Critical Stress: Police Officer Religiosity and Coping with Critical Stress Incidents

As a result of exposure to critical stress inducing incidents, police officers experience high rates of family disruption, alcohol abuse, domestic violence, and physical and psychological problems. This paper evaluates the ability of religion to mitigate the harmful consequences of critical stress using data obtained from a survey of metropolitan police officers (n?=?811). Contrary to our expectations, we found less religious officer used more adaptive coping strategies when confronted by critical stress incidents than their more religious counterparts. Furthermore, we found Protestants employed more adaptive strategies than Catholics. Potential explanations for the unexpected findings are discussed.     

Categorically wrong? Nominal versus graded measures of ethnic identity

Ethnic identity is a fundamental concept for understanding the dynamics of contemporary political change, but there has been very little exploration of how to measure ethnic identity and even less discussion of the implications of these measurements for understanding ethnic conflict. Through an analysis of Estonians and Slavs (Russians, Byelorussians, and Ukranians) in Estonia, we show that the ethnic identity of different groups is “salient” to different degrees and that this has significant implications for within-group agreement about political issues and for between-group differences. We show that nominal ethnic identity fully predicts political attitudes when ethnicity is highly salient because a highly salient ethnic identity sets in motion forces that cause individuals within a group to form similar attitudes based upon their ethnic identity. These forces were fully active for Estonians in Estonia in the early 1990s. In this case, nominal ethnic identity was sufficient to explain the attitudes of Estonians. But ethnicity must be treated as graded when it is not highly salient, as with Slavs in Estonia, because only degrees of ethnicity can explain the within-group differences in political attitudes that arise because of a lack of salient identity. Researchers, therefore, should typically treat ethnicity as if it were graded, and they should devise graded measures of it. Although nominal measures are sometimes appropriate (i.e., when ethnicity is highly salient), they will cause the researcher to miss something important in other situations. For example, our work suggests that if events discrupt the social processes that maintain a group’s sense of itself, then a graded measure of ethnicity is useful for predicting attitudes concerning ethnic identity and survival. In short, it is not categorically wrong to treat ethnicity as nominal, but it is best to begin by treating it as graded. Henry E. Brady, Professor of Political Science and Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley, is co-author ofVoice and Equality: Civic Voluntarism in American Politics andLetting the People Decide: The Dynamics of a Canadian Election. He has also written on elections, referendums, polotical behavior, and political methodology. Cynthia S. Kaplan, an Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of California, Santa Barbara, received her Ph.D. from Columbia University and has conducted extensive research in Russia, Estonia, and Tatarstan. She is the author ofThe Party and Agricultural Crisis Management in the USSR and numerous articles on comparative ethnicity, social movements, and political culture in the former Soviet Union.     

Tape Lift Sampling of Chemical Threat Agents

Commercial‐off‐the‐shelf (COTS) materials were evaluated as surface samplers for the Department of Homeland Security Chemical Forensics Program. The program helps evidence collectors identify trace chemical residues at incident scenes. COTS items are widely available, produced in large lots, and with strict controls. Chemical attribution signatures were collected from common surfaces. Eight tape lift candidates were considered, five were chosen based on performance and tested for analytical interferences and extraction efficiencies with 14 chemicals. Three products (duct tape, print lifters, command strips) were evaluated for uptake from common interior surfaces (glass, tile, ABS plastic). Duct tape provided highest recoveries across all surfaces. Even the most volatile analytes were detected in the ABS plastic samples (nondetections in others), regardless of tape lift material used. The porous plastic substrate provides better target retention than glass and tile surfaces. Forensic field operators should sample surfaces made of ABS plastic (keyboards, remotes, phones, etc.) whenever possible.     

Spatially Dispersed Ties Among Interdependent Citizens: Connecting Individuals and Aggregates

A continuing tradition in contextual analysis locates individualcitizens within spatially defined, aggregate settings in aneffort to provide a more complete account of individual behavior.Given the increasing individual mobility within society, itis less than clear that geography continues to define the boundarieson meaningful aggregate contexts—people have become lesstied to their geographic contexts, and technology makes it possiblefor citizens to maintain relationships independently of space,distance, and location. In this paper we pursue an analysisand set of analytic techniques that are designed to connectindividual voters, their communication networks, and the geographythat surrounds them. The analytic techniques utilize a uniquedata set that captures spatial dispersion in an individual'ssocial and political network, and from these analyses we candraw two conclusions. First, spatial dispersion in a networkdoes have an effect on interaction within the network; the worldis not full of voters who operate independently of their geographiccontexts. Second, spatial dispersion provides opportunitiesto connect citizens living in different geographic contexts,thereby creating bridges for communication across differentcontexts. These findings suggest that scholars might profitablyincorporate geography as an important component of the complexrelationships among and between individual citizens in explainingthe role of the individual in modern democratic politics.     

Federalism Outcomes and Ideological Preferences: The U.S. Supreme Court and Preemption Cases

The record of the U.S. Supreme Court in decisions affectingfederal-state relations has been one of inconsistency betweenstates' rights and national supremacy. This inconsistency hasperplexed both legal and political science scholars who havehad great difficulty placing decision-making regarding federalismoutcomes by the Court in any sort of theoretical context. Contraryto much conventional wisdom, ideological preferences do notautomatically translate into federalism outcomes. We extendmodels of judicial decision-making in political environmentsby including state policy. State policy outcomes may be eithermore liberal or more conservative than the policy would be underfederal control. Thus, the ideological preferences of the justicesmay contradict their preferences toward nationalism or statesrights. Testing the model using 94 preemption cases, we findthat individual justices and most Courts are willing to sacrificetheir federalism values in the pursuit of some other policygoal. This finding has implications for both the federalismliterature and strategic models of Court behavior, as well asfor cases the Court is currently reviewing.