Cracked Ceilings, Firmer Floors, and Weakening Walls: Trends and Patterns in Gender Representation among Executives Leading American State Agencies, 1970–2000

Trends of female access to and presence in responsible governmental positions have gained substantial attention. The research reported here assesses and seeks convergence on several issues associated with gender representation. It extends the research by focusing on top executive posts in American state governments. In particular, the presence of women agency heads in all 50 states is examined from 1970 through 2000 using the lenses of passive representativeness and active representation. The authors find, first, that women face fewer blockages in securing top posts—the glass ceilings are cracking. Second, women's access to peak executive positions springs from more solid educational, career, and organizational foundations or "floors." Third, lateral career movements are penetrating the "walls" surrounding traditionally male-dominated agency types. The essay concludes with a framework for understanding relationships involving passive representativeness, active representation, and representative results. That framework assists in shifting attention toward the consequences of both passive and active representation.     

Identity Orientation, Voice, and Judgments of Procedural Justice During Late Adolescence

This study focused on the relationship between voice and judgments of procedural justice in a sample of older adolescents and examined potential moderating and mediating influences of identity orientation (personal, social, and collective) and negative emotional response. Participants read 1 of 2 different family conflict scenarios (voice and no voice) asking them to imagine themselves in a disagreement with their parents over grades and financial support. In the voice condition, parents were described as making their decision after listening to the participant’s input. In the no voice condition, parents were described as making their decision without listening to the participant’s input. The adolescents then judged the fairness of the parental decisions and responded to questions concerning their identity orientation. Findings indicate that in addition to replicating the effect of voice in a novel context, the present investigation found moderating effects of personal identity orientation on procedural fairness judgments. Additionally, negative emotional response partially mediated the relationship between voice and global judgments of procedural fairness.Mark R. Fondacaro is an Associate Professor of Psychology and Associate Director of the Levin College of Law Center on Children and Families at the University of Florida. He received his Ph.D. in clinical psychology from Indiana University and his J.D. from Columbia University School of Law. His major research interests are ecological jurisprudence and the conceptualization and assessment of procedural justice in legal and extra-legal contexts including the family and the juvenile justice and health care systems.Eve M. Brank is an Assistant Professor of Criminology, Law & Society at the University of Florida. She received her Ph.D. in social psychology and her J.D. from the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. Her major research interests are parental responsibility laws and juvenile law issues.Jennifer Stuart is a graduate student in counseling psychology at the University of Florida. Her major research interests are adolescent development and delinquency prevention.Sara Villanueva-Abraham received her Ph.D. in developmental psychology from the University of Florida. Her major research interests are adolescent development and parent-child relationships.Jennifer Luescher is a Forensic Psychology Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. She received her Ph.D. in counseling psychology from the University of Florida. Her major research interests are in the areas of procedural justice, risk assessment and risk management, and mental health and juvenile justice policy.Penny S. McNatt is a Visiting Assistant Professor at the University of North Florida. She received her Ph.D. in social psychology from the University of Florida. Her major research interests are in the area of intergroup relations.     

Composition of bacillus species in aerosols from 11 U.S. cities

A PCR-based heteroduplex assay was used to determine the presence and composition of Bacillus species in 11,059 Environmental Protection Agency PM2.5 aerosol samples from 11 U.S. cities. The assay differentiated three groups: Type A containing Bacillus anthracis and very closely related, often pathogenic, Bacillus cereus and Bacillus thuringiensis strains; Type B containing other B. cereus and B. thuringiensis strains; and a third group of more-distantly related Bacillus species. Eight of the 11 cities were positive for Bacillus species in 50% or more of the samples, and the percent of aerosol samples that contained the HD Type A group ranged from 3% to 32%. Cities from the eastern half of the United States generally contained a higher frequency and broader diversity of Bacillus species than the western half of the United States. Positive samples were detected throughout the year. These results have implications for pathogen detection in environmental samples, understanding the natural evolution of new pathogenic strains, and incidence of infection caused by strains of the B. cereus subgroup.     

Assessing the Generalization of Psychopathy in a Clinical Sample of Domestic Violence Perpetrators

This study proposed that domestic violence perpetrators in a clinical sample could be categorized into distinct subgroups and that a particular subgroup of batterers would exhibit sufficient psychopathic characteristics to be clinically meaningful. Participants were interviewed in order to gather a relevant social, familial, educational, criminal, and substance abuse history. They were then administered several psychological measures including the Psychopathy Checklist: Screening Version (PCL:SV). Results lent support to the empirical batterer typology identified by Holtzworth-Munroe, A., Meehan, J. C., Herron, K., Rehman, U., & Stuart, G. L. (2000). However, despite the presence of a more antisocial subgroup, psychopathy did not consistently differentiate among batterers across the measured dependent variables.     

Priming Presidential Approval: The Conditionality of Issue Effects

Variations in the effectiveness of media priming are traditionally attributed to individual differences in political sophistication and news exposure. We contribute to this literature by considering the degree to which the content of an issue prime drives its use in presidential approval. Using a macro level approach, we combine public opinion data on presidential approval from 1981 to 2000 with content analyses of presidential news coverage to see how media attention affects the way issues are weighted in presidential approval. We find that the effectiveness of issue primes depends on issue content, such that familiar and understandable issues are more likely to be primed than more complex and difficult issues.

Establishing safe injection facilities in Canada: legal and ethical issues

In the face of an ongoing and escalating health crisis among injection drug users in Canada, calls are coming from many quarters to initiate safe injection facilities as a way to reduce overdoses, the spread of bloodborne diseases, and other health and community problems associated with injection drug use. This article summarizes a paper on safe injection facilities released in early 2002 by the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network. The paper contributes to the policy discussion in Canada and sets out why and how the law should support the introduction of safe injection facilities.