Does Wal-Mart reduce social capital?

Social capital has attracted increasing attention in recent years. We use county-level and individual survey data to study how Wal-Mart affects social capital. Estimates using several proxies for social capital—such as club membership, religious activity, time with friends, and other measures—do not support the thesis that “Wal-Mart destroys communities” by reducing social capital. We measure exposure to Wal-Mart two ways: Wal-Marts per 10,000 residents and Wal-Marts per 10,000 residents aggregated over the years since 1979 to capture a more cumulative “Wal-Mart Effect.” We find that the coefficients on Wal-Mart’s presence are statistically insignificant in most specifications.     

Risk assessment and suicide prevention in primary care

General practitioners (GPs) are assumed to occupy an important position in the prevention of suicide through the introduction of risk assessment techniques commonly used in psychiatric practice. Despite this theoretical role for primary care services, it remains unclear how frequently GPs implement risk assessment in patients who may be vulnerable to suicide. To address this, a retrospective survey of probable suicides was conducted within a primary care setting utilizing a questionnaire of GPs who had experienced a patient suicide and was augmented by hospital and coroners' records. 85% of questionnaires were returned and 61 deaths were adjudged as suicides during the year long census period. 75% of suicides were male and 54% were aged under 35.28% were in contact with psychiatric services prior to death, although 60% had some diagnosis of mental disorder. GPs had little knowledge of a patient's life circumstances in up to half of cases. Recording of risk assessment occurred in 38% of subjects, was positively associated with prior psychiatric contact (p = 0.001) but negatively associated with presence of physical illness (p = 0.004), older patient age (p = 0.04), and GPs length in practice (p = 0.05). One GP felt their suicide case was preventable. The low rate of risk assessment and limited knowledge of patient lifestyle point to the need for active engagement of GPs in future suicide prevention strategies and should influence the content of training programs in primary care.     

Shame,ontological insecurity and intercountry adoption

Romania and South Korea were once among the top sending countries for adoptive American families. In recent years, though, both have adopted significant restrictions on intercountry adoption. What leads countries to introduce such severe restrictions? This article argues that shame plays a significant, yet underappreciated, motivating factor for leading governments to change their laws on intercountry adoption. Political leaders seize on nationalist rhetoric to argue that intercountry adoption is shameful. The article explores the interaction between intercountry adoption and shame through brief case studies on Romania and South Korea. Finally, it examines the role of the Hague Convention on Protection of Children and Cooperation in Respect of Intercountry Adoption (Hague Adoption Convention) in ameliorating these feelings.     

Evaluating Thatcher: Sceptical Versus Synthetic Approaches

Sceptical approaches to the Thatcher governments provide a useful corrective to exaggerated accounts of their impacts. In particular they point to dependencies in policy-making and implementation. However, evaluating Thatcher via comparison with other post-war UK governments questions excessive scepticism. It suggests that Thatchers governments have made more of a difference than most of their predecessors. In contrast with sceptical views, synthetic views see the significance of the Thatcher governments as more than the sum of their parts. They identify dynamic qualities in the Thatcher governments' approach to policy change, particularly regarding 'policy learning' and 'rolling agendas'.     

Knowledge and attitudes about AIDS: A comparison of public high school students,incarcerated delinquents,and emotionally disturbed adolescents

This study compared AIDS knowledge and attitudes in public high school students (N=167), incarcerated delinquents (N=166), and emotionally disturbed (SED) adolescents (N=151). The response measure was a 50-item Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS) questionnaire that was previously used by Bell et al., in their 1991 study of learning disabled adolescents. Although AIDS knowledge was moderately high in all three groups, widespread misunderstandings about disease transmission and awareness of high-risk groups and practices were noted. Knowledge scores were significantly higher in the public school sample than in the SED adolescents; moreover, they tended to be slightly higher (p<0.10) than the delinquent group as well. Teenagers with the severest emotional problems were by far the least informed. Age and race were also predictive of AIDS knowledge. Other results showed that delinquents were more permissive in their attitudes about sex, more inclined to disdain safe sex practices, and more likely to feel threatened by high-risk groups as well as powerless to protect themselves against AIDS. Generally speaking, the findings extend the work of other investigators on the needs for AIDS education in adolescents. The need is especially urgent in delinquent and emotionally disturbed youth who may require a more comprehensive intervention because of their greater knowledge deficits, propensity for high-risk practices, and tendency to deny or underestimate their own vulnerability.Received Ph.D. in clinical psychology from the University of Utah in Salt Lake City. Research interests include health behavior change and the treatment of anxiety and habit disorders. To whom correspondence should be addressed.Received M.A. degree in psychology from the University of the Pacific. Research interests include health behavior change and medical epidemiology.Received Ph.D. in psychology from the University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand. Research interests are in child and adolescent psychiatry and the delivery of mental health services.Received Ph.D. in biostatistics from the Medical College of Virginia. Research interests are in general linear models.     

Developing economics expertise for the evaluation of primary health care

Given that government budgets are increasingly stretched in the face of competing demands, there is a pressing need for evidence on the costs and benefits of public sector investments. Nowhere is this need greater than in the health field, where the benefits of programmes are typically difficult to measure. Within the health sector a key area of interest is primary health care, which is generally regarded as a central function and the most important means by which the health of the population can be improved. This paper reports the results of a recent survey of Commonwealth countries which sought to establish the extent of economic evaluation of PHC programmes, the impact on decision-making and the level of health economics expertise available in Third World countries. Based on the results of the survey, suggestions are made for improving the commissioning and conduct of economic evaluations, for interpreting and implementing evaluation results, and for developing government expertise in economic evaluation.     

The privatisation of British Telecom: a case study of the extended process of legislation

Abstract. One of the main ingredients in discourse about British politics concerns the extent to which, and under what conditions, central government can get its own way. Since 1979, the country has been ruled by a prime minister and a government placing at least rhetorical emphasis on the 'politics of conviction'. At the same time we have a well established academic literature giving emphasis to the various hurdles in the policy-making process which face even a government with a working parliamentary majority. The purpose of this paper is to trace the steps in the process towards the government achieving one of its manifesto commitments; the sale of 51 per cent of British Telecom shares to the private sector. In so doing, it is intended to analyse this example of the policy process in terms of the predominant British policy style.