Understanding Date Rape Attitudes and Behaviors: Exploring the Influence of Race,Gender, and Prior Sexual Victimization

This exploratory investigation examines the influence of race, gender, and prior sexual victimization on attitudes and behaviors related to date rape from a large sample of college students (n = 3,084) in the United States. The results of this study indicate that gender was a salient factor, with males more likely to subscribe to undesirable attitudes toward date rape and to engage in behaviors that increase the risk of both men and women perpetrating date rape. Findings also indicate that racial differences exist in that black students were less likely to subscribe to undesirable attitudes and to engage in sexual behaviors that increase the risk of perpetrating date rape than were white students. Finally, the analyses found previous sexual victimization experiences unexpectedly increased undesirable attitudes toward and behaviors associated with date rape. Implications of the results are discussed.     

Reviving the Rhetoric of Realism: Politics and Responsibility in Grand Strategy

In both disciplinary history and contemporary methodology, realism is conventionally cast as the antithesis of rhetoric. Born in reaction against the empty liberal rhetoric of interwar liberalism and espousing a robust materialism and rigorous rationalism, realism often seems the obstacle that rhetoric's focus on language, narrative, and social construction must inevitably confront and the challenge around which debates must again inevitably revolve. This article challenges this vision of the relationship between rhetoric and realism. Returning to the birth of international relations in the immediate post-war era, we demonstrate that early realists perceived rhetoric as central to action in domestic as well as international politics and that it was particularly important in the United States. This realist rhetoric is marked by an engagement with grand politics, with the relationship between rhetoric, political identity, social mobilization, political leadership, and foreign policy. Rather than taking either the American state or its national interest for granted, post-war realists sought to counter the dangers of the dominant historical rhetorics of American foreign policy and to develop an alternative rhetoric that could insulate American democracy from destructive tensions and provide the basis for robust and responsible action in world affairs. Recovering the relationship between realism and rhetoric is important not only in challenging disciplinary and methodological orthodoxies that obstruct creative theorizing, but also for its incisive contributions to thinking about American foreign policy amidst the profound changes and challenges it confronts today.     

Columnar‐Thin‐Film‐Assisted Visualization of Depleted Sebaceous Fingermarks on Nonporous Metals and Hard Plastics

A fingermark on a nonporous substrate can be developed by depositing a columnar thin film (CTF) on it, but the CTF technique's sensitivity for low‐quality fingermarks is unknown. The optimized CTF and traditional development of several depletion series of sebaceous‐loaded fingermarks were compared using a split‐print methodology as well as subjective and objective grading schemes, in a limited laboratory trial. CTF development was superior to development with selected traditional techniques on brass, anodized aluminum, black acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS), and white nylon. On white ABS and black nylon, the CTF technique performed poorly but still as well as the best‐performing traditional development technique. The CTF technique was more sensitive on brass and anodized aluminum than, and as sensitive on the four hard plastics and stainless steel as, the best‐performing traditional technique. Thus, the CTF technique is useful to develop friction‐ridge detail from limited fingermark residue on some smooth substrates.     

Explaining the Prevalence of Illegitimate Wage Practices in Southern Europe: An Institutional Analysis

This paper proposes that the prevalence of illegitimate wage practices in Southern European societies results from the discord between the formal rules (formal institutions) and the socially shared unwritten rules that reflect citizens' beliefs (informal institutions). To evaluate this, a 2013 survey is reported on whether employers in five Southern European countries fraudulently evade tax and social security payments by paying employees a portion of their salary off the books. A strong association is revealed between the extent of wage under-reporting and the degree of institutional asymmetry across these societies. The implications for theorising illegitimate wage practices are then explored.     

Observing protest: media use and student involvement on 7 April 2010 in Bishkek,Kyrgyzstan

Individuals in and around protests are generally classified as either participants or nonparticipants. However, observers witnessing protests can also play an important role in collective actions by sharing their experiences. This paper explores the characteristics of observers during the 7 April 2010 demonstrations in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. Based on data collected via a survey of university students, I demonstrate that protest observers differed from nonparticipants on a range of variables. A key factor differentiating student observers from nonparticipants was their online activity prior to the protests. Logistic regressions show that students with higher rates of online activity were significantly and substantially more likely to be protest observers than nonparticipants. These findings provide empirical evidence for categorizing observation as a distinct level of protest involvement, shed light on the demonstration in Bishkek on 7 April 2010, and suggest that examining online activity can contribute to a better understanding of protest involvement levels.     

Parental role in teenage driving

Students in 75 high schools in seven states participated in a questionnaire survey. The results showed that high school students want to become licensed as soon as possible and that parents are important in teaching them to drive. Once licensed, the majority of students have their own cars, though they do not typically pay the majority of the costs. Seventy-one percent of licensed students who do not have their own cars reported that they can usually or always use a family car. Most students, particularly younger ones and females, reported that their parents expect them to conform to certain rules or restrictions when driving and when riding as passengers. The most common restrictions were that their parents asked them not to drive after drinking, to tell parents where they were going and with whom, and to be home at a certain time. Students were far less likely to report that their parents required that they wear seat belts.This work was supported by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety.Received a Ph.D. in experimental psychology from Yale University. Research interests are highway safety, pedestrian safety, and evaluation of training and education programs.Received a Ph.D. in social psychology from Harvard University. Research interests are the factors related to motor vehicle injuries, drinking and driving, and the crash involvement of teenagers.Received a Ph.D. in social psychology from State University of New York at Buffalo. Research interests are health behavior and the role of the individual in public health.