Adolescent women's developing identity: A study of self-definition in the context of family relationships

This study generated adolescent women's perception of their identity in relation to family members spanning three generations and related these perceived relationships to their sex-role orientation. Subjects were 20 firstborn university women from intact families. The methodology used multiple sources of information, including open-ended interviewing procedures, rating scales, and standard research measures of sex-role identity. Significantly more constructs empirically differentiated family by generation than by sex. Congruence of young women with both the parent and grandparent generation, relative number of masculine stereotypes produced, and personality traits of males and females were significantly influenced by the presence of a brother in the sibling generation. There was no relationship between family constellation and sex-role orientation. Feminine women were significantly more congruent with other females in their family than androgynous women. There was a linear trend for androgynous women to be increasingly individuated across the generations.Received her Ph.D. from Yale University. Research interests include observation of children and families in natural settings, longitudinal research with at-risk infants, and rural consultation.Received her Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota. Research interests include development of social competence in family, school, and community environment.Received his Ph.D. from Yale University. Research interests include the socialization of values, professional development, and studies of the family in religious and ethnic community contexts.     

Drawings of the opposite sex: Continued use of the draw a person test and young state hospital patients

The Draw A Person test has continued to be one of the most frequently utilized psychological tests with children and adolescents. This is especially true for the child/adolescent populations in state hospitals. Because of the frequent criticism leveled against the DAP's validity, this study was undertaken in order to provide normative data for the DAP with this particular clinical population. Previous research has focused on the drawings of the same sex as the subjects; this study deals with the characteristics of the drawings of the opposite sex. The subjects were 84 male and 66 female psychiatric patients from the Adolescent Unit (AU) at Rusk State Hospital. As each patient was admitted to the AU, he was scheduled for psychological testing, with the DAP, the Revised Beta, and the MMPI being a part of this testing. The results of this study indicate that IQ ranking is the most significant factor affecting DAP test performance by male subjects. IQ ranking was not found to significantly influence the drawings by females. Neither MMPI test performance nor social background factors were shown to significantly affect DAP test performance. It is suggested that in order for the DAP to become a more objectively utilized personality technique, a scoring method should be developed that takes into account the overall quality of the drawing in conjunction with the individual details of each area of the figure drawn. More focus should also be given to the characteristics of the opposite-sex figure drawn by the subjects and its potential interpretation.Received his M.S. degree in psychology from North Texas State University in 1968. Current interests include establishment of residential psychiatric facilties for children and adolescents, development of new treatment modalities for children and adolescents (i.e., Wilderness Camping Programs for emotionally disturbed children and adolescents), and understanding and developing working knowledge of the criminally insane child or adolescent.Received his Ph.D. in experimental psychology from the University of Alabama. His research interests include program evaluation and psychometric studies of psychological tests.Received his B.A. degree in mathematics at the University of South Florida in 1968 and his M.S. degree in statistics from Virginia Polytechnic Institute in 1970. His current interest is mental health statistics.Received his Ph.D. from Texas Tech University in 1975. His current interest is in assertion training.     

Parental influences on the development of adolescent autonomy and identity

Two studies were undertaken to examine parental influences on autonomy and identity development. In Study 1, 262 adolescents in seventh and eleventh grades were given Kurtines's autonomy measure, Simmons's identity measure, and Elder's questions regarding the adolescents' perceptions of their parents' autocratic, democratic, or permissive parenting styles. Study 2 was a replication with 168 subjects. Across both studies it was found that sex-role socialization is more influential for automony development than is either level of parental power or age. Both age and father's use of democracy were the most influential variables on identity development.Received Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota. Major interests are adolescent social cognition and social development.Major interests are adolescent social cognition and social development.Major interests are adolescent social cognition and social development.Received Ph.D. from the University of Cincinnati. Major interests are cognitive development and theories of personality.     

A decade of pediatric homicide: a retrospective study at the Medical University of South Carolina.

