Examining 19 years of officially reported child abduction incidents (1995–2013): employing a four category typology of abduction

Child abduction has generated extensive media attention due to deep-seated fear elicited by infamous incidents. Perceptions of an abduction epidemic during the 1970s and 80s entrenched a perception of ‘stranger danger’. Limited research on child abduction overemphasizes stranger abductions, which account for fewer than half of all abductions. As a result, less is known about the victim/abductor relationship across other abduction types. Prior work has emphasized simplistic stranger vs. family dichotomies, and similar trichotomies. This study, drawing on officially reported child abductions employing NIBRS datasets (N = 29,293), emphasizes differences across abductors/victims in a four category relationship-based typology, including a newer category – ‘intimate partner abductions’. Findings contribute baseline knowledge about child abductions by countering misplaced media driven fears and placing empirical findings in a more accurate context. Findings also reveal that intimate partner abductions have a unique victim/offender/incident profile and are the most serious and most consequential to adolescent female victims.     

Perceptions of Fairness and Support for Proportional Representation

This paper explores the causes and consequences of evaluations of the political system and support for electoral system change. In 1993, New Zealand voters adopted a referendum that fundamentally changed the way representatives are elected, moving from a plurality to a proportional (PR) electoral system. We examine the role of cynicism about the political system in adopting PR and how electoral change may shape evaluations of the political system. We expect that political minorities and those dissatisfied with the current performance of government are more likely to be cynical about the fairness of the political process and that these evaluations are related to support for PR. In turn, supporters of the referendum should judge the political system more favorably once the reform is implemented. Using panel data from the 1993 and 1996 New Zealand Election Studies, we find that support for PR is based on more general evaluations of the fairness of the political system and partisan self-interest. Those who supported PR and are politically aware are also more likely to have an increase in favorable evaluations of the political system.     

Winning by Co-Opeting in Strategic Government-University-Industry R&D Partnerships: The Power of Complex, Dynamic Knowledge Networks

There is increasing consensus among academic scholars, policy makers, and industry practitioners alike that the present and future secret of business survival and prosperity lies in strategic partnering and co-opeting successfully rather than outright competition. This is particularly so in knowledge-intensive, highly complex, and dynamic environments such as all high technology industries (semiconductors, aerospace, software, telecommunications, etc.), where collaborating to compete in knowledge generation and exchange has become so pervasive it is often hard to notice having become the standard modus operandi (from cross-licensing agreements to strategic complementarity in products and services). For example, witness the case of the Microsoft/Intel collaboration or “Wintel” alliance. We propose a dynamic, learning-driven framework which uses the game theoretic perspective, drawing principally from the notion of “co-opetition” (coined by Ray Noorda, former CEO of Novell, and developed by Brandenburger and Nalebuff [1996]), to examine how a knowledge generating and leveraging value-maximizing organization (not just a for-profit firm), should position itself in relation to the range of players with whom the organization interacts (in terms of market relationships, generating and pooling of strategic knowledge assets including intellectual property rights and human capital, and other dimensions) to maximize shareholder value in the long term. Select case studies focusing on government-university-industry strategic partnerships for research and technological development (GUISP RTDs), such as the NSF Engineering Research Centers, provide empirical validation of our concepts and especially on how to architect intelligent organizational interfaces across the spectrum of strategic R&D collaborations.     

Volunteer Involvement in Local Government after September 11: The Continuing Question of Capacity

The 1990s witnessed extensive promotion of volunteerism and the creation of a federal and state infrastructure to support government voluntary activities. What has been the impact on local governments? This article reports on a 2003 survey of volunteer involvement in Georgia local government, which followed a similar 1990 study and provides a rare opportunity to examine long‐term trends in public volunteerism. Volunteerism in Georgia cities and counties has increased during the past decade, with 81 percent of all jurisdictions now reporting some volunteer engagement. The events of September 11, 2001, have had a small but generally positive effect on volunteer utilization. However, political and labor resistance to government volunteers has not been resolved. And the increase in public managers' concerns that they lack the funding or staff to utilize volunteers suggests that governmental capacity remains the principal obstacle to greater volunteer involvement in local governments.     

Beyond effects: Adolescents as active media users

This is an overview of the special Issue, Adolescents Uses of Media. The articles in the special issue are described as taking the uses and gratifications approach, which emphasizes that people make choices about the media they consume and that people differ in their interpretations of media content. The common goal of the articles is to integrate this approach with developmental perspectives on adolescence. Common themes include adolescents as active media users, the developmental context of adolescence, the cultural context of media use, and integrative and innovative methodological approaches.Received Ph.D. from University of Virginia. Research interests include adolescent reckless behavior, adolescents' uses of media, and the transition to adulthood.Received Ph.D. from University of Chicago.     

Logical Deficiencies in Spatial Models: A Constructive Critique

A fundamental property of any good theoryis logical consistency. However, two commonassumptions in the rational choice approach topolitical analysis (that induced preferences overpolicy are separable and that such preferences areindependent of changes in exogenous factors) are notconsistent with the archetypal assumptions ofindividual utility maximization. These particularpathologies of spatial models of politics have notbeen well recognized in the political scienceliterature.