The Role of Father Involvement and Mother Involvement in Adolescents' Psychological Well-being

to Eirini Flouri, Department of Social Policy and Social Work, University of Oxford, Barnett House, 32 Wellington Square, Oxford OX1 2ER, UK. E-mail: eirini.flouri{at}socres.ox.ac.uk Summary This study of 2,722 British adolescents aged 14–18 yearsexplored whether paternal involvement can protect against lowlevels of well-being even when maternal involvement and riskand protective factors are controlled for. Results showed thatalthough both father and mother involvement contributed significantlyand independently to offspring happiness, father involvementhad a stronger effect. Furthermore, the association betweenfather involvement and happiness was not stronger for sons thanfor daughters. There was no evidence suggesting that familydisruption weakens the association between father involvementand happiness, or that father involvement is more strongly relatedto offspring happiness when mother involvement is low ratherthan high.     

Four Motives for Community Involvement

A conceptual analysis is offered that differentiates four types of motivation for community involvement: egoism, altruism, collectivism, and principlism. Differentiation is based on identification of a unique ultimate goal for each motive. For egoism, the ultimate goal is to increase one's own welfare; for altruism, it is to increase the welfare of another individual or individuals; for collectivism, to increase the welfare of a group; and for principlism, to uphold one or more moral principles. As sources of community involvement, each of these four forms of motivation has its strengths; each also has its weaknesses. More effective efforts to stimulate community involvement may come from strategies that orchestrate motives so that the strengths of one motive can overcome weaknesses of another. Among the various possibilities, strategies that combine appeals to either altruism or collectivism with appeals to principle may be especially promising.     

Outcomes assessment of role-play scenarios for teaching responsible conduct of research

We describe the summative assessment of role-play scenarios that we previously developed to teach central topics in the responsible conduct of research (RCR) to graduate students in science and engineering. Interviews with role-play participants, with participants in a case discussion training session, and with untrained students suggested that role-playing might promote a deeper appreciation of RCR by shifting the focus away from wanting to simply "know the rules." We also present the results of a think-aloud case analysis study and describe the development of a behaviorally-anchored rating scale (BARS) to assess participants' case analysis performance.     

Efficacy,Action, and Support for Reducing Climate Change Risks

A growing body of research demonstrates that believing action to reduce the risks of climate change is both possible (self‐efficacy) and effective (response efficacy) is essential to motivate and sustain risk mitigation efforts. Despite this potentially critical role of efficacy beliefs, measures and their use vary wildly in climate change risk perception and communication research, making it hard to compare and learn from efficacy studies. To address this problem and advance our understanding of efficacy beliefs, this article makes three contributions. First, we present a theoretically motivated approach to measuring climate change mitigation efficacy, in light of diverse proposed, perceived, and previously researched strategies. Second, we test this in two national survey samples (Amazon's Mechanical Turk N = 405, GfK Knowledge Panel N = 1,820), demonstrating largely coherent beliefs by level of action and discrimination between types of efficacy. Four additive efficacy scales emerge: personal self‐efficacy, personal response efficacy, government and collective self‐efficacy, and government and collective response efficacy. Third, we employ the resulting efficacy scales in mediation models to test how well efficacy beliefs predict climate change policy support, controlling for specific knowledge, risk perceptions, and ideology, and allowing for mediation by concern. Concern fully mediates the relatively strong effects of perceived risk on policy support, but only partly mediates efficacy beliefs. Stronger government and collective response efficacy beliefs and personal self‐efficacy beliefs are both directly and indirectly associated with greater support for reducing the risks of climate change, even after controlling for ideology and causal beliefs about climate change.     

Implementation issues for consumer-directed programs: comparing views of policy experts, consumers, and representatives

An increasing number of aging community providers and consumers support consumer-direction (CD) in long-term care services. In regard to devolution, consumer-direction goes beyond the usual approach of shifting responsibilities from the federal government to state governments to bring programs "closer to the people." Consumer-direction goes even further by placing resources directly in the hands of consumers. Yet, many questions remain unanswered regarding how to implement CD personal assistance services in general, and especially for older persons. This article describes the importance of examining views from multiple key stakeholders involved in implementing CD programs. We report on three background studies that have informed the Cash and Counseling Demonstration and Evaluation (CCDE) design and implementation-policy expert interviews as well as surveys and focus groups with consumers and representatives. As a fourth data source, we drew upon experiences in designing the CCDE and initial results from the first year of implementation. Each of the three studies on its own provided essential information for planning the CCDE. However, when we examined the studies together, and added CCDE design and implementation experiences, views expressed by the different stakeholders formed a type of multi-perspective "dialogue" that expanded our knowledge about implementing CD services. We hope this increased knowledge will help expand the availability of such services for consumers of any age who want to direct their own care.     

Demand for health risk reductions: A cross-national comparison between the U.S. and Canada

Using a large stated preference survey conducted across the U.S. and Canada, we assess differences in individual willingness to pay (WTP) for health risk reductions between the two countries. Our utility-theoretic choice model allows for systematically varying marginal utilities for avoided future time in different adverse health states (illness-years, recovered/remission years, and lost life-years). We find significant differences between Canadian and U.S. preferences. WTP also differs systematically with age, gender, education, and marital status, as well as a number of attitudinal and subjective health-perception variables. Age profiles for WTP are markedly different across the two countries. Canadians tend to display flatter age profiles, with peak WTP realized at older ages.     

Now What Do People Know About Global Climate Change? Survey Studies of Educated Laypeople

In 1992, a mental‐models‐based survey in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, revealed that educated laypeople often conflated global climate change and stratospheric ozone depletion, and appeared relatively unaware of the role of anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions in global warming. This study compares those survey results with 2009 data from a sample of similarly well‐educated laypeople responding to the same survey instrument. Not surprisingly, following a decade of explosive attention to climate change in politics and in the mainstream media, survey respondents in 2009 showed higher awareness and comprehension of some climate change causes. Most notably, unlike those in 1992, 2009 respondents rarely mentioned ozone depletion as a cause of global warming. They were also far more likely to correctly volunteer energy use as a major cause of climate change; many in 2009 also cited natural processes and historical climatic cycles as key causes. When asked how to address the problem of climate change, while respondents in 1992 were unable to differentiate between general “good environmental practices” and actions specific to addressing climate change, respondents in 2009 have begun to appreciate the differences. Despite this, many individuals in 2009 still had incorrect beliefs about climate change, and still did not appear to fully appreciate key facts such as that global warming is primarily due to increased concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, and the single most important source of this carbon dioxide is the combustion of fossil fuels.