Attitudes towards lesbians and gay men and support for lesbian and gay human rights among psychology students

A questionnaire comprising two scales, the short form of the Attitudes Towards Lesbians and Gay Men Scale (ATLG-S; Herek, 1984) and the newly devised Support for Lesbian and Gay Human Rights Scale (SLGHR) were administered to 226 students taking undergraduate psychology courses at universities in the United Kingdom, to assess their attitudes towards lesbians and gay men, and their level of support for lesbian and gay human rights. The results indicated that whilst only a small percentage of respondents expressed negative attitudes towards lesbians and gay men on the ATLG-S, the sample as a whole did not overwhelmingly support lesbian and gay human rights. The lack of support for lesbian and gay human rights is discussed in relation to its implications for psychology students as future practitioners and policymakers.     

Cognitive Style and the Theory and Practice of Individual and Collective Learning in Organizations

This paper reviews aspects of two largelydisparate literatures from the adjacent fields ofindividual and organizational learning and identifiessome implications for theory and practice. The focus of attention is the extent to which the individuallevel construct cognitive style can be meaningfullyapplied to aid the understanding of learning at thelevel of the organization as well as at the level of the individual. Attention is given to theways in which consideration of cognitive style canimprove the effectiveness of interventions designed toimprove individual and organizational performance. Nine categories of intervention areidentified.     

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More evidence on smoke detector effectiveness and the value of saving a life

Economic models of the fire fatality rate give estimates of smoke detector effectiveness. These estimates are much smaller than those generally accepted. Reasonable interpretation of these estimates, combined with the cost of a smoke detector and the risk of a fire death, places the smoke detector-based value of life saving in a range of $ 1.41 to $ 2.487 million 1986 dollars. The more generally accepted results of other studies of the value of life saving fall in a range of $ 1.6 to $ 8.5 million 1986 dollars. Smoke detector market data, along with effectiveness estimates from economic models, may provide a unique opportunity to estimate the value of life saving.Partial funding for this project was made available by the Kellogg Foundation through a grant to the Missouri Youth Initiative Program. An earlier version of this paper was presented as a seminar paper at the Center for Fire Research, National Institute of Standards and Technology, United States Department of Commerce, Gaithersburg, Maryland, May 8, 1990. Results were also reported at the session on Value of Life Saving: Narrowing the Range, Southern Economic Association, November 1990, New Orleans.     

Identification and Review of Sensitivity Analysis Methods

Identification and qualitative comparison of sensitivity analysis methods that have been used across various disciplines, and that merit consideration for application to food-safety risk assessment models, are presented in this article. Sensitivity analysis can help in identifying critical control points, prioritizing additional data collection or research, and verifying and validating a model. Ten sensitivity analysis methods, including four mathematical methods, five statistical methods, and one graphical method, are identified. The selected methods are compared on the basis of their applicability to different types of models, computational issues such as initial data requirement and complexity of their application, representation of the sensitivity, and the specific uses of these methods. Applications of these methods are illustrated with examples from various fields. No one method is clearly best for food-safety risk models. In general, use of two or more methods, preferably with dissimilar theoretical foundations, may be needed to increase confidence in the ranking of key inputs.     

Health Risk Assessment for Planned Waste Incinerators: Getting the Right Science and the Science Right

Health risk assessment is widely advocated in the United Kingdom as the most comprehensive means of assessing the health risks posed by the emissions of a planned waste incinerator. Its main advantage over other methods of assessment, such as air quality impact assessment, is its ability to address explicitly the direct (inhalation) and indirect (ingestion and dermal contact) health risks posed by different chemicals, including those that are not thought to have a threshold below which no adverse effect will take place. This article examines the level and quality of the emissions assessments included in 61 waste incinerator environmental statements (ESs); in particular, it focuses on the quality of the exposure assessment and risk characterization stages of the health risk assessment process. The article concludes that the ES has not always provided interested stakeholders with the best available information upon which to determine the tolerability of the health risks posed by waste incinerator emissions Some recommendations are made as to how this problem might be addressed in future environmental impact assessment (EIA) processes.     

An adaptive seamless phase II/III design for oncology trials with subpopulation selection using correlated survival endpoints

Although the statistical methods enabling efficient adaptive seamless designs are increasingly well established, it is important to continue to use the endpoints and specifications that best suit the therapy area and stage of development concerned when conducting such a trial. Approaches exist that allow adaptive designs to continue seamlessly either in a subpopulation of patients or in the whole population on the basis of data obtained from the first stage of a phase II/III design: our proposed design adds extra flexibility by also allowing the trial to continue in all patients but with both the subgroup and the full population as co-primary populations. Further, methodology is presented which controls the Type-I error rate at less than 2.5% when the phase II and III endpoints are different but correlated time-to-event endpoints. The operating characteristics of the design are described along with a discussion of the practical aspects in an oncology setting.     

Collective efficacy, family attachment, and urban adolescent suicide attempts

The suicide rate among American adolescents between the ages of 14-25 has dramatically increased during the last 50 years, and this fact has been the focus of extensive social-scientific investigation. To date, however, research focusing on the joint effects of mental health, family, and contextual-level predictors on adolescents' suicidal behaviors is scarce. Drawing on Durkheim's classic macro-level approach to suicide and collective efficacy theory, we use data from the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods (PHDCN) to examine the effect of informal social controls on adolescents' suicide attempts. Analyzing reports from 990 youth, we examine the hypothesis that neighborhood-level collective efficacy and family-level integration and social control independently affect suicide attempts. We also examine the extent to which they interact in their effects on suicidal behavior. Overall, results from multilevel logit models support the Durkheimian expectation that family attachment reduces the probability that adolescents will attempt suicide. The effect of collective efficacy is interactive in nature. Specifically, we find that collective efficacy significantly enhances the protective effect of family attachment and support on adolescent suicidal behaviors. We discuss findings within the context of social control theory.