The Role of Public Service Motivation in Employee Work Engagement: A Test of the Job Demands-Resources Model

The study investigates the nature of public service motivation’s (PSM) relationship to employee work engagement. Using the Job Demands-Resource Model, the authors compare whether PSM as a resource is an antecedent to employee work engagement or has a buffering effect on job hindrances of perceived red tape in explaining employee work engagement. They surveyed 388 supervisors and managers in a public-sector organization in the United States. The findings support PSM as an antecedent along with perceived job influence and perceived procurement red tape to employee work engagement.     

Regulatory Analysis Procedures and Political Influence on Bureaucratic Policymaking

Well‐known theories suggest that administrative procedures may be used as mechanisms of political control of the bureaucracy. This study investigates whether three common regulatory analysis procedures—cost‐benefit analysis, risk assessment, and economic impact analysis—lead to greater influence by political officials on bureaucratic policymaking. Multivariate analyses of data from a unique survey of state administrators indicate that regulatory analysis requirements are associated with decreases in the perceived influence of elected political officials on the content of administrative rules. This association is particularly evident in cases where proposed rules are subjected to a cost–benefit test. These findings contradict prominent theories of administrative procedures, but are consistent with recent research on the political power of administrative agencies.     

Reintegrative Shaming, Procedural Justice, and Recidivism: The Engagement of Offenders' Psychological Mechanisms in the Canberra RISE Drinking-and-Driving Experiment

Advocates of restorative justice (RJ) hypothesize that the diversion of criminal cases to RJ conferences should be more effective in lowering the rate of reoffending than traditional prosecution in court processing because the conferences more effectively engage the psychological mechanisms of reintegrative shaming and procedural justice. This study uses longitudinal data from the drinking-and-driving study in the Australian Reintegrative Shaming Experiments (RISE) to evaluate the long-term impact of reintegrative shaming and procedural justice on support for the law and on later recidivism as assessed through the use of police records and by self-report. Analysis first suggests that there is no direct effect of experimental condition on later recidivism. However, it further suggests that both traditional court-based prosecution and RJ conferences increase support for the law and lower the rate of future reoffending when they engage the social psychological mechanisms of reintegrative shaming and procedural justice and thereby increase the legitimacy of the law. Hence, the results argue for the potential value of procedures such as the RJ conference but indicate that those procedures will only achieve their objectives if they are effectively designed and implemented.     

You Get What You Pay For: Environmental Policy and Public Health

In this article, we examine the cumulative impact of state environmentalprotection policies and environmental quality on the healthof state residents in the United States. Using a series of pathanalytic models, we simultaneously analyze the effect of stateenvironmental policies on environmental pollution and healthoutcomes. Our results indicate that states with stronger environmentalprograms have lower levels of pollution and better public health.These results are robust across multiple measures and alternativemodel specifications. We also find some evidence that statesthat assume authority to implement federal environmental programshave worse health outcomes. Our findings suggest that overalllevels of public health may be affected by state choices withrespect to environmental policies and highlight the importanceof assessing programmatic consequences across policy areas.     

Retirement-age women and pensions: findings from the New Beneficiary Survey

This article examines the extent of employer-sponsored pension receipt and the amounts of pension benefits among a cohort of retirement-age women interviewed in the New Beneficiary Survey. These women reported relatively low levels of pension protection. Only 27 percent were receiving a pension in late 1982, either from their own employment or as survivors. This was one-half the rate of current pension receipt among a comparable cohort of men. An additional 17 percent of the women were expecting pensions of their own or had potential survivor protection through their husbands' pensions. Among those receiving a pension, women reported median monthly benefits of $250, compared with $460 among men. Pension benefits were a fairly important source of income for these women, particularly those who were unmarried. Almost one-half of the unmarried recipients depended on their pensions for one-third or more of their total incomes, and without their pension income 11 percent would have been below poverty income levels.     

New Sources for the Study of Iraqi Intelligence during the Saddam Era

The US Department of Defense (DOD) has made available to scholars a significant collection of documents captured from the files of the Saddam-era Iraqi intelligence services. DOD is also studying ways in which further such documents can be released. These documents paint a picture in many ways reminiscent of the intelligence services of the totalitarian Soviet Union. These and forthcoming documents may enable important research on Iraq and on the role of intelligence services in totalitarian states. One newly available document gives the Iraqi General Military Intelligence Directorate's assessment of Iran on the eve of the Iran–Iraq War.     

Implementing violence and incident reporting measures on a forensic mental health unit

The assessment of risk and prediction of violence in mental health units can play a large role in creating a safer environment for both the staff and the patients. Nurses in forensic units are in a unique position in regards to assessment of violence as they spend a great deal of time with the patients. Nurses on a forensic mental health unit scored the Brøset Violence Checklist (BVC) twice daily for 12 weeks for all patients either resident on or admitted to the unit (N?=?46). The Staff Observation Aggression Scale-Revised (SOAS-R) was used to report any adverse incidents (N?=?51). Data were examined at the both the item and scale level. Main results showed the area under the curve values of the BVC score, slide rule, and the sum of BVC and slide rule score in turn demonstrated strong predictive accuracy for inpatient aggression (0.68–0.73). Through logistic regression analyses the BVC uniquely predicted inpatient aggression but adding the slide rule did not improve prediction. Predictive accuracy was found across three diagnostic groups – dementia, psychosis and substance use disorders. These results provide further support on the predictive accuracy of the BVC for short-term violence in forensic mental health settings.