More than 3 million children are abused and/or neglected each year in the United States. Unfortunately, a significant percentage of these cases result in homicide by child abuse or child neglect. Causes of death range from blunt force trauma and shaking to asphyxia to immolation. We retrospectively reviewed all pediatric forensic cases referred to the Medical University of South Carolina Forensic Pathology Section over the past 10 years, from January 1986 to December 1995. Of these, we looked only at children < or =5 years of age. The majority (342 cases, 69%) of these deaths were classified as natural, 96 (19%) as accident, and 60 (12%) as homicide. Of the homicides, we examined the cause of death; age, gender, and race of the victim; relationship to the perpetrator; time interval between injury and death; and the initial history given as to the cause of the injury. The cause of death fell into nine categories, the number one category being head trauma. Forty-five percent of the homicides were by head trauma, 12% by abdominal or body trauma, 25% by asphyxia (with half of these due to drowning), 10% by carbon monoxide poisoning or thermal injury, and the remaining 8% involving cases of neglect, stabbing, and poisoning. The majority of the homicide victims were male (67%) and black (67%). Forty-six percent were < or =1 year of age. Approximately 25% of the homicide cases were designated as shaken baby syndrome (SBS). In 97% of the cases, the assailant was known to the victim and was a family relative in 77%. Sixty-three percent of the assailants were female and 45% of the assailants were male; in 12%, the assailants were both parents, and in 1 case, the assailant remains unknown. Of the asphyxia deaths, 87% of the assailants were female. The time interval between injury and death ranged from minutes to hours in most cases to months in cases of repeated abuse and chronic injury and sequelae. The time interval between injury and the onset of symptoms remains unknown in most cases due to inconsistencies in the history and lack of credibility of the caretaker. The most common initial history given was "a fall" (20%). We report our findings of a decade of pediatric homicides to increase awareness of the common scenarios and case histories, demographics of the victims, causes of death, and perpetrators of pediatric homicide.     

Homicides in two Scandinavian capitals.

In this study we investigated homicides in the two Scandinavian capitals, Copenhagen, Denmark and Oslo, Norway, for the 10-year period from 1985 to 1994. The total number of homicides was 431; 63.8% occurred in Copenhagen and 36.2% in Oslo. The average homicide rate was 1.6/100,000 in Copenhagen and 1.8/100,000 in Oslo. Blunt force, sharp force, and strangulation were the most common methods. Firearms were also used but did not account for >20% in either of the two cities. This is probably due to strict gun laws in both countries. There was no clear difference between the homicide victim populations in the two cities with regard to age, gender, or social and marital status. The proportion of alcoholics and unemployed persons was much higher than in the background population and to a similar extent in both cities, indicating that the homicide victim populations differ from the background populations. The perpetrator knew the victim in the majority of the cases. The most frequent motives or circumstances in both cities were fights, family rows, financial controversies, or jealousy.     

The Constitution of a European Democracy and the Role of the Nation State

Starting from the presupposition that European democracy is necessary to the survival and development of the European Union, the author deals with the process which may entail a European constitution, and discusses the elements of the present legal structure of the EU which are conducive to a European Democracy. In particular, the author focuses on the incomplete, polycentric, and dynamic character of a possible EC/EU constitution, and on the duality of its legitimating principle. This claim is that these characteristics necessitate some institutional modifications of democratic principles if compared with national democracy, and that Euro-democracy is possible if we do not simply apply the standards of democracy valid for Member States, but succeed in developing criteria which are adequate to the institutional qualities of the EC/EU. Finally, the author maintains the legal character of the regulatory power of the Community, and invokes the mutual legal bonds linking the Member States and their peoples as the source of the Community.     

Hypoxic/ischaemic brain damage, especially pallidal lesions, in heroin addicts.

The occurrence of pallidal lesions with or without other hypoxic/ischaemic brain injuries was evaluated in 100 intravenous (i.v.) heroin addicts. The brains were collected consecutively from forensic autopsies during the period from January 1995 to June 1996. The autopsies were required by the police and performed at The Institute of Forensic Medicine, The National Hospital, Oslo. There were 21 women and 79 men, median age 32 (range 21-47) and 34 (19-60) years, respectively. Of 38 brains with abnormalities, twenty-five cases showed isolated or combined lesions of hypoxic/ischaemic origin. Pallidal lesions were found in nine brains; six lesions were old, one was subacute (a couple of weeks), and two were part of recent, generalized hypoxia/ischaemia. Six persons had old infarcts in the hippocampal formation, and one of them in combination with old pallidal infarcts. In seven brains small and old infarcts were found in watershed areas in the cerebellum. Between five and ten percent of i.v. heroin addicts might have pallidal infarcts, either as the sole lesion, or combined with other manifestations of hypoxic/ischaemic brain injury. This might give severe mental disturbances in the affected persons.     

