Youth (and) Violence

Youth violence is a major concern. Everyday the news and entertainment media feeds the public a fresh supply of school shootings, stabbings at house parties and random gun violence involving young people. These narratives do not just entertain, they fundamentally alter our existence. But, should they? Are our fears warranted? This essay considers how youth violence shapes our ontology, that is, the way we view and interact with our world. Towards this end, I examine the prevalence of violence in North American society. However, before sliding into this discussion, I highlight the nuances involved in asking the question, ‘what is violence’? Next, I ask what is the aetiology or ‘causes’ of violence? This section surveys a variety of experts on the subject including: Freud, sociologists, criminologists and philosophers. I conclude by suggesting that violence is irreverent and to begin an exegesis requires that we, all of us, avow all life.     

Whither the Muse: What Influences Empirical Research on Verbal Behavior?

The Analysis of Verbal Behavior - To identify some of the published works that have helped to inspire empirical verbal behavior research, we searched for patterns in the sources cited in empirical...     

The evaluation of retractions in sexual abuse cases

In some cases of alleged sexual abuse, the child or adult retracts allegations made. This poses problems for both civil and criminal legal proceedings. It is argued that the collection and examination of retraction statements often does not receive the same careful attention as is the case with the investigation of the original allegations. Logically, depending on whether the original complaints were true or false or a mixture, so the meaning of a retraction may vary. Where retractions are examined and evaluated with care they may be shown to add to the confidence of the final conclusion rather than simply throwing doubt on that. A systematic approach is described, followed by three cases where such application assisted and paradoxically added to the probative value of earlier statements. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

On a lottery pricing anomaly: Time tells the tale

This article identifies a lottery pricing anomaly, which I call the “r=x anomaly,” that is present in past pricing experiments—namely, a tendency for subjects to announce that their minimum selling price for some binary lottery is the greater of the two lottery prizes. The study shows that the anomaly is inconsistent with two theoretical explanations for another well-known pricing anomaly (preference reversal) and experimentally replicates these inconsistencies. The new experiment also measures the time subjects spend making their pricing decisions. These decision-time measurements suggest that ther=x anomaly may be a decision-cost effect.     

The associations between work stress and mental health: A comparison of organizationally employed and self-employed workers

This study examined the associations between work stressors and mental health in organizationally employed and self-employed workers, and with the numbers of general practitioner (GP) services used by these two employment groups. The participants were selected from those already taking part in the PATH Through Life Project, in Australia. A total of 2275 men and women aged from 40 to 44 years participated in a community survey and were in the labour force at the time of the interview. Those who participated entered responses into a hand-held computer under the supervision of an interviewer. A total of 14.2% of the group identified themselves as self-employed. Respondents also provided details of their occupation and the extent to which they experienced work stressors. Some 72.6% of these participants gave consent for information on their use of GP services over a 12-month period to be obtained from national insurance records. We found that self-employed men and women reported more decision authority than the organizationally employed, while self-employed women also had more manageable job demands. Self-employment offered men no health benefit. However, women who were self-employed reported worse physical health than their organizationally employed counterparts. While work stress factors were most likely to be associated with the use of GP services by self-employed men, the use of those services by women was more strongly associated with their experiences of stress in organizational employment. Overall, self-employment was found to be associated with relatively few mental health benefits.     

Contested boundaries,contested places: The Natura 2000 network in Ireland

Where to draw the boundary line between ‘nature’ and ‘society’ has perplexed sociologists, ecologists and geographers through the ages. This paper was inspired by environmental sociologist, Alan Irwin, who suggests that we shift our focus from asking ‘where to draw the line’ between what is considered ‘natural’ and ‘social’ to exploring the ‘very process of line-drawing’ as it occurs within specific socio-ecological contexts (Irwin, 2001). Nature conservation initiatives in the form of “protected areas” provide remarkable insights into attempts to devise and manage conceptual and spatial-geographic boundaries between nature and society. Here, I discuss Ireland’s contribution to the Natura 2000 network of protected ecological sites. I show how line-drawing in Natura 2000, from EU right down to local levels, is a highly contingent, contested and uncertain process; how both ‘nature’ and ‘society’ can frustrate attempts to draw and maintain these boundaries and the conflicts, uncertainties and dilemmas thrown up in the process. The paper ends by considering the extent to which this “boundary-work” analysis provides an insightful, though incomplete picture of the experiences of and challenges posed by Natura 2000 on-the ground, while posing some more philosophical questions about nature–society boundaries and the challenges they pose to nature conservationism.     

Comments on a Paper by Lachenbruch and Flack

Razzaghi (1987) conjectured that a wrong choice of covariance matrix in a restricted linear model results in loss of efficiency. This conjecture was proved correct by Kabe and Gupta for a wrong choice of constant covariance matrix. The present paper demonstrates that this loss of efficiency persists even with an estimated covariance matrix, thereby resulting in inefficient estimation, prediction, and confidence intervals.