Prevalence and patterns of substance use among early adolescents

Prevalence and patterns of substance use are described for a sample of 105 San Francisco East Bay adolescents (age 14). Data are compared with national statistics on substance use among high school seniors. While alcohol use appeared comparable to the national statistics, tobacco use was less prevalent among this younger western sample. Despite the differences in ages, use of marijuana, cocaine, and hallucinogens was similar to national high school prevalence; use of other harder drugs was more extensive among the older, national sample. Contrary to typical findings, males and females were not found to differ in frequency or extent of substance use; females appeared somewhat more involved in substance use at this early age. Initiation of substance use occurred at early grade levels, suggesting that intervention efforts should begin prior to junior high, perhaps as early as fourth or fifth grade.This study was supported by National Institute of Mental Health Grant MH 16080 to Jack Block and Jeanne H. Block.Received her Ph.D. from Harvard University. Main interest is cognitive development and development in adolescence.Received his Ph.D. from Stanford University. Main interest is personality development.     

The criminal investigative process: Toward a conceptual framework

There have been few attempts to develop a conceptual framework of the criminal investigation process. This article attempts to develop such a framework through use of a criminal act continuum to identify intervention points as these relate to investigative techniques and information sources. Criminal investigation is then considered within a political context to identify eight investigative subprocesses, each of which poses varying degrees of risk to democratic social systems.     

Intergroup Bias and Inequity: Legitimizing Beliefs and Policy Attitudes

Policy attitudes relating to group-based inequities are in many cases founded on tenuous legitimizing beliefs which are contradicted by empirical evidence. Policy issues, and their attendant legitimizing beliefs, are considered, including affirmative action, colorblindness/“racial privacy,” hate crime legislation, same-sex marriage, and, in greater depth, capital punishment and racial profiling. Primary themes underlying the legitimizing beliefs include denials that group-based biases and inequities exist, overestimations of the societal costs of inequity-reducing policies, valuing public safety above civil liberties, and discounting the adverse effects of inequity-reducing policies.     

School choice in Chile: Is it class or the classroom?

Skeptics of school choice are concerned that parents, especially low‐income ones, will not choose schools based on sound academic reasoning. Many fear that, given choice, parents will sort themselves into different schools along class lines. How‐ever, most surveys find that parents of all socioeconomic groups cite academic aspects as important when choosing a school. Moreover, almost no parents refer to the social composition of the student body. Many advocates of choice hold up these results as proof that choice will produce desirable outcomes. However, these results may not be reliable because they may simply be verbal responses to survey items rather than indicators of actual behavior. In this research, we report on the search behavior of parents in the Metropolitan Region of Santiago, Chile, examining how they construct their school choice sets and comparing this to what they say they are seeking in choosing schools. The data indicate that parental decisions are influenced by demographics. Based on this evidence, we argue that unfettered choice may reduce the pressure on schools to improve their performance and could potentially increase stratification. © 2006 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management     

What if Everyone Voted? Simulating the Impact of Increased Turnout in Senate Elections

The conventional wisdom among journalists and politicians is that higher turnout would benefit Democrats, although extant scholarly research suggests otherwise. We adopt a new approach to assessing the partisan impact of higher turnout. We use state-level exit polls and Census data to estimate the partisan preferences of nonvoters in Senate elections and then simulate the outcome of these elections under universal turnout. While nonvoters are generally more Democratic than voters, the dearth of close races means that very few election outcomes would have changed had everyone voted. Other scenarios—full turnout among registered voters, equal turnout rates for whites and African-Americans, and equal turnout rates across income groups—generate similar results: although Democrats fare better in each scenario, few outcomes would have changed. However, the gap between voters and nonvoters' partisan preference varies considerably across states and across years, suggesting that this "partisan differential" warrants further examination .     

Suicide in pregnancy

The difficulty in establishing the cause of death of a pregnant woman emphasizes the necessity for the careful gathering of evidence. Especially in the case of motor accidents along lonely stretches of road involving a solitary motorist the possibility of suicide should be taken into consideration. Since a televised suicide had apparently served as model for the method of suicide, mention has been made of the "Werther effect". A literature review reveals that little has been written on the subject-suicide during pregnancy.     

Political independence in America,III: In search of closet partisans

This study uses the 1980 NES questions on partisanship to investigate the question of the attributes of closet partisans, using a typology of partisans and independents developed from an alternative (PST) set of survey items to the usual ones. The study explores the application of four criteria to those learners most suspected of being undercover partisans. What is found is that those learners who are most like strong partisans on the criteria of political involvement and partisan commitment are nonetheless least like strong partisans on two further criteria: independence attitudes and affective response to the substantive content of elections. Thus, theAmerican Voter analysis, which assumes leaners are Independents, and the Wolfinger et al. critique ofThe American Voter, which concludes that leaners are partisans, both turn out to be oversimplifications of political reality.This is a revision of a paper, Political Independence in America III: On Detecting Closet Partisans, presented at the annual meeting of the Western Political Science Association, San Francisco, March 10–13, 1988.     

