Self-injurious behaviors, PTSD arousal, and general health complaints within a treatment-seeking sample of sexually abused women

Eighty-nine adult female survivors of childhood sexual abuse, presenting for psychological treatment, were assessed for self-reported rates of self-injurious behaviors (SIB), health complaints, and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms of physiological arousal. A composite measure of current SIB was significantly and positively associated with health complaints, PTSD arousal, and three measures of sexual abuse severity: age of onset for sexual abuse, injury experienced during the sexual abuse, and perceived life threat. Tests of mediation revealed that symptoms of PTSD arousal mediated the relationship between earlier age of onset for sexual abuse and SIB. PTSD arousal moderated the relationship between sexual-abuse-related injury and SIB. SIB was a unique predictor of health complaints, even after controlling for sexual abuse severity and PTSD arousal.     

Attributes of specialist search dogs--a questionnaire survey of UK dog handlers and trainers

The ideal and actual characteristics of specialist search dogs have been examined in questionnaire surveys of 244 dog handlers and trainers from the six main UK dog-using Government agencies. The ten most important characteristics were (ideal level in brackets): acuity of sense of smell (very high), incentive to find an object which is out of sight (very high), health (very high), tendency to hunt by smell alone (very high), stamina (very high), ability to learn from being rewarded (very high), tendency to be distracted when searching (very low); agility (high), consistency of behaviour from day to day (high), motivation to chase an object (high). Significant differences between actual and ideal levels were found for 22 of the 30 characteristics, predominantly in undesirable attributes, suggesting that there is scope for significant improvement in operational effectiveness.     

Jocks, gender, binge drinking, and adolescent violence

Previous research has suggested a link between athletic involvement and elevated levels of adolescent violence outside the sport context. The present study expanded on this literature by positing differences in the sport-violence relationship across dimensions of athletic involvement (athletic participation vs. jock identity), type of violence (family vs. nonfamily), and gender as well as by examining the impact of binge drinking on the sport-violence relationship. Regression analyses using a sample of 608 Western New York adolescents indicated that (a) jock identity (but not athletic participation) was associated with more frequent violence, (b) jock identity predicted nonfamily violence (but not family violence), and (c) the link between jock identity and nonfamily violence was stronger for boys than for girls. Binge drinking predicted family violence among nonjocks only.     

Biography and the search for women's subjectivity

This paper considers women's biography as an important connecting link between the study of microinteractions of social history and macropolitical structures and transformations. As the search for women's subjectivity requires the fullest possible historical contextualization for the subject of women's biography, identifying the sex-class conditions of women is essential. In studying the structuring of sex classes, it is found that both sexism and racism produce domination by essentializing physical or biological differences. But the dyadic character of gender domination differentiates sexism from all other conditions of exploitation. Because gender power is basically dyadic, interpretative interaction is offered as an appropriate methodological approach to women's biography. Further, when meaning and situation are extended to consciousness and praxis, interpretive interaction can encompass the full range of historical structure which shape sex-class. This theoretical-methodological approach forms the basis for a critique of deconstruction which depoliticized gender research by decentering the subject and dismissing binary oppositions such as gender dyads.     

Global change in microcosm: The case of U.S. water institutions

Water is a resource that already has been affected by some aspects of global change and whose availability in time and place may be substantially further altered by global warming. As human demands and impacts on water resources have increased, institutions governing water use have evolved in response to pressures exerted by competing resource users. The record of such institutional evolution and its implications for the impacts of environmental change on human welfare can provide a glimpse of issues that are likely to arise as other natural resources are increasingly subject to the effects of global environmental transformations. Efforts to manage multiple interdependent water uses present informative analogies to the general problem of managing the many interrelated aspects of global change.     

Unmarried Cohabitation and Parenthood in Britain and Europe

This paper focuses on cohabitation and unmarried parenthood across a range of European nations. It includes a brief outline of the history of cohabitation, reviews recent trends in cohabitation and unmarried parenthood, compares the stability of marital and cohabiting unions, examines the extent to which cohabiting couples are regarded as families, and the final sections include a review of the policy responses to date, as well as a discussion of the impetuses that may lie behind the rise in cohabitation and unmarried parenthood.