Health habits and depression in adolescence

In a study of the relationship between health habits and depression, 80 high school students, selected on an availability basis, were administered a Health Behaviors Questionnaire (HBQ) and the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI). The HBQ and the BDI significantly correlated (r=0.43p<0.01). Those who smoked were more frequently depressed than those who did not (X ²=10.5p<0.05), and those who used drugs other than marijuana were depressed more frequently than those who did not (X ²=9.2p<0.01). Mildly overweight boys (overweight by more than 5% of their ideal weight) and mildly under-weight boys (underweight by more than 5% of their ideal weight) were moreThis research was supported in part by a grant from the American Diabetes Association and by National institute of Health Grant MH 15529.Received his M.D. at George Washington School of Medicine. Major interest is interface of child psychiatry and pediatrics.Received his M.D. at Downstate Medical Center, State University of New York. Major interest is metabolic changes in adolescence.Received her M.A. from Queens College, New York. Major interest is measurement of human behavior.Received his M.D. from the University of Wisconsin. Major interest is adolescent sexuality.Received her Ph.D. in psychology from Hofstra University. Major interest is evaluation of clinical programs. depressed than boys of normal weight (p<0.02). The more pounds underweight the girls were, the more depressed they were (r=0.482, p<0.05). The closer the weight of a girl who perceived herself as overweight was to her ideal weight, the more depressed she was (r=–0.428,p<0.05).     

School return among pregnant adolescents

School return by adolescent mothers has been problematic. Many of the barriers to continuing education have been created by school system practices and policies. Recent administrative and court decisions are forcing changes in these traditional practices. Participants in an adolescent pregnancy program were permitted to attend their usual high school during and after pregnancy. Staff members discussed this and other educational opportunities with each eligible student and her family. More members of the program than control group reported some school attendance during the quarter of the delivery. Compared with the control group, which was permitted but not systematically encouraged to return, more program participants returned to day school following the pregnancy. Unexpectedly high rates of return to other school programs (other than day school) were reported by members of the control group. It is argued that the program effects are primarily a function of elimination of school system barriers, both formal and informal, to school return so that the subjects' already high motivation to return could be realized.Received her Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Washington. Main interests include social pathological aspects of fertility and fertility-related behavior.Received his Ph.D. in sociology from University of Washington. Main interests include sociology of the family. Current research is in family structure and suicide.     

Creating Stable Agreements in Marine Policy: Learning from the California South Coast Marine Life Protection Act Initiative

In this article, we examine the California South Coast Marine Life Protection Act Initiative stakeholder process, evaluate its shortcomings, and consider what could have been done differently. Our objective is to make recommendations to improve future multi‐stakeholder marine policy processes. In our view, while the South Coast stakeholder process had many positive outcomes, it failed to reach what we call here a “stable agreement.” Our analysis is based on two of the authors’ involvement (one as a facilitator and the other as a stakeholder representative) in the process and a post‐hoc survey of participants. We find that several ill‐advised process design and management choices significantly destabilized the negotiations, leading to an ultimately unstable agreement. We highlight four major problematic process design and management decisions, including the following: representation on the multi‐stakeholder group was imbalanced, the pre‐meeting caucuses were not paired with training in interest‐based negotiation, adequate incentives to negotiate toward a consensus agreement were not provided, and the use of straw voting at one point in the process was unclear and inconsistent. As a result of these and other process design and management flaws, many stakeholders believed that the process was biased and that their ends would be better achieved by anchoring negotiations and engaging in positional bargaining. Ultimately, this meant that near‐consensus on a single cross‐interest marine protected area proposal was not reached, the scientific guidelines put forth were not fully met, the process was not and is not viewed as fair by the stakeholders directly or indirectly involved, and the marine protected area regulations lack broad‐scale support. These pitfalls of the South Coast stakeholder process could have been avoided had the management and facilitation team consistently followed best practices in dispute resolution. We recommend that future marine planning processes learn from this example, particularly those occurring in highly complex, urban ocean environments.     

Non-Contingent Success Reduces People’s Desire for Processes that Adhere to Principles of Fairness

A central tenet of justice theory and research is that people prefer decisions to be made with processes that adhere to principles of fairness. The present research identified a boundary condition for this general tendency. Across three studies, we found that people who experienced non-contingent success had less of a desire for fair processes relative to their counterparts who experienced contingent success. Furthermore, results attributable to other independent variables, namely regulatory focus in Study 2 and self-affirmation in Study 3, shed light on the underlying mechanism: people experience non-contingent success as self-threatening and lower their desire for processes that adhere to fairness in the service of protecting themselves against the threat. Theoretical implications are discussed as are limitations of the studies and suggestions for future research.