HOMOPHOBIA AND HOMOSOCIALITY:

Past research on the subject of homophobia consists of theoretical generalizationl, on its origin or empirical correlations of a multitude of attitudinal and demgraphic variables, with very little synthesis of the two. The present study relates homophobia to the maintenance of powerful sex-segregated institutions. It does so by operationalizing, for the first time, the concept of homosociality, which refers to social preference for members of one's own gender, but does not necessarily imply erotic attraction. This concept is tested for its relationship with homophobia in a survey of a large adult sample. Traditional explanations of homophobia (which center around religious and sex-role conservatism) are similarly explored. All proposed hypotheses find support.     

School performance, academic aspirations, and drug use among children and adolescents

The relationship between drug use, school performance, and academic aspirations among 446 Anglo and Hispanic youths, age nine to seventeen, is explored. Two groups of subjects--current substance users and non-users--were interviewed. Subjects in each comparison group were similar in age, ethnicity, and gender. Overall results, consistent with prior research, indicate a significant relationship between current school performance, future educational aspirations, and drug use. No difference was noted between substance use groups on indicators of general interest in school work or probability of dropping out of school. Important differences in response patterns occurring with age, ethnicity, and gender were found.     

Coping and adaptation by children with mild physical differences

This comparative study of 60 parents' and teachers' views of how elementary school children cope with their own mild physical differences and with current psychosocial development and academic tasks in mainstream classrooms identified statistically significant differences in use of defensive-adaptive imagery and psychosocial functioning between children experiencing academic success and failure.     

Interparental Conflict and Preschoolers' Peer Relations: The Moderating Roles of Temperament and Gender

The relations between destructive interparental conflict (IPC) and three‐ to six‐year‐olds’ (N = 62) peer relations were examined as a function of child temperament and gender. Regression analyses indicated that effortful control moderated the relations of IPC with children's amount of peer interaction as well as with their problematic relations with peers. Specifically, high IPC was associated with low amount of interaction and high problematic relations for preschoolers low in effortful control, but it was related to high amount of interaction and low problems for those high in effortful control. Additionally, gender differences in the relations between IPC and the amount of peer interaction indicated that IPC was negatively related to the amount of interaction for girls but positively related to the amount for boys. The findings highlight the need for examining individual differences in the relations between IPC and the development of early peer relations.     

Mixing patterns between age groups in social networks

We present a method for estimating transmission matrices that describe the mixing and the probability of infection between age groups. Transmission matrices can be used to estimate age-dependent forces of infection in age-structured, compartmental models for the study of infectious diseases. We analyze the social network generated by the synthetic population of Portland and extract mixing patterns. Our results show that the mixing within the population consists of two groups, children and adults. Children interact most frequently with other children close to their own age, while adults interact with a wider range of age groups and the durations of typical adult contacts are shorter than typical contacts between children. Furthermore, the transmission matrix shows that children are more likely to acquire infection than adults.     

Who captures the marks for the Petersen estimator?

Summary.  We examine the claim that the well-known Petersen estimator which is used in population size estimation was not in fact used by the scientist after whom it is named. We show how, in the early years of the last century, the modern use of the Petersen estimator grew from that of the fishing coefficient. Contending with the somewhat conflicting claims that were made at the time, and what by modern standards is poor referencing of sources, we investigate where the credit lies for these concepts, and the principles and protocols which support them. We assess also how far attributions of credit were affected by practical considerations, and the history of the estimator by the nature of the problems being pursued. We identify scientists whose early work on marking and estimating fish populations deserves more credit than it has received.     

Relationships among shiftworker eating habits, eating satisfaction, and self-reported health in a population of US miners

As part of a larger study on the health and safety of shiftworkers in the mining population by the US Bureau of Mines, the association between meal frequency, meal regularity, eating satisfaction and a self-reported health index was examined. Although the link between shiftwork and some health complaints, such as gastrointestinal disorders, has been established, the research needed to understand why this occurs has not been fully undertaken. Specifically, academic nutritional research has substantially ignored the question of how working irregular hours affects the eating behavior of industrial workers such as miners. In this study the eating habits of 101 surface mine workers were studied. It was found that working the day, afternoon/evening, and night-shifts was related to the number of meals eaten on those shifts and to the consistency of timing of those meals. The lowest eating satisfaction levels were reported by those who ate at different times on all shifts and who changed the number of meals eaten per day on each shift. Lowest self-reported health ratings were reported by those who changed the number of meals taken on each shift, rather than by those who ate one, two or three meals per day. These results are discussed in relation to the possible mechanisms contributing to gastrointestinal disorders and to coping mechanisms that could be adopted by shiftworkers.