Correlates of campus crime: An exploration of minority attitudes at an HBCU

Despite a recent increase in the reporting of crime, student attitudes associated with crime on college campuses have been well documented. To the contrary, there is a deficiency of studies that examine the views of students who attend Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs). The purpose of this exploratory study is to identify student attitudes in relation to crime within the context of victimization, offender characteristics, and crime prevention measures. Analyzing nearly 200 questionnaires, chi-square analyses reveal that age, gender, and residential status bear statistically significant relationships in association with student attitudes towards various aspects of campus-related crime. In a similar vein, binary logistic regression models demonstrate the existence of significant associations in a number of specific categories such as victimization and crime prevention measures. Limitations, areas of further research, and policy implications are discussed.     

The determination of lysergide (LSD) in urine by high-performance liquid chromatography-isotope dilution mass spectrometry (IDMS)

The use of isotope dilution mass spectrometry (IDMS) has been investigated for the forensic confirmation of lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) in urine by LC-MS. The advantages of using a deuterated analog of LSD as an internal standard over methysergide are discussed. This study includes a comparison of the electrospray mass spectra of LSD, LSD-d3 and methysergide, and discusses the choice of suitable ions for use in selected ion monitoring (SIM) mode. An IDMS method is presented for the LC-MS confirmation of LSD in urine, with a limit of quantification (LOQ) of 0.5 ng/mL, reflecting the forensic requirement at this laboratory. Under some circumstances the LOQ can be improved to 0.1 ng/mL. This method is linear in the range tested (up to 10 ng/mL LSD in urine) and has been validated in terms of accuracy and precision.     

"PUBLICITY" AS A PROBLEM IN THE INTERNAL VALIDITY OF TIME SERIES QUASI-EXPERIMENTS

Scholars who work with time series quasi-experiments have identified "publicity" as a problem in the interpretation of such research designs. The present study utilizes three examples of the role of publicity in three social interventions: the Romanian abortion restriction of 1966; the British breathalyzer crackdown; and, the 1978 Georgia Status Offender Act. The authors conclude that publicity is most likely to be a problem in internal validity when (1) the intervention is not truly abrupt and (2) a broad "policy" is evaluated as opposed to a "program."