Parents,public policy,and youth smoking

This paper jointly examines the importance of parental influences, prices, and tobacco control policies on the smoking behavior of youths. Data are drawn from the Audits & Surveys (A&S) 1996 survey of high school students across the United States from “The Study of Smoking and Tobacco Use Among Young People” to examine the impact of parental influences on the probability of youth smoking in the context of both specific observable parenting behaviors and in terms of youths' perceptions of the importance of their parents' opinions. The key finding is that specific parental influences (such as communication/bonding (extent of discussions about daily issues between parent/adult and child), limit‐setting with regard to free time, home smoking rules, and parental smoking behavior) and the extent to which teenagers value their parents' opinions play a significant role in youth smoking decisions. Our results by age reveal that specific modifications related to improving communication channels and implementing home smoking rules and more general changes that improve the quality of the parent‐child relationship so teens place a higher value on their parents' opinions are likely to be particularly effective in the early teen years. © 2005 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.     

The Face of the State

From a liberal perspective, policies designed to permit the participation of minorities in national institutions while retaining their cultural particularities are justified either on the grounds that culture has a particular importance or on the basis of equal treatment of individuals. This paper argues that such policies, while not without benefits, have at least the potential to compromise the perceived neutrality of an important state institution. It focuses on the Canadian decision to permit the use of religious symbols as part of the uniform of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Advocates of such policies focus only on their benefits and ignore the potential difficulties; the paper argues that a more balanced assessment is required, one which weights advantages and disadvantages.     

Posthumous reproduction and the meanings of autonomy

In recent years there has been considerable debate over the legal and ethical issues associated with posthumous reproduction. This article analyses recent cases and legal regulation of reproductive technologies in Australia. The issues associated with posthumous reproduction are explored through a consideration of the nature of an individual's interest in their reproductive material. The suitability of a property-based model as a means of conceptualising interests in reproductive material is explored. The article concludes that the issues in this area need to be analysed in terms of autonomy interests that are understood relationally.     

Expert Approaches to Communicating Violence Risk

There has been virtually no empirical study of the way in which evaluating clinicians communicate their conclusions about the risk of violence toward others. Risk communication has become particularly important in recent years, serving as the link between empirical data from recent studies and the understanding and use of such data by evaluators and decision makers. The present study considered how psychologists and psychiatrists, identified as experts in violence risk assessment, responded to eight vignettes that systematically measured preferences for risk communication. The vignettes involved the presentation of the following factors in a 2 × 2 × 2 within-subjects design, counterbalanced for order: (1) risk model (prediction vs. management), (2) risk level (high vs. low risk of the individual being assessed), and (3) risk factors (the predominance of static vs. dynamic risk factors). A total of 71 individuals (41 psychologists, 2 sociologists, and 28 psychiatrists) responded to a survey mailed to 100 individuals, for a response rate of 71%. Participants were asked to rate the value of six forms of risk communication for each of the eight vignettes. There were few significant differences between the ratings assigned by psychologists and those assigned by psychiatrists. The most highly valued form of risk communication involved identifying risk factors applicable to the individual and specifying interventions to reduce risk. A repeated-measures multivariate analysis of variance yielded a main effect for risk level and an interaction between risk level and risk factors. The implications of these findings for research and practice are discussed.     

THE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF MEXICAN AND CUBAN IMMIGRANTS BY POLITICIANS

Schneider and Ingram (1993) propose that the amount and quality of service that target groups receive from their government is related to two factors: political power (strong or weak); and the target groups’ image in the public eye (positive or negative), also known as “social constructions.” This research examines political candidates’ social constructions of Mexican and Cuban immigrants in major newspapers. Using newspaper articles from Lexis/Nexus (an electronic newspaper database), we content analyzed 495 major US newspapers over a six‐year period. Our results indicate that Latin American immigration, particularly Mexican immigration, is championed as a political platform in ways consistent with Schneider and Ingram's model.     

Reducing Variability in Civil Jury Awards

The purpose of the present study was to test several procedures that could be adopted for reducing unwanted variability in civil damage awards. Four methods for providing guidance to jurors (and judges) about the distribution of awards in comparable cases were compared to each other, to a no-guidance control, and to the capping of awards at a specified maximum, which has been the most commonly legislated solution. The findings of this study suggest several alternative solutions that are better able than caps to solve the problem of unwanted variability in awards.     

Education and mass belief systems: An extension and some new questions

Using the SRC/CPS's national election surveys from 1956 to 1976, this paper investigates the effect of education on consistency among the public's domestic policy opinions. Evidence from both gamma correlations and factor analysis indicates that education has neither a strong nor a linear effect on issue constraint over the 20 years covered by the data, for the lowest and the highest education strata consistently show the highest levels of constraint. We do not conclude, however, that education is unrelated to recognition of ideological concepts, for almost one-half of the lowest education stratum do not use liberal and conservative terms. We conclude that issue constraint does not directly translate into ideology and suggest some new directions that future research should take if we are to evaluate effectively the effect of education on opinion structuring.A preliminary version of this paper was presented at the 1978 Meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association.     

Multisectoral Movement Alliances and Media Access: Salvadoran Newspaper Coverage of the Health Care Struggle

Focusing on the social movement that resisted the privatization of health care in El Salvador in 2002–3, this article asks how the movement's multisectoral composition influenced news coverage of the health care policy debate. Specifically, it examines whether the diversity of perspectives in the alliance was reflected in the media's source selection and framing of the policy issues. A content analysis of Salvadoran newspapers' coverage shows that the media relied mainly on just two movement actors to represent the antiprivatization position: the striking doctors and the leftist opposition party. It also reveals that a period of elite dissensus on the policy issues opened a temporary opportunity to insert movement messages in the coverage. The study indicates that a multisectoral alliance does not enhance movement influence through the news media, though broad alliances confer strategic advantages for the movement's broader communication work.     

Experienced and vicarious victimization: Do social support and self-esteem prevent delinquent responses?

This article extended research that views violent victimization as a stressor that may lead to delinquency. Following general strain theory, the analysis considered the mediating role of fearfulness, depression, and anxiety. The analysis also examined whether social support and self-esteem conditioned the relationship between victimization and delinquency. Results indicated that negative emotions did not substantially mediate the effect of victimization on delinquency. Among those with lower levels of both social support and self-esteem, experiencing violent victimization and witnessing victimization led to general delinquency. Victimization was unrelated to general delinquency among those with higher levels of both these resources. Experiencing victimization led to violent delinquency for all groups. Witnessing victimization and perceiving an unsafe neighborhood led to violent delinquency only among those with lower levels of both resources. Additionally, negative emotions and a bad temper led to violent delinquency only for those low in resources. The results suggested that fostering social support networks and self-esteem among adolescents victimized by violence can limit delinquency.