Marcia and erikson: The relationships among ego identity status,neuroticism, dogmatism,and purpose in life

Implicit in James Marcia's writings and in the many studies that have employed his measure of ego identity is the assumption that his four ego identity statuses are developmentally ordered along a continuum from “being identity diffused” to “achieving” an ego identity. In order to assess the validity of this assumption, hypotheses were generated and tested concerning the relationship between the above ordering and Erikson's writings regarding the role played in the process of identity formation by the following three variables: neuroticism, dogmatism, and a sense of purpose in life. If one assumes that Erikson's perspective is valid, then the results of this study fail to support Marcia's continuum assumption. While some of the identity statuses appear to classify persons in a manner consistent with Erikson's writings, not one instance of the postulated ordering of Marcia's four statuses is observed. It is concluded that Marcia's measure is not an adequate operationalization of Erikson's perspective on identity formation.     

Work,love and politics: Recent studies of nineteenth‐century British women

Olive Banks, Becoming a Feminist. The Social Origins of ‘First Wave’ Feminism (Wheatsheaf) Brighton, 1986; Barbara Caine, Destined To Be Wives. The Sisters of Beatrice Webb (Clarendon) Oxford, 1986; Sandra Stanley Holton, Feminism and Democracy. Women's Suffrage and Reform Politics in Britain, 1900–1918 (Cambridge University Press) New York, 1986; Pat Jalland, Women, Marriage and Politics 1860–1914 (Clarendon) Oxford, 1986; Sylvia Walby, Patriarchy at Work. Patriarchal and Capitalist Relations in Employment (Polity) Cambridge, 1986.     

A decade of dissent: explaining the dissent voting behavior of Bank of England MPC members

We examine the dissent voting record of the Bank of England Monetary Policy Committee. Contrary to findings in the FOMC literature (for example Havrilesky and Schweitzer in The Political Economy of American Monetary Policy, pp. 197?C210, 1990; Chappell et al. in Q. J. Econ. 108(1):185?C218, 1993), the effects of members?? career backgrounds and the political channel of appointment on voting behavior are negligible, reflecting the distinct institutional constraints and incentives associated with UK monetary policy. Our findings also suggest that literature which characterizes voting behavior as being predominantly determined by members?? internal or external status is overly simplistic. This view is supported by econometric results appertaining to the introduction of member-specific fixed-effects, which account for possible unobserved heterogeneity.     

Credentialism,meritocracy, and merit: educational requirements and the public service

The American myth of mobility suggests that educational attainment, as evidenced by some credential, is the road to achievement for everyone. This has never been entirely true, but recent trends suggest that the educational credential may increasingly limit as well as offer opportunity. Additional educational requirements have often been equated with increasing the “professionalism” of the public service, but they may also serve as a reason to keep out minorities or women now that non-meritorious discriminatory barriers have been eliminated by the courts. Examples from Mississippi and New York are cited. Although the courts have been vigilant in insisting that tests and other selection devices be validated, they have been much more tolerant of educational requirements, often failing to subject them to the stringent tests of job relatedness and validity. Even when a particular government unit is willing to lower credential barriers that cannot clearly be justified, it may be subject to pressures from other government units or associations, focusing on “improving” professional qualifications.     

A national population based examination of the association between age-versatility trajectories and recidivism rates

Purpose

To compare theoretical explanations of the age-versatility curve including the hypotheses of: self-control theory stating that versatility is followed by specialization; taxonomic theory stating that adolescent-limited offenders are specialists and life-course offenders are versatile and orthogenetic theory stating that specialization and versatility are present in a large number of offender groups.

Methods

These explanations were tested with Israeli national population-based data on all first and subsequent juvenile offenders (n = 17,176) with 248,114 registered police contacts from 1996 to 2008.

Results

Semi-parametric group-based modeling identified two trajectory-groups that characterized the age-versatility curve of police contacts before first conviction. The trajectory-groups were labeled as versatility (n = 2,447; 14.2%), and specialization (n = 14,729; 85.8%). After controlling for 19 documented demographic, familial, and criminogenic risk factors, Cox regression showed that juvenile offenders in the versatility group were at increased risk of recidivism compared to offenders in the specialization group.

Conclusions

These results partially adhere with taxonomic theory than the remaining theories and indicate that assuming a trajectory of elevated pre-conviction versatility increases the risk of recidivism.