The Impact of Gender and Department Climate on Job Satisfaction and Intentions to Quit for Faculty in Science and Engineering Fields

This study investigates whether gender and the perceptions of department climate affects faculty job satisfaction and intentions to quit (work outcomes) with surveys responses from 308 faculty members in science and engineering fields. The study finds that both gender and department climate are related to work outcomes and that two facets of department climate (affective and instrumental) mediate the relationship between gender and both job satisfaction and intention to quit. This finding suggests that universities can benefit from improving department climate, which then may improve the retention of both male and female faculty, but may have an even greater impact on improving job satisfaction and reducing intentions to quit of female faculty.     

Calibration procedure and the robustness of CGE models: Simulations with a model for Poland

Calibration is commonly used in order to specify a numerical computable general equilibrium model. As it involves the evaluation of model parameters on the basis of a single observation, there is a concern about the reliability of the results obtained from the model. A one-sector model for the Polish economy is specified and calibrated using various years as a benchmark equilibrium. Different assumptions are also made about some elasticity parameters. The model response is examined by simulating an increase in government expenditure. The results are quite robust to the choice of the base year but very sensitive to some elasticity parameters such as trade substitution elasticities.     

EXAMINING THE CONNECTION BETWEEN CHILD ACCESS AND CHILD SUPPORT

This article examines the connection between fathers' access to children and their maintaining child support. Also examined are various approaches to obtaining compliance with support orders. The effect of various factors on payment of support, such as frequency of contact, remarriage, and the length of time since the separation, is analyzed.     

Changing Stalking Patterns and Prosecutorial Decisions: Bridging the Present to the Future

This article reviews sixty cases from prosecutor's files in two New Jersey counties. These cases are used to examine and help better define the phenomena of stalking. Selected sample case examples are presented and described in regard to the typology of stalking behavior originally proposed by Dziegielewski and Roberts (1995). Based on these cases, application, modification and refinement of the typology criteria are suggested. The critical need for crisis intervention protocols and specialized anti-stalking units and training are emphasized. It is hoped that this information will help the criminal justice and forensic professional to better understand, assess the dangerousness of, and intervene rapidly and effectively in the phenomena of stalking, and to provide technology to protect victims.     

Relationship Between Two Types of Help Seeking Behavior in Domestic Violence Victims

A coordinated community response system to the help-seeking behaviors of domestic violence victims is critical to minimize the impact of violent events and to educate the public, so that safe and effective conflict management skills may replace violent responses. The focus for the present study is to identify and analyze victims’ choices of law enforcement assistance in stopping the violence and/or aid through the services of the regional family violence center. Some victims select legal channels of support; others rely exclusively on social service support, and others seek assistance from both sources. Characteristics of victims whose cases followed two types of help-seeking behavior patterns—legal support or social support–were determined through archived data from both the records of a regional family violence center (FVC) (n=258) and domestic violence incident reports of a police department serving a city of approximately 200,000 citizens (n=127). Findings indicate that African American victims more frequently sought protection through law enforcement sources than they did through family violence center services, and the reverse was true for Euro-Americans.     

The identification of a US serviceman recovered from the Holy Loch, Scotland.

During February and March 2000, human remains were recovered from the Holy Loch, Scotland. Police enquiries identified 13 males that had gone missing, presumed drowned in the Holy Loch or the adjoining lochs, over the previous 35 years. Osteological examination of the remains established they were from a male, aged between 15 and 23 and 168-174 cm tall. This information eliminated ten of the known missing persons. DNA profiles, both STR and mitochondrial were generated from the remains and compared to the profiles generated from relatives of the missing men. A positive match between the unidentified individual and one of the maternal relatives identified the remains as belonging to a US serviceman who had gone missing 35 years ago. The successful identification led to the repatriation of the serviceman's remains.     

A Framework for Understanding Consensus-Building Initiation

The potential of consensus building is dependent upon overcoming difficulties associated with the challenges in getting parties to the table. This article builds a framework for understanding the factors and variables most fundamentally involved in the initiation of consensus-building efforts. Nine factors involved at the beginning of a consensus-building process are identified and outlined. The framework is structured on three major functions of the initiation phase: the definition of the problem, the structure of negotiation, and the motivation to participate.     

The international diffusion of electoral systems: The spread of mechanisms tempering proportional representation across Europe

There is an assumption in much of the electoral engineering literature that domestic episodes of electoral system choice occur in a vacuum, isolated from international influences. Yet this assumption remains largely untested, despite the comparative focus of much of that literature. This article focuses on part of this gap by considering two electoral mechanisms that seek to limit party system fragmentation under proportional representation – low district magnitudes and high electoral thresholds – and shows that the mechanisms have spread across many European countries during the post‐1945 period. Analyses reveal that national legislators are more likely to adopt one of these electoral mechanisms when a large number of peer countries have made similar choices within the last two or three years. This effect is robust to various model specifications and to the inclusion of multiple controls. The article also offers some qualitative evidence from case studies and parliamentary debates.