Teaching and Learning Politics: a Survey of Practices and Change in UK Universities

The paper presents the results of a survey of practices and change in respect of teaching and learning politics in UK universities for the period 1991/92–1994/95. It begins by contextualizing the survey; summarizing changes that occurred in higher education in the UK in the early 1990s and reviewing key strands in contemporary British literature on teaching and learning in higher education. Following a methods section, the findings of the survey are then presented. These suggest that, in 1994/95, UK politics departments were struggling to cope with increased student numbers and resource constraints whilst retaining a broadly traditionalist approach to teaching and learning. Implications of these findings are then considered in a short concluding discussion.     

Coping with complexity: An experimental study of public policy decision-making

Empirical studies of decision-making invariably conclude with profound skepticism about the human capacity to process complex problems. The skepticism bodes ill for public policy makers, for they confront decisions of formidable complexity. This research examines the impact of systematic variation in the complexity of public policy decisions on the quality of decisions made by experienced public and private sector managers. Results show that increases in complexity do affect decision-making, but in positive as well as negative ways.     

The discrimination of small fragments of household gloss paint by microspectrophotometry

A microspectrophotometer has been used to discriminate between sets of household gloss paints of the same British Standard colours obtained from different manufacturers. Reflectance spectra were obtained, over the range 390 to 900 nm, from paint top surfaces and individual cross-sectional layers. Comparison of the reflectance spectra enabled visually similar paints to be discriminated.     

Problem boys in young adulthood: Teachers' ratings and twelve-year follow-up

In an earlier paper we reported that teachers' ratings of child guidance clinic children were associated with the children's global adjustment in young adulthood. Teachers' ratings, especially the peer relations measure, far surpassed other data sources in predicting general adult mental status. Other sources were developmental history, social history, family information, and psychiatric and psychological evaluations. The purposes of the present investigation were to evaluate mother-son reliability on adulthood information, and to determine whether teacher-rated behaviors of clinic boys predicted specific adult behaviors or were only globally related. Interviewed separately when sons were young adults, mothers and sons closely agreed on sons' adult behavior, with mothers somewhat underreporting sons' negative behaviors. The major finding was that one teacher-rated item,fails to get along with other children, was closely associated with a wide spectrum of adult behaviors. This was not due to the peer relations indicator serving as a global statistic reflecting general childhood impairment. It was also found that composite scores of childhood and adulthood bad conduct were significantly related to each other.Data collection was funded by NIMH Grant #MH-23441-02A1, and by the William T. Grant Foundation, Loretta K. Cass, Principal Investigator. The authors bear sole responsibility for the data analyses and interpretation presented here.Received Ph.D. from University of Oklahoma. Current research interests are in prediction of adult mental status from childhood indexes.Received Ph.D. from Washington University. Current research interests are in life history research, particularly alcoholism and schizophrenia.Received B. A. from Washington University.     

The enigma of the kula ring: Gift-exchanges and primitive law and order

There is no such thing there as a free gift.¹Exchanges are peacefully resolved wars and wars are the result of unsuccessful transactions. ²As long as ceremonial exchanges continued to take place assurance, that peace prevailed, the linked groups could continue to carry on other mutually advantageous activities, such as trade in ordinary goods …³     

The Social Ecology of Violent Victimization: Individual and Contextual Effects in the NCVS

Multi-level research has shown that individual and community factors are important predictors of the risk for violent victimization. However, previous analyses have drawn different conclusions about the role of any given factor. These differences likely are related to variations in how violence is measured and to the fact that the data are drawn from different locales. The research presented here uses the 1995 National Crime Victimization Survey and tract-level census data to examine (1) how the risk of violence is distributed across persons and places in the United States and (2) whether empirical findings are sensitive to the operationalization of violence. Results show that some individual-level predictors (e.g., gender and race) are sensitive to the operationalization of violence, whereas others (e.g., age and marital status) are not. In addition, the impact of community characteristics on violence depends on central-city residence. In central cities, persons most at risk are in disadvantaged tracts, with lower proportions of immigrants. Outside central cities, the proportion of immigrants in an area increases risk, while community disadvantage has no independent influence. The importance of an empirical foundation for the development of theories of risk is discussed.