A review of rejected police candidates.

This paper reviews the activities of a Civil Service Medical Review Board which has reviewed the appeals of civil service applicants, particularly for police work, who have been rejected for psychiatric reasons by the hiring authority on the grounds of "mental unfitness." In a 1-1/2-year period, 98 cases have been reviewed. The Board has upheld the applicant in 65% of the cases and the hiring authority in 35% of the cases. Some of the factors resulting in the reversal of the decision of the hiring authority have been discussed. These include insufficient and superficial examination, inappropriate use of test material, attitudinal biases by the examiner, and inadequate reports which do not provide the adequate documentation required by law. It has been the hope of the Board that this review of professional judgment will ultimately impress both hiring authorities and examiners with the defects of the procedures utilized and will encourage them to provide higher quality screening which will be upheld on appeal. To a degree this has been accomplished. Hiring authorities were upheld in only 25% of the cases from September 1973 to March 1974 and 18% from March 1974 to September 1974. This changed radically in the September 1974 to December 1974 period, when hiring authorities were upheld in 60% of the appeals. As has been pointed out, such screening primarily involves review of personality disorders which, by their nature, require thoroughness of knowledge and delicacy of judgment for the formulation of a reasonable conclusion. It is hoped that these lessons will ultimately result in the selection of police officers likely to be successful at their tasks, without arbitrary rejection of those who reasonably merit a trial at work so essential to our society.     

Book reviews

Jan Marczewski, Crisis in Socialist Planning. Eastern Europe and the USSR. Translated from the French by Noel Lindsay. (Praeger Special Studies in International Economics and Development.) New York: Praeger Publishers and London: Pall Mall Press, 1974. xvii+245 pp. £8.00.

Alec Nove, Stalinism and After. London: Allen & Unwin, 1975. 205pp. £4.74, or £2.35 (paperback).

John Erickson, The Road to Stalingrad. Volume 1 of Stalin's War with Germany. London: Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 1975. x+594 pp. £12.00.

Henry W. Morton and Rudolf L. Tökés (eds.), Soviet Politics and Society in the 1970s. New York: The Free Press and London: Collier Macmillan Publishers, 1974. xxvi+401 pp. £6.50.

Dodd L. Harvey and Linda C. Ciccoritti, U.S.‐Soviet Cooperation in Space. Coral Gables, Fla: Center for Advanced International Studies, University of Miami, 1974. xxxiii+382 pp. Paperback.

T. Dixon Long and Christopher Wright (eds.), Science Policies of Industrial Nations: Case Studies of the United States, Soviet Union, United Kingdom, France, Japan and Sweden. Praeger Special Studies in International Politics and Government. New York: Praeger, 1975. xiii+232 pp.

Roy E. H. Mellor, Eastern Europe: A Geography of the Comecon Countries. London: Macmillan Press, 1975. x+358 pp. £7.50 or £3.95 (Paperback).

Bogdan Mieczkowski, Personal and Social Consumption in Eastern Europe: Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and East Germany. Praeger Special Studies in International Economics and Development. New York: Praeger Publishers, 1975. xxiv+342 pp. $21.50.

Gerhard Wettig, Community and Conflict in the Socialist Camp: The Soviet Union, East Germany and the German Problem 1965–1972. Translated by Edwina Moreton and Hannes Adomeit. London: C. Hurst, 1975. xiv+161 pp. £6.30.

Kurt Sontheimer and Wilhelm Bleek, The Government and Politics of East Germany. Translated by Ursula Price. London: Hutchinson University Library, 1975. 205 pp.

Allen H. Barton, Bogdan Denitch and Charles Kadushin (eds.), Opinion‐Making Elites in Yugoslavia. Praeger Special Studies in International Politics and Government. New York: Praeger and London: Pall Mall Press, 1973. xxii+344 pp. £7.75.

Sharon Zukin, Beyond Marx and Tito. Theory and Practice in Yugoslav Socialism. London: Cambridge UP, 1975. x+302 pp. £7.50.

Ervin Pamlényi (ed.), A History of Hungary. Wellingborough: Collet's, 1975. (Published in Hungary, edited under the auspices of the Historical Institute of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.) 676 pp. £4.95.

Peter J. Potichnyj (ed.), Ukraine in the Seventies. (Papers and Proceedings of the McMaster Conference on Contemporary Ukraine, October 1974.) Oakville, Ontario: Mosaic Press, 1975. 355 pp. $12.95 or $6.95 (paperback).

Leon Trotsky, The Challenge of the Left Opposition (1923–25). Edited and with an introduction by Naomi Allen. New York: Pathfinder Press, 1975. 428 pp. $15.00. $3.95 or £1.65 (paperback).

Frank Haller, Sozialistische Akkumulations‐ und Wachstumstheorie. Zur Kritik der politischen Ökonomie des Sozialismus in der DDR. Berlin: Osteuropa‐Institut an der Freien Universität Berlin, 1974. In Kommission bei Verlag Duncker & Humblot, Berlin. 192 pp. DM 62.     

Trauma, sport, and malignant cerebral edema

Sudden cerebral swelling and death secondary to craniocerebral trauma has been noted in children and young adults. This is due to an increase in intracerebral blood, either secondary to an increase in cerebral blood volume or a redistribution of intracranial blood from the pial to the intraparenchymal vessels. Sequential craniocerebral trauma has been associated with the syndrome of "malignant cerebral edema"; the possibility of a "compliance compromised brain" has been suggested as the cause. The additional possibility of asymptomatic encephalitis leading to a compliance compromised brain and malignant cerebral edema is discussed.     

Adolescents' capacities to provide voluntary informed consent

Minors' capacities to provide a valid informed consent for the treatment of medical and psychological disorders are contingent in part on the determination of whether they can make voluntary treatment decisions. The gravity of a medical dilemma and the nature of parental influence are two factors hypothesized to effect and perhaps compromise the voluntariness of treatment decisions made by adolescents. In the present study 40 14- and 15-year-old subjects were asked to note their conviction for treatment decisions they had made in response to hypothetical medical dilemmas in which parental influence varied. It was found that adolescents making treatment decisions are generally deferent to parental influence, although they are more likely to resist parental influence when the consequences of the decision have serious implications for the hypothetical adolescent's health.This investigation was supported in part by a grant from the American Psychology-Law Society/ Division 41 of the American Psychological Association, whose assistance is gratefully acknowledged. Gratitude is also extended to the Albemarle County School District, the Blue Ridge School. and St. Anne's-Belfield for their kind cooperation. The authors wish to thank William Gardner, Jeanne Smith, and Edith Lawrence for their work on behalf of this project. Special recognition is due to Lois A. Weithorn for her guidance and support of this research endeavor.     

Factor similarity of the Conflict Tactics Scales across samples,spouses, and sites: Issues and implications

Wide variations in prevalence estimates of marital aggression point to the absence of a uniform and adequate definition of marital aggression. To focus on the construct validity of Straus' (1979) Conflict Tactics Scales, the most frequently used measure of marital aggression, two studies were conducted. Based on responses to the Conflict Tactics Scales, two consistent factors (viz. Physical and Psychological Aggression) emerged in separate samples of 187 couples seeking therapy for marital problems, and 398 nonclinic couples in beginning marriages. The factor structure was consistent across clinic and nonclinic samples, sex, geographical sites, time, and socioeconomic status. Implications for the measurement of interspousal physical aggression are raised (e.g., mild, moderate, and severe aggression load on the same factor) and appropriate directions for further research on the construct validity of the Conflict Tactics Scales are suggested (e.g., conducting similar factor analyses on aggressive couples).