Parental Demandingness and Executive Functioning in Predicting Anxiety among Children in a Longitudinal Community Study

Journal of Youth and Adolescence - Theoretical models and empirical studies of anxiety have predominately focused on the main effects of various predictors such as executive functioning deficits on...     

Identifying Counterfeit Cigarettes Using Environmental Pollen Analysis: An Improved Procedure*

Traditional pollen preparation techniques provide clear residues for pollen identification; however, such methods are time-consuming, requiring repeated centrifugation, heating, and digestion with high-concentration hazardous chemicals. Tobacco leaves can effectively trap environmental pollen due to hairy surface and terpene-rich exudates. A new tobacco sample processing method was developed by using different extraction chemistry with surfactant. Marlboro Gold cigarettes were employed as model samples for method development. Parameters critical for pollen extraction, which include number of cigarette sticks used, extraction solution, and extraction temperature, were optimized. By using 1% dishwashing detergent to treat three cigarettes at room temperature, the improved method was able to recover sufficient pollen for microscopic analysis in three repeated centrifuge-washing steps and omit hazardous chemicals involved in traditional methods. We focused on the pollen of common ragweed (Ambrosia artemisiifolia), a plant native to North America, as an indicator to differentiate genuine and counterfeit U.S. brand cigarettes. Results from analyzing randomly purchased genuine (authenticated by forensic examination) and known counterfeit Marlboro Gold provided by law enforcement revealed that a significant amount (39%) of Ambrosia were consistently present in all genuine samples, while counterfeit contained none or only trace count. Similar results were found in other counterfeit U.S. brand cigarettes (all seized in the U.S.) involved in this study as well. Lack of Ambrosia in cigarette strongly indicates the product was not originated in the United States.     

Bureaucratic control and information processing: An institutional comparison

Standard models of bureaucratic control argue that politicians vulnerable to asymmetric information rely on third‐party monitoring to expand information supply. This solution to information asymmetry assumes that politicians can process all information that comes their way. However, advocates strategically oversupply information to crowd out rivals, making such a solution counterproductive. Using data on administrative reorganization in Hong Kong, we examine the alternative proposition that bureaucratic control is contingent not only on how information is obtained but also on how it is processed under two different institutional arrangements: one that splits attention across domain‐specific streams and one that concentrates attention in a single sequence. In both cases, bureaucrats refrain from major changes when politicians break from these arrangements. Moreover, bureaucratic action is significantly more likely to respond to changes in attention allocation when politicians process information in multiple streams.     

Antecedents of Chinese Parents’ Autonomy Support and Psychological Control: The Interplay Between Parents’ Self-Development Socialization Goals and Adolescents’ School Performance

Despite ample evidence for the benefits of parental autonomy support and the harms of parental psychological control to Chinese adolescents’ well-being, little is known about what foreshadows these parenting behaviors among Chinese parents. The current research addressed this gap in the literature. It tested the hypothesis that parents’ endorsement of self-development socialization goals (i.e., regarding a positive sense of self in terms of holding optimistic attitudes toward oneself, feeling autonomous in one’s actions, and establishing one’s independence from others, as important for adolescents to develop) and adolescents’ school performance may interact to predict parental autonomy support and psychological control in urban China. Three hundred and forty-one Chinese seventh graders (mean age?=?13.30?years, 58?% female) and their parents (186 mothers and 155 fathers) participated. Parents reported on their own and their spouses’ endorsement of self-development socialization goals; adolescents reported on parental autonomy support and psychological control; and adolescents’ grades were obtained from school records. Significant interactions were found between parents’ socialization goals and adolescents’ grades in predicting parenting behaviors. When adolescents were doing well at school, the stronger parents’ endorsement of self-development socialization goals, the greater their autonomy support and the lesser their psychological control; when adolescents were doing poorly at school, regardless of parents’ socialization goals, their autonomy support was relatively low and their psychological control was relatively high. These findings highlight a tension between parental concerns over adolescents’ self-development and academic success, which needs to be resolved to promote autonomy support and prevent psychological control among urban Chinese parents.     

