Initial emotional response to childhood sexual abuse: Emotion profiles of victims and relationship to later adjustment

A sample of 137 college women's retrospective reports of childhood sexual abuse were examined in order to identify the emotional responses these victims experienced at the time of abuse and to investigate the relationship between these responses and the long-term effects of abuse. Results identified three important dimensions of responding including guilt/fear, anger/disgust, and positive emotions. Further, five groups of victims displaying unique emotion profiles were identified. These include: (a) guilty/fearful individuals, (b) low responders, (c) angry/disgusted individuals, (d) ambivalent individuals, and (e) positive individuals. It was determined that victims' responses to abuse were associated with abuse severity. Finally, victim's affective responses to abuse were related to subsequent adjustment. Individuals experiencing high levels of guilt/fear were identified as exhibiting poorer social adjustment than either individuals reporting primarily anger or disgust or individuals reporting low levels of all emotions. Possible mechanisms through which these experiences have their effects are discussed.     

Do welfare benefits cause the welfare caseload?

Analyses of the welfare system generally examine one of five competing models: (1) The work disincentive model; (2) the human capital model; (3) the macroeconomic model; (4) the public choice model; or (5) the cost-of-job-loss model. This paper employs the Granger causality concept and the multiple-rank F statistic to test the implications of all five of these models simultaneously. The results offer modest support to all but the macroeconomic model. The relationships among welfare benefits, caseloads, and labor market conditions appear to be too complex to be fully captured by a single model.     

An empirical investigation of interstate AFDC benefit competition

Claims that states which offer generous welfare benefits attract the poor and that some states pay low benefits intending to drive the poor away are neither uncommon nor entirely unfounded. This paper employs a two player (state) generalized game to model states' choice of a benefit level in the Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) program. Migration by the poor in response to interstate differentials in earnings and welfare opportunities, and the subsequent changes in AFDC caseloads, drive this game. Estimation of the model (using 1979 data) suggests that states within approximately 750 miles of each other do engage in a benefit-setting game. The rival's initial number of poor and preference for non-AFDC consumption appear to be the more influential rival characteristics. These findings, while derived from a different methodological approach, are consistent with previous studies which indicate that welfare recipients tend to move toward higher benefit states. Such migration may impede the efficient spatial allocation of labor. The results also indicate that states will tend to offer lower benefits given recipient migration than would be the case otherwise. State jurisdiction over benefits consequently leads to underprovision of AFDC. Federalization of the AFDC program would improve efficiency in terms of the spatial allocation of labor and the provision of AFDC.     

The relationship between education level and performance ratings of campus police officers

Data from 165 campus police officers at 16 campus police departments were used to investigate the relationship between educational level and performance of campus police officers. The results of the study indicated that education was significantly related to supervisor ratings of report writing proficiency (r=.29) and communication skills (r=20) but not discipline problems (r=−.01) or overall performance (r=.10). The relationship between education and report writing proficiency was moderated by years of police experience as education predicted performance in officers with five or more years experience but not those with less than five years experience.     

Accounting for the "Second Assault": Legal Organizations'Framing of Rape Victims

What organizational and community conditions influence legal officials to treat rape victims “unresponsively”? Our analysis is guided by Goffman's theory of organizational frameworks and frames of activity and March and Olsen's institutional theory of organizations. Using data from 130 m-organizations in Florida that process rape cases, we compare six types of organizations (including hospital emergency rooms and rape crisis centers) on eight criteria and review their frameworks and frames of activity relative to unresponsiveness. We use the issue of victim legitimacy to illustrate the utility of our model. Our results show that well-meaning staff in legal organizations are oriented to routinely treat victims unresponsively. Their organizations routinely orient them to be concerned with, for example, public approval, the avoidance of losing, and expediency more than with victims' needs. In our conclusion, we identify ways legal officials and rape crisis centers can promote responsive treatment of victims. We also call for research on legal organizations that are responsive to victims and for a nationwide discourse on the “politics of rape victims' needs” as a means of addressing the gender inequality issues that underlie rape crimes and laws and orient legal officials to treat victims unresponsively .     

Ellen Swallow,Lois Gibbs and Rachel Carson: Catalysts of the American environmental movement

There are none as responsible for the initiation and spirit of the American environmental movement as two scientists, Ellen Swallow and Rachel Carson, and a third woman, Lois Gibbs, a housewife and mother turned environmental activist. Ellen Swallow devised the world's first formal curriculum and scientific methods for the study of ecology. Although her science of ecology was ultimately rejected by male science and then relegated to the field of home economics, her legacy to environmental science has borne fruit nearly a century later in the phenomenon of the American housewife and mother, as exemplified in Lois Gibbs of Love Canal, New York. Gibbs, who is self-taught in the science of hazardous waste, has been the major force in the national protest against indiscriminate disposal of hazardous waste in the environment.Rachel Carson's final book. Silent Spring, was the clarion call to the American society to examine the excessive toll taken on insect, aquatic, animal, plant, and human life by the post World War II policy of increasing use of synthetic chemicals with insecticidal properties in American agriculture, forestry, and management of natural resources. As a consequence of its passionate and irrefutable arguments, the American government created the Environmental Protection Agency and promulgated some of the most rigorous environmental legislation in the world.