Reviews

Paul Dukes, The Last Great Game: USA Versus USSR. Events, Conjunctures, Structures. London: Pinter Publishers in association with John Spiers, 1989, xii + 209 pp., £35.00 h/b, £12.95 p/b

Walter C. Clemens, Jr., Can Russia Change?: The USSR Confronts Global Interdependence. Boston, MA: Unwin Hyman, 1989, xxix + 384 pp., £38.00 h/b, £12.95 p/b.

Neil Malcolm, Soviet Policy Perspectives on Western Europe. London: The Royal Institute of International Affairs/Routledge, 1989, viii + 117 pp., £7.95 p/b.

R. A. Longmire, Soviet Relations with South‐East Asia. London and New York: Kegan Paul International, 1989, x + 176 pp., £35.00.

Geoffrey Roberts, The Unholy Alliance: Stalin's Pact with Hitler. London: I. B. Tauris, 1989, xviii + 296 pp., £19.95.

Anthony Jones & William Moskoff, eds., Perestroika and the Economy. New Thinking in Soviet Economics. Armonk, NY, London: M. E. Sharpe, 1989, xxii + 277 pp., $45.00.

Kristian Gerner & Stefan Hedlund, Ideology and Rationality in the Soviet Model: A Legacy for Gorbachev. London and New York: Routledge, 1989, xii + 455 pp., £30.00.

J. L. Porket, Work, Employment, and Unemployment in the Soviet Union. Basingstoke and London: Macmillan, St. Antony's/Macmillan Series, 1989, xv + 250 pp., £37.50.

Vladimir Shlapentokh, Public and Private Life of the Soviet People. Changing Values in Post‐Stalin Russia. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989, 281 pp., $24.95.

David Joravsky, Russian Psychology: A Critical History. Oxford and Cambridge: Basil Blackwell, 1989, xxii + 583 pp., £45.00.

W. O. McCagg & Lewis Siegelbaum, eds., The Disabled in the Soviet Union. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1989, 304 pp., $34.95.

Thomas F. Remington, ed., Politics and the Soviet System: Essays in Honour of Frederick C. Barghoom. London: Macmillan, 1989, 235 pp., £35.00.

Julian Graffy & Geoffrey Hosking, eds., Culture and the Media in the USSR Today. Basingstoke and London: Macmillan in association with SSEES, University of London, 1989, viii + 168 pp., £35.00 h/b, £14.99 p/b.

Carlo Frateschi, ed., Fluctuations and Cycles in Socialist Economies. Aldershot: Avebury, 1989, xiii + 157 pp., £25.00.

Martin Myant, The Czechoslovak Economy 1948–1988: The Battle for Economic reform. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989, xii + 316 pp., £30.00, $54.50.

Michael Simmons, The Unloved Country: A Portrait of East Germany Today. London: Abacus, 1989, viii + 184 pp., £4.99 p/b.

David Childs, Thomas A. Baylis & Marilyn Rueschemeyer, eds., East Germany in Comparative Perspective. London: Routledge, 1989, xvi + 238 pp., £35.00.

David Turnock, Eastern Europe: An Economie and Political Geography. London and New York: Routledge, 1989, xiv + 360 pp., £35.00.

David Turnock, The Human Geography of Eastern Europe. London and New York: Routledge, 1989, xii + 345 pp., £35.00.

Theodore H. Friedgut, Iuzovka and Revolution. Volume 1: Life and Work in Russia's Donbas, 1869–1924. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1989, xviii + 361 pp., illustrations, tables, $45.00.

Graham Smith, Planned Development in the Socialist World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989, vi + 106 pp., £10.95 h/b, £5.95 p/b.

Lynn Turgeon, State and Discrimination. The Other Side of the Cold War. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1989, xii + 169 pp., $32.50.

Gerald D. Surh, 1905 in St. Petersburg: Labor, Society, and Revolution. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1989, xvii + 456 pp., $45.00.     

Intrametropolitan financial flows under tax increment financing

Under tax increment financing (TIF), the property tax revenues of county, school and other local governments are used to finance the development expenditures of cities. This paper examines the tax shifting that results when TIF is used by numerous cities in a single urban area. Development subsidies for governments and individuals are distinguished and TIF is shown to have potential negative financial impacts on some taxpayers within a metropolitan area unless two important conditions are met. Data for cities in Milwaukee County, Milwaukee are used to demonstrate the potential tax shifting that results when TIF is used in a large urban area.