Elementary School-age Children's Attitudes Toward Children in Same-Sex Parent Families

As numbers of families with same-sex parents increase in the United States, children are more likely to encounter diverse family structures. Given that young children can demonstrate in-group bias, prejudicial attitudes, and social exclusion, it is important to understand how children perceive their peers in diverse families. To our knowledge, no studies have assessed elementary-school-age children's attitudes about same-sex parent families. Here, 131 elementary school students (M_age = 7.79 years; 61 girls) viewed images of same-sex (female and male) and other-sex couples with a child and then were asked about their perceptions of these families, particularly the children. Results indicated participants' preferences toward children with other-sex versus same-sex parents. Developmental and practical implications about children's attitudes toward sexual minority parent families are discussed.     

Making the Technological Transition – Citizens' Encounters with Digital Pension Services

We examine in this article the impact of digitization on the provision of public services by studying how citizens experience the use of web portals in their pension planning. Based on focus groups and user test material, we elucidate five critical phases that each operate as an obstacle for citizens' further engagement in the digital self‐service process: interest, access, comprehension, reflection and support. We argue that these phases and the obstacles they entail illustrate a transition away from a situation in which control and agency over the quality of public services is embedded in a dyadic relationship between citizens and frontline personnel, and to a situation characterized by more complex relations between citizens, the front line, and the digital infrastructure. We argue that this transition implies that citizens are required to possess a new type of competence that contains both financial and digital skills. Citizens who are unable to develop or acquire such competence are likely to be disadvantaged by the services. Lastly, we argue that these developments pose significant challenges for public administrations to ensure the overall quality of the public services.     

A Risk-Based Method for Modeling Traffic Fatalities

We describe a risk-based analytical framework for estimating traffic fatalities that combines the probability of a crash and the probability of fatality in the event of a crash. As an illustrative application, we use the methodology to explore the role of vehicle mix and vehicle prevalence on long-run fatality trends for a range of transportation growth scenarios that may be relevant to developing societies. We assume crash rates between different road users are proportional to their roadway use and estimate case fatality ratios (CFRs) for the different vehicle-vehicle and vehicle-pedestrian combinations. We find that in the absence of road safety interventions, the historical trend of initially rising and then falling fatalities observed in industrialized nations occurred only if motorization was through car ownership. In all other cases studied (scenarios dominated by scooter use, bus use, and mixed use), traffic fatalities rose monotonically. Fatalities per vehicle had a falling trend similar to that observed in historical data from industrialized nations. Regional adaptations of the model validated with local data can be used to evaluate the impacts of transportation planning and safety interventions, such as helmets, seat belts, and enforcement of traffic laws, on traffic fatalities.     

Black identity: The O. J. Simpson case

The purpose of this paper is to review the White and Black perspectives regarding the O.J. Simpson trial. The hermeneutic-dialectic (HD) method of inquiry will be utilized in order to comprehens how Whites and Blacks reached their respective conclusions concerning O. J. Simpson's guilt or innocence. This method of inquiry employs discourses, separately by Blacks and Whites, the interchange of the recorded discourses, and last, the coming together of both groups of participants for further discourse. Blacks, in contrast to Whites, experienced justice through a common sense of identity forged historically by a minority people rather than by the immediate circumstantial evidence gathered at the time of the trial.     

An art-historical view of social disintegration

One hundred and one Fine Arts college students judged seventeen Western Master paintings of small groups spanning six centuries, using a semantic-differential scale. It was hypothesized that the paintings would portray a decreased sense of social cohesiveness, reflecting Riesman's (1950) characterization of social changes from inner-directed to other-directedness. A factor analysis revealed that one of the two factors extracted, group solidarity, significantly related to century of painting, supporting Riesman's thesis.     

Global patterns of healthy life expectancy for older women

This paper focuses on patterns of healthy life expectancy for older women around the globe in the year 2000, and on the determinants of differences in disease and injury for older ages. Our study uses data from the World Health Organization for women and men in 191 countries. These data include a summary measure of population health, healthy life expectancy (HALE), which measures the number of years of life expected to be lived in good health, and a complementary measure of the loss of health (disability-adjusted life years or DALYs) due to a comprehensive set of disease and injury causes. We examine two topics in detail: (1) cross-national patterns of female-male differences in healthy life expectancy at age 60; and (2) identification of the major injury and disability causes of disability in women at older ages. Globally, the male-female gap is lower for HALE than for total life expectancy. The sex gap is highest for Russia (10.0 years) and lowest in North Africa and the Middle East, where males and females have similar levels of healthy life expectancy, and in some cases, females have lower levels of healthy life expectancy. We discuss the implications of the findings for international health policy.     

Black Identity: The O. J. Simpson Case

The purpose of this paper is to review the White and Black perspectives regarding the O. J. Simpson trial. The henneneutic-dialectic (HD) method of inquiry will be utilized in order to comprehend how Whites and Blacks reached their respective conclusions concerning O. J. Simpson’s guilt or innocence. This method of inquiry employs discourses, separately by Blacks and Whites, the interchange of the recorded discourses, and last, the coming together of both groups of participants for further discourse. Blacks, in contrast to Whites, experienced justice through a common sense of identity forged historically by a minority people rather than by the immediate circumstantial evidence gathered at the time of the trial.     

The Discursive Construction of Death

Two people in distress over the death of a parent converse with each other about the loss. Death must convey some meaning. The attempt at creating such meaning appears to be a function of the comfort to be derived to the survivors. To the extent that death is seen as transition to some other form of further existence, e.g., to some place of tranquility, the survivors remain at peace. That vision, however, presents considerable difficulties since it demands some form of contact with the deceased. In the absence of such contact, doubts remain and the survivors suffer from a sense of abandonment and apathy due to the lack of meaning.