deaths had been attributed to exposure to high environmental temperatures. Amphetamine-related hyperpyrexial deaths, anesthetic deaths caused by malignant hyperpyrexia, deaths of elderly incapacitated individuals during heat waves, and deaths of children trapped in the back of cars were excluded from the study. In 9 cases, where heat-related deaths had occurred (age range 21 to 77 years; M:F = 8:1). Predisposing factors included lack of familiarity with Australian environmental conditions, excessive clothing, prolonged sun exposure, acute alcohol intoxication, obesity, benztropine and trifluoperazine medication, and underlying dementia, alcoholic liver disease, and possibly epilepsy.     

Reviews

Roget E. Kanet (ed.), Soviet Foreign Policy in the 1980s, New York: Praeger Publishers, 1982, xii + 364 pp. hardback $31.95, paperback $13.95. Adeed and Karen Dawisha (eds.), The Soviet Union in the Middle East: Policies and Perspectives, London: Heinemann for Royal Institute of Interna‐national Affairs, 1982, x+ 172 pp. hardback £13.50, paperback £5.50.

David Holloway, The Soviet Union and The Arms Race, New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1983, x + 211 pp. £7.95, $14.95.

P. H. Vigor, Soviet Blitzkrieg Theory, London: Macmillan, 1983, ix + 218 pp. £25.00.

Angela Stent, From Embargo to Ostpolitik: The Political Economy of West German‐Soviet Relations 1955–1980, Cambridge: CUP, 1982, xvi + 328 pp. £22.50.

Stephen T. Hosmer and Thomas W. Wolfe, Soviet Policy and Practice toward Third World Conflicts, Lexington, Mass.: Lexington Books/Gower Publishing, 1983, xviii + 318 pp. £19.50.

David A. Dyker, The Process of Investment in the Soviet Union, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983, vii + 254 pp. £20.00.

D. Gale Johnson and Karen McConnell Brooks, Prospects for Soviet Agriculture in the 1980s, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1983, x + 214 pp. UK hardback £12.25, paperback £6.27. Elsewhere hardback $21.88, paperback $11.19.

Marshall I. Goldman, USSR in Crisis: The Failure of an Economic System, London/New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1983, xii + 210pp. $15.00.

Ronald E. Hoyt, Winners and Losers in East‐West Trade: A Behavioral Analysis of US‐Soviet Detente (1970–1980), New York: Praeger, 1983, xiii + 238 pp. $29.95.

Paul Dotsenko, The Struggle for a Democracy in Siberia, 1917–1920. Eyewitness Account of a Contemporary, Stanford: Hoover Institution Press, 1983, xvii+ 178 pp. $16.95.

Abram Bergson and Herbert Levine (eds.), The Soviet Economy: toward the Year 2000, London: George Allen and Unwin, 1983, xvi + 452pp. £27.50.