Exposure Assessment: Methods of Analysis for Environmental Carcinogens1

Human populations are exposed to environmental carcinogens in both indoor and outdoor atmospheres. Recent studies indicate that pollutant concentrations are generally higher in indoor atmospheres than in outdoor. Environmental pollutants that occur in indoor air from a variety of sources include radon, asbestos, organic and inorganic compounds, and certain particles (e.g., tobacco smoke). Some of the gases or vapors are adsorbed on suspended particulate matter, whereas others exist entirely in the gas phase or are distributed between the latter and a particle-bound state. Because of differences in chemical and physical properties, each class of carcinogens generally requires different sampling and analytical methods. In addition, a single indoor environment may contain a wide variety of air pollutants from different sources. Unfortunately, no single best approach currently exists for the quantitative determination of such complex mixtures and, for practical reasons, only the more toxic or the more abundant pollutants are usually measured. This paper summarizes the currently available monitoring methods for selected environmental pollutants found in indoor atmospheres. In addition, some possible sources for those pollutants are identified.     

A theoretically derived model of premarital intervention: The building of a family system

Premarital intervention programs are on the rise in the United States despite the absence of persuasive empirical data that substantiate their effectiveness. In addition to this lack of strong empirical support, many premarital counseling programs fail to articulate any coherent theory of family process or family intervention which serve as conceptual guideposts for formulating program goals and devising program activities. In this article, the authors describe an experimental program that is conceptually grounded in theories of family process and family intervention. The theoretical rationale for each element included in the program is discussed and numerous examples of the program's content and exercises are offered. Finally, the authors discuss a number of issues central to the evaluation of premarital counseling programs.     

The Causal Sequence of Risk Communication in the Parkfield Earthquake Prediction Experiment

A model of public perception and response to communication about natural hazards risk was constructed. It was estimated on data from samples of households in three communities at risk in the Parkfield earthquake prediction experiment. Estimated model parameters revealed consistent conclusions. Communicated risk information that was reinforced through additional communications and/or social cues precipitated an interactive personal search for more information; personal definitions of risk and what to do emerged; and these social constructions directed how the public responded. Perceived risk only indirectly impacted public action through information searching. This suggests that searching behavior should intervene between perception of risk and response in the theory of public risk communication.     

A Test of the Emergent Norm Theory of Collective Behavior

Objective: The paper uses the timing of evacuation behavior of occupants of the World Trade Center at the time of the explosion of February 26, 1993, to test predictions from Emergent Norm Theory. Method: It uses ordinary least square multiple regression analysis to examine data from a survey done in the first week in May 1993 of 415 people who worked at the World Trade Center. Results: The theory's predictions regarding the additive effects of size of group and preexisting social relationships on the timing of evacuation are supported. However, the findings document important and unexpected interaction effects of these two variables on the effects of perceived threat, resources, and cooperativeness on the timing of evacuation. Conclusion: The results augment the theory by showing the continued importance of enduring social relationships as determinants of collective behavior. Enduring social relationships are not only useful to differentiate collective behavior from institutionalized behavior but also specify the dynamics attending the occurrence of collective behavior.     

Improving child welfare performance: retrospective and prospective approaches

Some of the key outcome measures used in the first federal Child and Family Service Reviews rely on retrospective cohorts and exclude key portions of the population from the analysis. Most discussions of this issue have focused on the extent to which retrospective measurement is a valid basis on which to judge states' performance (Courtney, Needell, & Wulczyn, 2003). The analyses presented here suggest that in some instances the relative or comparative results of retrospective and prospective measurements exhibit few differences. On the other hand, the analyses also make clear that retrospective measurements have two serious deficiencies in relation to improving performance. First, they are likely to identify the wrong issues, and, second, even when they identify the correct issues they fail to provide information needed to improve performance. This article suggests some practical ways in which the information currently available to child welfare agencies can be used to correct these problems.     

Conflict of interest in the evaluation and dissemination of "model" school-based drug and violence prevention programs

Conflict of interest refers to a set of conditions in which professional judgment concerning the validity of research might be influenced by a secondary competing interest. The competing interest that has received most attention in the literature addressing the prevalence and effects of such conflicts on the practice of empirical research has been that of financial relationships between investigators and research sponsors. The potential for conflicts of interest to arise in the evaluation of drug prevention programs was raised by Moskowitz in this journal in 1993, but to date there has been no attempt made to estimate the scope of this problem. The present study addressed this issue using a sample of “model” school-based drug and violence prevention interventions by first, identifying the types or relationships that exist between program developers and program distributors, and, second, by assessing how many of the evaluations of these programs published in peer-reviewed journals had been conducted by the developers of the programs compared to independent evaluation teams. The data presented indicate that there are relatively few published evaluations that do not involve program developers and that there are few instances in which there is complete separation between the program developer and program distributor. Using the open systems model of the Institute of Medicine Committee on Research Integrity as a framework, it is argued that the culture and norms of the program developer and those of the program evaluator are fundamentally distinct and therefore failure to separate these roles produces high potential for conflict of interest to arise.     

The development of collective moral leadership among parents through education organizing

It is often assumed that parent participation in schools is primarily based on self-interest and that this is a frequent source of contention between parents and teachers. This article examines the experiences of members of the Jamaica Plain Parent Organizing Project (JP-POP), a community-based organization in Boston, and reveals that some parents have learned to act beyond their individual self-interest and to organize on behalf of the entire community as a result of their participation. The authors present qualitative data from interviews with JP-POP members to ascertain the motivations behind their initial decisions to become involved in education, the benefits they derive from their participation, and the gradual evolution of narrow definitions of self-interest to more communal understandings. Finally, they draw out implications for the potential capacity enhancement of community-based organizations in education at both the institutional and district levels.     

An Examination of the Perceptions of Organizational Politics Model: Replication and Extension

This study examined the Perceptions of PoliticsModel (Ferris, Russ, & Fandt, 1989) in a three-phaseprocess. In the first phase, the model was examinedusing Anderson and Gerbing's (1988) two-step approach to structural equations modeling. Themodel was tested on data collected from 786 employees ofa state government agency and 469 employees of anelectric utility cooperative. Results from this phase indicated that the model had acceptablefit and was more parsimonious than any of the competingmodels to which it was compared. In the second phase,understanding as a moderator of the relationships between perceptions of organizational politicsand several outcome variables was examined. Resultsindicated that understanding only moderated the outcomerelationship between politics and job satisfaction, not intent to turnover or job anxiety. Finally,in phase three, the additional outcome variables oforganizational satisfaction, supervisor effectiveness,and self-reported individual performance were included in an effort to expand the Ferris et al. (1989)framework. Additionally, the moderating effects ofunderstanding on the relationships between perceptionsof politics and these new outcome variables were explored. Results from the final step indicatedthat adding the new outcome variables increased theparsimonyof the model without decreasing model fit. Withrespect to the moderating effects, only thepolitics-performance relationship was moderated byunderstanding.Allof these results are discussed in light of theirimplications for future research.