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.     

Survival dilemmas: Case study of an adult child of a schizophrenic parent

This article describes aspects of the treatment of an adult child of a schizophrenic parent. Many theories on irrationality in the family setting illuminate the range of impingement on the child's reality when a parent is disturbed in this way. Current research has absorbed itself in interpretations of data on risk, vulnerability, disorder, and early trauma, which have implications for prevention as well as therapeutic treatment of the adult survivor. Profound effects on Ms. P's early development are elaborated in the therapy, in which the treatment stance is influenced by Kohut's theories of the self, particularly as applied to the establishment within the holding environment of specific transferences that facilitate reconstructive work.     

The parenting of adolescents in Britain today

In this paper it is noted that increased attention has been paid to the topic of parenting in recent years. However, most of this attention has been concentrated on the parenting of young children, with the parenting of adolescents being largely ignored by both practitioners and academics. The paper reviews the available research on the parenting of teenagers, and shows how this could be of use to those who live with young people. The article concludes with some suggestions for new research, and argues that there is an urgent need for greater support and information for this group of parents.     

Urban tree cover: an ecological perspective

Analysis of urban tree cover is generally limited to inventories of tree structure and composition on public lands. This approach provided valuable information for resource management. However, it does not account for all tree cover within an urban landscape, thus providing insufficient information on ecological patterns and processes. We propose evaluating tree cover for an entire urban area that is based on patch dynamics. Treed patches are classified by their origin, structure, and management intensity. A patch approach enables ecologists to evaluate ecological patterns and processes for the entire urban landscape and to examine how social patterns influence these ecological patterns and processes.     

Informing the Public About Uncertain Risks

Many problems arise in connection with the communication of risk information. In this article the content of the information communicated is taken as a starting-point for analyzing the risk communication process. We studied the way in which authorities communicated health risks to local residents in Dutch soil pollution situations and found that communication problems were characterized more by misunderstanding and conflict between parties with different views and interests than by a lack of understanding. Therefore, it is important to look more closely at the way the communicators of information (in our cases, officials) select risk information from risk assessments, and to study the effects that the information selected has on the receivers (in our cases, residents). Both the process of selection by the officials and the process of interpretation by the residents will be shown to be influenced by the different institutional backgrounds. The article presents a new approach to risk communication. Both the risk information presented by the authorities and the public reactions to this risk information are considered to reflect the institutional background of authorities and residents, and can be analyzed in these terms. Such an approach has consequences for the study of risk communication and the manner in which it is practiced.     

State lotteries and compulsive gambling

The legalization of gambling, including state lotteries, has resulted in a dramatic increase of compulsive gambling. Not surprisingly, a new profile of compulsive gambler has emerged which differs significantly from the previous profile of white, middle aged, middle class male. This paper discusses public policy issues, lottery advertising, and legislative/lottery support given to address the problems of compulsive gambling.     

The abortion issue and Title VII employment discrimination: The microcosm of the law

This paper presents a discussion of a 1989 United States federal appeals court ruling in the case of Doe v. First National Bank. The case is the first ruling on the federal appellate level involving a claim of Title VII employment discrimination based upon alleged employer knowledge of and animus towards an employee who had undergone an abortion. Doe raises the ethical questions of how a highly charged, national social issue can be reduced to interpersonal dealings between a supervisor and her subordinate in the workplace. The facts of the case are presented in a chronological manner, followed by a discussion of both the court rulings in the case and the utility of employing this case as an excellent tool in the teaching of business ethics and society.     

Hierarchic predictive ratio-based and product-based estimators and their efficiency

SUMMARY Invoking the predictive approach with a fixed population set-up, and employing initially the customary ratio and product estimators as potential predictors for the non-surveyed part of the population, we have generated sequences of ratio-based and product-based estimators. The proposed ratio-based and product-based estimators of order k are-under some practical conditions-found to be more efficient than the customary ratio and product estimators and the usual simple mean when k is chosen optimally. Under the optimal value of k, the kth-order ratio-based and product-based estimators are found to be as efficient as the linear regression estimator. We have used real population data to illustrate the efficacy of the proposed ratio-based and product-based estimators relative to the usual simple mean and the customary ratio and product estimators.