A measure of risk taking for young adolescents: Reliability and validity assessments

Researchers often define adolescent risk taking in terms of individual behaviors such as alcohol and drug use, early sexual activity, and reckless driving. It is not clear whether these behaviors defined by adults as risky have the same meaning for adolescents. This paper describes the development and preliminary testing of an instrument to assess risk taking among young adolescents. The six item scale was constructed by asking small groups of eighth grade boys and girls to describe things that teenagers your age do for excitement or thrills. The measure was then used in a longitudinal study of 758 young adolescents from three rural counties in Maryland. The scale shows good reliability, as indicated by coefficient alpha and factor analyses. Eighth-grade scores on the scale are associated with the initiation of sexual activity and substance use in ninth grade among virgins and nonusers of alcohol, marijuana, cocaine and pills in eighth grade.     

Treatment refusal among forensic inpatients

Although the United States Supreme Court has not offered a definite opinion, some states have established the qualified right of involuntarily committed patients to refuse treatment. Controversy continues between psychiatry and law over what procedural protections should be provided to patients when therapists seek to override nonemergency refusal of treatment. The authors review Oregon's administrative approach and its application to the treatment refusal of 33 state hospital forensic patients. Patient characteristics, refusal patterns, and implications of treatment refusal are also described.     

Community control and pricing patterns of nonprofit hospitals: An antitrust analysis

Traditional control of nonprofit hospitals by the communities they serve has been offered as justification for restraining antitrust enforcement of mergers that involve nonprofit hospitals. The community is arguably a constraint on a nonprofit's inclination to exercise market power in the form of higher prices; however, community control is likely to be attenuated for hospitals that through merger or acquisition become members of hospital systems--particularly those that operate on a regional or multiregional basis. We report findings from a study in which we examined empirically the relationship between market concentration and pricing patterns for three types of nonprofit hospitals that are distinguishable based on degree of community control: an independent hospital, a member of a local hospital system, and a member of a nonlocal hospital system. Study results indicated that when conditions existed to create a more concentrated market, (1) all three types of nonprofit hospitals exercised market power in the form of higher prices, and (2) hospitals that were members of nonlocal systems were more aggressive in exercising market power than were either independent or local system hospitals. The results have important implications for antitrust enforcement policy.     

用科学的人才观建设“人才珠海“的思考——关于加快珠海市高层次人才队伍建设的调查报告

随着知识经济的到来,国与国之间的竞争归根到底是人才的竞争;地区与地区间的差异愈来愈表现为拥有人才的差异.珠海市第五次党代会提出了聚集高素质人才、发展高质量经济、建设高品位城市的战略目标,其意义重大,任务艰巨,需要我们采取有效的应对措施.文章对加快珠海市高层次人才队伍建设提出了一些见解.     

B. Reviews: general

DISCOVERING ISLAM: MAKING SENSE OF MUSLIM HISTORY AND SOCIETY. By AKBAR S. AHMED. London and New York, Routledge and Kegan Paul, Ltd., 1988. 251pp.

THE CRUSADES THROUGH ARAB EYES. By AMIN MAALOUF. Translated by JON ROTHSCHILD. London, Al‐Saqi Books, 1984 (first published as Les Croisades vues par les Arabes, Paris, 1983). 295 pp., 2 maps.

THE SOCIAL ORIGINS OF THE MODERN MIDDLE EAST. By HAIM GERBER. Boulder, Lynne Rienner/London, Mansell, 1987. 300pp. £26.50 (U.K.)

PAN‐ARABISM AND ARAB NATIONALISM: THE CONTINUING DEBATE. Edited by TAWFIC E. FARAH. London/Boulder, Colorado, Westview Press, 1987. 208pp., notes, tables.

POLITICAL SOCIALIZATION IN THE ARAB STATES. Edited by TAWFIC E. FARAH and YASUMASA KURODA. Boulder, Lynne Rienner, 1987. vii‐xiv, 215pp.

ZIONISM AND THE ARABS, 1882–1948: A STUDY OF IDEOLOGY. By YOUSEF GORNY. Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1987. 342pp. £32.50.

SHI'ISM, RESISTANCE, AND REVOLUTION. Edited by MARTIN KRAMER. Boulder, Co., Westview/London, Mansell, 1987. 324pp.

EGYPT: INTERNAL CHALLENGES AND REGIONAL STABILITY. Edited by LILLIAN CRAIG HARRIS. (Chatham House Papers, 39.) London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1988. 116pp. £5.95.

PALESTINIAN HIGHER EDUCATION IN THE WEST BANK AND GAZA: A CRITICAL ASSESSMENT. By SAMIR N. ANABTAWI. London, KPI, 1986. 84pp. 1 map, tables.

POLITICS AND THE ECONOMY IN SYRIA. Edited by J.A. ALLAN. London, Centre for Near and Middle Eastern Studies, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, 1987. 142pp., maps, figs., tables.

IRAQ SINCE 1958: FROM REVOLUTION TO DICTATORSHIP. By MARION FAROUK‐SLUGLETT AND PETER SLUGLETT. London, KPI, 1987. 332pp. £12.95.