Application of experimental poverty measures to the aged

The U.S. Census Bureau recently released new, experimental measures of poverty based on a National Academy of Sciences (NAS) panel's recommendations. This article examines the effects of the experimental measures on poverty rates among persons aged 65 or older in order to help inform policy debate. Policymakers and analysts use poverty rates to measure the successes and failures of existing programs and to create and defend new policy initiatives. The Census Bureau computes the official rates of poverty using poverty thresholds and definitions of countable income that have changed little since the official poverty measure was adopted in 1965. Amid growing concerns about the adequacy of the official poverty measure, a NAS panel undertook a study of the concepts, methodology, and data needed to measure poverty. The panel concluded in its 1995 report that the current measure no longer provides an accurate picture of relative rates of poverty for different groups in the population or of changes in poverty over time. The panel recommended changes in establishing the poverty thresholds, defining family resources, and obtaining the required data. The Census Bureau report shows how estimated levels of poverty would differ from the official level as specific recommendations of the NAS panel are implemented individually and how estimated trends would differ when many recommendations are implemented simultaneously. It computes nonstandardized and standardized poverty rates. (The latter constrains the overall poverty rate under the experimental measures to match the official rate.) This article reports poverty rates that have not been standardized and provides considerably more detail than the Census report about the effects of the experimental measures on poverty among the aged. It examines the effects of changing the poverty thresholds and the items included or excluded from the definition of available resources. It also explores the effects of the experimental measures on persons aged 65 or older by age group, gender, race and ethnicity, and marital status. Results indicate that: Poverty rates in 1997 for persons aged 65 or older under the experimental NAS poverty measure are 17.3 percent, compared with 10.5 percent under the official poverty measure. This 65-percent increase is largely driven by the NAS-based measure's subtraction of medical out-of-pocket (MOOP) expenses from resources. Under the NAS-based measures, poverty rates increase for all major groups of older persons, and increase the most for groups for whom the incidence of official poverty is the lowest. The experimental NAS poverty measure shows narrower differences between genders, racial and ethnic groups, and among persons of different marital statuses than the official poverty measure. For example, white Hispanic women aged 65 or older have poverty rates that are 450 percent higher than those for white non-Hispanic men under the official poverty measure and 181 percent higher under the NAS measure. The NAS-based measure's subtraction of MOOP expenses from resources has a disproportionate effect on poverty rates among non-Hispanic whites and men as compared with other groups. However, changes in relative poverty between groups appear to be most influenced by the NAS midpoint equivalence scale. Because this scale decreases poverty rates for persons who live alone or with unrelated individuals and increases them for persons who live with others, poverty rates differ meaningfully under the NAS and official measures among demographic groups. This article highlights issues concerning the elements of the experimental NAS poverty measure that are particularly important to the measurement of poverty among the aged population. Results suggest that the research community's future efforts to refine, enhance, and build upon the NAS panel's recommendations will yield important insights about poverty among the older population.     

Coexistence of public and private job agencies: Screening with heterogeneous institutions

In response to the analysis of bureaucracies and the finding of inherent inefficiencies, public choice theory argues for an increase in competition by contracting out government services and deregulation. The paper explores the effect of coexisting public and private employment services in a model with private information of the worker about her ability and unobservable effort choice. The employer's use of an efficient unemployment exchange and an efficient private agency may lead to optimal screening with first best contracts. This is due to the assumption that good types of workers lose more human capital than bad types in periods of unemployment or mismatch. In contrast to standard screening contracts, a bad type of worker earns an information rent if the employment exchange is inefficient, but the employer chooses not to use the private agency for good types.