Reaching Men who have Sex with Men in Australia. An Overview of AIDS Education: Community Intervention and Community Attachment Strategies

This paper outlines the principles underlying the Australian AIDS strategy and offers an explanation for its success in reducing the spread of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) among homosexual and bisexual men in Australia's gay communities. A brief outline of the AIDS education activities offered by the gay-community AIDS organisations is followed by results from the Social Aspects of the Prevention of AIDS (SAPA) research project based at Macquarie University. This research confirms the importance of the community-intervention strategies utilised by gay AIDS organisations. The paper then assesses progress in the development of community-attachment strategies for men who have sex with men but who are not attached to organised gay communities.     

School's out! Why earlier among children of lone parents?

The aims of this population-based study were to analyse educational attainment at ages 24–25 among children of lone parents in comparison with children living with two biological parents, to increase understanding of the factors that seem to be of major importance in increased risks of lower educational achievement and to examine how the life circumstances of non-custodial parents influence possible differences. We found that children who grew up with only one parent showed lower educational attainment than did children in two-parent families. Poorer educational performance on the part of the offspring of lone parents can be explained to a large extent by socio-economic disadvantage, especially a lack of economic resources. However, achievement varies according to cause of lone parenting, and findings strongly indicate that adjusting solely for custodial parents' circumstances may lead to under-estimation of the relationship. Lone parenting seems to have a more detrimental effect on girls' education, and also within groups of children with highly educated parents than among those with a relatively low level of education.     

What really happened? Incidence and factor assessment of abused children and adolescents

Abuse of children and adolescents is a societal problem. If health-care providers are to intervene adequately in abuse, they must identify the occurrence, elicit all pertinent information surrounding the abuse and the patient's response, and integrate pertinent abuse issues in the overall treatment plan for the patient. This study has conclusively demonstrated the failure of health-care providers to assess and plan treatment based on the comprehensive documentation of sexual and physical abuse factors. Findings clearly indicate a need for education of health-care providers in the development of comprehensive and integrated treatment plans for abused psychiatric patients based on documentation of all factors related to trauma learning and replay. Service agencies must be willing to implement in-service programs that provide nurses and other health-care providers with the cognitive and affective knowledge and skills necessary to feel comfortable in the management of abuse issues.     

How race affects dismissals of college football coaches

We employ a discretetime hazard model and a Blinder-decomposition approach to explore the possibility of racial discrimination in the dismissal and retention of college football coaches by university administrations. A rich data set consisting of 81 institutions over an 11-year period (1990–2000) that contains, in addition to a coach's race, variables on cumulative winning records, annual on-the-field improvements, and pre-/post-season game participation by institutions and their coaches is employed. Our study finds that black coaches, on average, face a dismissal probability that is 9.6 percentage points below that of their nonblack counterparts, ceteris paribus, suggesting that black head coaches may be the beneficiaries of favorable treatment by university administrators. Such a result likely stems from universities ' approach to social concerns involving race and gender issues. This finding also fits a construct that considers workplace discrimination as multi-dimensional. For example, black representation in the college football coaching ranks may be disproportionately low, possibly as a result of discrimination. However, once hired, black coaches are given more time to succeed than nonblacks, other things constant.     

Review Essay: Power and Culture in Organizations: Two Contrasting Views

Sociological Forum -     

Presidential Address on ALTRUISM AND SOCIOLOGY

This article concerns the study of altruism. Highlights of the research history of altruism in sociobiology, psychological social-psychology, and sociology are reviewed. Examples from the author's work on kidney and bone-marrow donation are interwoven with this history. The sociological mechanisms producing altruism, particularly normative obligation, are emphasized along with the psychological mechanisms (e.g., empathy). The need for better integration across subareas in sociology is discussed. In addition, it is concluded that some scientific work significantly trivializes altruism.     

DETECT

DETECT is an inexpensive, easy to use, general-purpose, Monte Carlo simulation program for IBM and compatible personal computers. It can be used to quickly analyze fault trees or functions of random variables. DETECT provides a wide variety of input distributions to choose from and a dependency (correlation) option. The result of the analysis is a probability distribution over the variable of interest. We look forward to further improvements (e.g., graphics, full-screen editing, ability to inspect intermediate results) that will make DETECT even more useful and attractive.