Family Context and Childhood Adjustment Associated with Intrafamilial Unwanted Sexual Attention

Unwanted sexual attention (UWSA) encompasses unsolicited verbal comments, gestures, stares, and other noncontact behaviors made regarding one's sexuality and physical appearance. The present study examined the correlates and impact of such UWSA perpetrated toward girls by family members. The first objective of the study was to explore whether family climate is associated with intrafamilial UWSA. This included looking at three types of dysfunctional parenting styles (unaffectionate, unavailable, and patriarchal) as well as exploring the co-occurrence of UWSA by adult and child relatives. The second objective was to then measure the impact of such intrafamilial UWSA on childhood emotional health, after controlling for parenting style and the experience of more traditional forms of child sexual abuse (CSA). Of the 296 university women (mean age = 19) who participated in the study, 70% (N = 206) reported UWSA from a family member prior to age 18. Whereas each dysfunctional parenting style was related to presence of UWSA, a simultaneous multiple regression analysis indicated that two of the parenting styles, patriarchal and parental unavailability, also predicted frequency of nonphysical UWSA within the family. Presence of UWSA from a child relative was significantly correlated with presence of UWSA from an adult relative. Additionally, a hierarchical multiple regression, entering the three parenting styles simultaneously in the first step, childhood sexual abuse in the second step, and familial UWSA in the last step, indicated that the frequency of UWSA by family members significantly predicted poorer childhood mental health when controlling for the other variables. Overall, results indicate that while the specific parenting styles which co-occur with UWSA may be detrimental in their own right, the impact of UWSA on girls appears to be above and beyond that of either parenting styles or CSA. Clinical implications are discussed.     

US Presidential popularity and opportunities to coerce North Korea: a quantitative test 1990 2000

This paper investigates how North Korean behaviour towards boththe United States and South Korea is influenced by the popularityof the American President. The study applies theories relatingto strategic conflict avoidance and signalling to suggest thatthe American President is able to demonstrate a willingnessto use force when he is unpopular and as such is better ableto coerce Pyongyang. Using a time-series model, I demonstratethat the North Koreans become more cooperative towards the UnitedStates in response to decreases in presidential popularity andincreasing levels of US inflation. However, the study also showsthat the North Koreans do not alter their behaviour towardsthe South Koreans in response to low American President Popularityratings. The research, therefore, suggests that the North Koreansbelieve that the United States would be unable to launch a diversionaryattack in response to North Korean behaviour towards the South.This study provides a clear support for the strategic avoidanceof conflict hypothesis and suggests that the American Presidentsare best able to coerce North Korea when they are unpopularat home. Received for publication August 31, 2005. Accepted for publication December 21, 2005.     

Industry/University interaction for simulation-based process improvement

This paper describes an effort by industry and university partners to centralize manufacturing decision making through the development of generic simulation tools. This ongoing, cooperative process improvement initiative between the Industrial and Systems Engineering faculty at the University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH) and Chrysler’s Huntsville Electronics Division (HED) permits the involved faculty to broaden their experience and technical expertise in electronics fabrication, while the industry partner benefits from the transfer of technical knowledge and advanced analysis methodologies from the university. The focus of the project is the definition of generic electronic manufacturing models that can be easily defined and implemented through common user-oriented interfaces, allowing users who are not familiar with simulation and simulation languages to address the needs of their particular functional areas.     

Tension, compression, and shear: directions, stresses, and outcomes of health care cost control

"Control" of health care costs is often portrayed as a struggle between external, "natural" forces pushing costs up and individuals, groups, and societies trying to resist the inevitable. This picture is false. Control includes strenuous efforts by some to raise costs, and by others to resist those increases, and/or to transfer costs to someone else. But all such forces originate in the purposes and interests of individuals and groups. Health care cost control is a struggle among conflicting interests over the priorities of a society, and claims of "inevitability" are simply part of the political rhetoric of that struggle. International experience supports certain conclusions. First, there is no basis for the claim that limits on expenditure growth must threaten the health of (some members of) a society. Second, there is a substantial variety of experience with cost control. Failure in the United States is often presented as evidence of the impossibility of control, but most other countries have succeeded. Finally, control requires the direct confrontation of interests, with substantial build-up of stress. Advocates of expansion are more successful if they can transform compressive forces into efforts to shift the burden onto someone else. Pressures from providers in every country for "privatization" and/or payment by users reflect this recognition of economic interest.     