Putting the Cart before the Horse: Accountability or Performance?

Conventional wisdom argues that a good set of performance measures builds accountability and that improved accountability generates better productivity in the organisation. By way of an analysis of a case study in one inland Chinese county, this article shows that the assumed relationship between performance and accountability is more rhetoric than real. In practice, the implementation of performance measurement in local China leads to an accountability paradox, in which enhanced accountability tends to hinder the improvement of government productivity. The implementation of the Chinese target-based responsibility system risks boosting the short term accountability of public employees while undermining the long term productivity of government agencies. With the deepening of China's market-oriented reform, this choice appears to put the cart before the horse.     

North Korea’s Resurgence and China’s Rise: Implications for the Future of Northeast Asian Security

Today, Northeast Asia’s security situation is changing rapidly. North Korea is reviving and China’s power is growing at an alarming rate. While the U.S. continues to suffer diplomatically and militarily in the Middle East and from international terrorism, China’s and North Korea’s power is likely to futher increase, polarizing the Northeast Asian security structure, with South Korea, Japan (and Taiwan) all allied with the U.S. versus North Korea allied with China. The liberal democracies should pursue peace with North Korea and China to preclude the situation from aggravating, but should be ready in the longer term to meet, in diverse ways including strengthening their alliances, the challenges posed by rising powers.

Housing for an Aging Population

We use the American Housing Survey to examine the distribution and occupancy of homes that have, or could be modified to have, accessibility features that allow seniors to successfully remain in the community as they age. Despite the aging population and the growing need for accessible housing, the U.S. housing stock is woefully inadequate: fewer than 4% of housing units could be considered livable by people with moderate mobility difficulties, and a miniscule fraction are wheelchair accessible. Recent construction is no more likely to be accessible than homes built in the mid-1990s, suggesting that the housing market is not responding to the aging demographic profile. Only a small fraction of seniors, even among those with mobility difficulties, and even among recent movers, live in suitable homes. Modifications that potentially improve accessibility are more likely undertaken by households with a senior, but only once that senior develops mobility difficulties.     

Examining Relationships Between Legislative and Presidential Influences and Organizational Probity: Evidence from South Korean Central Government Agencies

In public management, few empirical studies have been conducted on the effects of the most influential political authorities—the legislature and the president—on government organizations, despite the theoretical and practical significance of these effects. This study tests the relationships between legislative and presidential influences and organizational probity in South Korean central government agencies, on the basis of political transaction-cost and principal–agent theories. We use three measures of legislative influence—inspectional influence (total annual days of legislative inspection), statutory influence (rules-to-laws ratio), and budgetary influence (ratio of reprogramming budget to total budget), and one measure of presidential influence (annual number of substantive meetings with the president). Then, these independent variables are linked to the organizational probity measure from audited archival data. The two-time-point panel data analysis reveals a positive link between legislative inspectional influence and probity but a negative relationship between the presidential influence measure and probity; the results support theoretical arguments for control over administrative agencies. Thus, the evidence suggests that governments should be cautious of implementing reforms that increase organizational or managerial autonomy.     

Policy Advocacy in Transitioning Regimes: Comparative Lessons from the Case of Harbour Protection in Hong Kong

Current research on policy advocacy relies exclusively on established regimes where instability is largely contained. Using the harbour protection advocacy in Hong Kong as an exploratory case, the article documents how conservationists exploited the unique opportunities arising from the transfer of sovereignty to advance heritage protection policy. Three new strategic choices in policy advocacy are identified. First, policy advocates strategically switched between issue frames instead of becoming strongly identified with any issue frame. Second, they avoided prolonged involvement by pursuing modest, programme-level adjustments. Third, they circumvented the restrictions on scope and focus by creating new venues outside of the policy subsystem.