LAW AND JUSTICE IN CONTEMPORARY YEMEN: THE PEOPLE'S DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF YEMEN AND THE YEMEN ARAB REPUBLIC. By S.H. AMIN. Glasgow, Royston Ltd., 1987. vi, 159pp. £18.75

TRANSLATIONS OF EASTERN POETRY AND PROSE. By REYNOLD ALLEYNE NICHOLSON, with a new Introduction by C.E. Bosworth. London, Curzon Press/New Jersey, Humanities Press, 1987 (first published 1922). xvi, 200pp, 5 plates. £5.50.

FROM THE IVORY TOWER: A CRITICAL STUDY OF TAWFIQ AL‐HAKIM. By PAUL STARKEY. (St Antony's Middle East Monographs, no.19.) London, Ithaca Press, 1987. 260pp. £18.00.

IRAN: AT WAR WITH HISTORY. By JOHN W. LIMBERT. (Profiles: Nations of the Contemporary Middle East.) Boulder, Co., Westview Press/London and Sydney, Croom Helm, 1987. xviii, 186pp., 5 maps, 12 photographs, glossary, chronology and index. £25.00.

IMAM RÜHULLAH KHUMAINI, ?AH MUHAMMAD RIZA PAHLAVI AND THE RELIGIOUS TRADITIONS OF IRAN. By GUDMAR ANEER. (Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis, Historia Religionum, 8.) Uppsala, 1985. (Distributor: Almqvist and Wiksell International, Stockholm.) 93pp., 7 colour plates.

FUNDAMENTALS OF ISLAMIC THOUGHT: GOD, MAN AND THE UNIVERSE. By AYATULLAH MURTAZA MUTAHHARI. Translated by R. CAMPBELL. Berkeley, Mizan Press, 1985. 235pp.

SOCIAL AND HISTORICAL CHANGE: AN ISLAMIC PERSPECTIVE. By AYATULLAH MURTAZA MUTAHHARI. Translated by R. CAMPBELL. Berkeley, Mizan Press. 1986. 164pp.

DEVELOPMENT PLANNING IN IRAN: FROM MONARCHY TO ISLAMIC REPUBLIC. By KAMRAN MOFID. Cambridgeshire, MENAS Press, 1987. 320pp., tables and figures, notes, bibliography.

THE ELEMENTARY STRUCTURES OF POLITICAL LIFE: RURAL DEVELOPMENT IN PAHLAVI IRAN. By GRACE GOODELL. Oxford, O.U.P., 1986. 326pp.

BANKING AND EMPIRE IN IRAN (THE HISTORY OF THE BRITISH BANK OF THE MIDDLE EAST, VOLUME I). By GEOFFREY JONES. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, xxiv, 418pp. £40.00.

PAKISTAN SOCIETY: ISLAM, ETHNICITY AND LEADERSHIP IN SOUTH ASIA. By AKBAR S. AHMED. Karachi, Oxford University Press, 1986. 279pp.

TOWARD ISLAMIC ANTHROPOLOGY: DEFINITION, DOGMA AND DIRECTIONS. By AKBAR S. AHMED. Ann Arbor, Michigan, New Era Publications/London, al‐Quds Publications, 1986.79pp. $6.00.

HÉRITER EN PAYS MUSULMAN: HABUS, LAIT VIVANT, MANYAHULI. Edited by MARCEAU GAST. Paris, Editions du C.N.R.S., 1987. 302pp. (French and English abstracts to p. 296; Index of vernacular terms to p. 302). FF. 130.

OPEC: THE RISE AND FALL OF AN EXCLUSIVE CLUB. By SHUKRI M. GHANEM. London, Kegan Paul International, 1986. 233pp. £30.00.

OPEC AID AND THE CHALLENGE OF DEVELOPMENT. Edited by ABDELKADER BENAMARA and SAM IFEAGWU. London, Croom Helm, 1987. 130pp. £25.00.

SYRIA AND IRAN: THREE STUDIES IN MEDIEVAL CERAMICS. Edited by JAMES ALLAN and CAROLINE ROBERTS. Oxford, O.U.P., 1987. 248pp. £25.00.     

Institutional change and the delivery of urban public services

Problems associated with providing efficient and equitable distribution of public services are attributable in part to the inabilities of government or other public institutions to be responsive to requirements of their clientele. To permit a better understanding of the nature of such institutional failures, and to suggest avenues of effective reform, this paper views institutional systems of service provision in a control systems framework. In this perspective, the elements of feedback are seen as essential to successful system performance over time and changing conditions. The paper identifies the kinds of error signals a system needs to generate, and the types of corrective mechanisms that it may employ, and then discusses three basic modes of institutional reform—performance evaluation, decentralization, and market competition—for improving the dynamic capability of systems of providing urban public services. Two service areas—sanitation and criminal corrections—are used for illustrating possible applications of the reform strategies.The author wishes to thank his colleagues at the Urban Institute, especially Richard P. Burton, for suggestions and comments on the substance and style of the paper. This paper is based on ideas first presented by the author at the First Annual Convention of the World Future Society, May, 1971. Opinions expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of The Urban Institute or its sponsors.