Explaining “Pain and Suffering” Awards: The Role of Injury Characteristics and Fault Attributions

The present research explored factors thought to affect compensatory awards for non-economic ham (pain and suffering) in personal injury cases. Experiment 1 showed that the nature and severity of the plaintiffs injury had a strong effect on perceptions of the extent of harm suffered and on award amounts. The parties' relatively active or passive roles in causing the injury affected assessments of their degree of fault, but perceived fault had little influence on awards. Experiment 2 replicated with more varied cases the strong impact of injury severity on harm perception and on awards for pain and suffering. In both studies, the disability and the mental suffering associated with injuries were stronger predictors of awards than were pain and disfigurement.     

Evaluating a new computer-based system for face recall

The Computer-Aided Design Centre has developed a new face recall system which enables a witness to construct the image of a suspect on a television screen. The system currently uses the Photofit library and method of construction. Likenesses of target faces produced by subjects (n=36) using the new system were compared to conventional Photofits produced by a second group of subjects (n=36) of the same targets. There was no difference on any of the three measures employed in the assessed quality of the likenesses produced by Photofit and the CADC System. Both systems tended to produce more recognizable composites when construction was carried out in the presence of the target compared to its absence. Composites made from memory on the initial trial were marginally better with the CADC System than with Photofit. While both systems showed low absolute accuracy, they enjoyed a measure of success in transmitting a likeness of a facial type. It is concluded that while the CADC system shows promise, psychological constraints upon witnesses' powers of recall may place limits on the absolute accuracy achievable with any system of face reconstruction.These experiments were financed by grant No. POL/73 1675/24/3 from the Police Scientific Development Branch of the U.K. Home Office. Points of view expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions or positions of the funding body. Our gratitude and thanks are due to Tony Kitson and Clive Holloway for their many hours spent developing and operating the CADC system; Jean Shepherd for her skills as a Photofit operator; the Computer-Aided Design Centre; and the MRC Applied Psychology Unit, Cambridge for facilities and subjects.     

Health care in Canada: patterns of funding and regulation

During the 1970s the share of health care expenditure in Canadian GNP remained roughly stable, in the range of 7-71/2 percent of GNP, in marked contrast to its escalation in most other countries (the U.S. in particular) and to previous Canadian experience. The shift to a stable pattern coincided with the completion of the Canadian system of universal comprehensive public hospital and medical care insurance. This paper explores how and why the public insurance system served to contain cost escalation. It then discusses the inadequacy of expenditure experience per se as a basis for health system evaluation--the same data will support claims of both "underfunding" and "spiralling costs." More serious questions involve the influence of alternative patterns of health care funding and delivery on the effectiveness and efficiency of care provision, and the resulting distributional patterns of care and income. A brief sketch is given of the present situation and future possibilities of Canadian health care under these heads.     

Book reviews

David Granick, Enterprise Guidance in Eastern Europe. A Comparison of Four Socialist Economies. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton UP, 1976. xvi+505 pp. £17.20 or £6.10 (paperback).

A. Zauberman, Mathematical Theory in Soviet Planning (Concepts, Methods, Techniques). London: OUP for the Royal Institute of International Affairs, 1976. xiv+464 pp. £17.00.

H. Gordon Skilling, Czechoslovakia's Interrupted Revolution. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton UP, 1976. 924 pp. £31.30 or £10.50 (paperback).

Alex Pravda, Reform and Change in the Czechoslovak Political System: January‐August 1968. Sage Research Papers in the Social Sciences, vol. 3, series No. 90–020 (Contemporary European Studies Series). Beverly Hills and London: Sage Publications, 1976. 96 pp. £1.30.

R. G. Gidadhubli (ed.), Fifty Years of Soviet Power—a Study of Social, Economic and Political Developments. Centre of Soviet Studies, University of Bombay, 1976. 295 pp. 29 rupees.

Occasional Papers, Centre for Soviet and East European Studies, Jawalharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, Nos. 2 and 3, 1976 (mimeographed).

Adam B. Ulam, A History of Soviet Russia. London: Martin Robertson, 1976. viii+312 pp. £5.00.

Olga A. Narkiewicz, The Green Flag: Polish Populist Politics 1867–1970. London: Croom Helm, 1976. 314 pp. £7.95.

Jacques Levesque, L'URSS et la révolution cubaine. Montreal: Presses de 1'Université de Montréal, 1976. 221 pp.

John B. Dunlop, The New Russian Revolutionaries. Belmont, Mass.: Nordland, 1976. 344 pp. $18.50.

Brian Hunter, Soviet‐ Yugoslav relations 1948–1972: a bibliography of Soviet, Western and Yugoslav comment and analysis. New York and London: Garland, 1976. 223 pp. $20.00.