The Equality Deficit: Protection against Discrimination on the Grounds of Sexual Orientation in Employment

The provisions of UK law offer no specific protection to gay men and lesbians suffering discrimination in the workplace on the grounds of sexual orientation. Such discrimination may take many forms and can result in ‘fair’ dismissal in certain circumstances. This article considers the degree of legal protection available under current provisions and investigates possible sources for the development of specific anti‐discrimination legislation. It is concluded that, despite the application of certain aspects of employment law, the level of protection afforded to this group of workers amounts to an equality deficit in comparison to the legal redress available to those discriminated against on other grounds. Although the development of human rights legislation may have some application in this context, the combination of institutionalized discrimination and wider public policy concerns suggest that the introduction of specific legislation aimed at eliminating such discrimination in the United Kingdom is still some way off.     

Controlling children's lives: covert messages in child protection service reports

This article presents central findings from a detailed examination of written documents in 50 child protection cases from the Norwegian welfare state. In so doing, it explores issues related to the social consequences of document writing in welfare state services. Using a frame drawn from Foucault's theory of discursive rites, it looks at the writing of certain documents as ritual performances involving on the one hand, various chains of power and on the other, processes reinforcing ruling definitions of normality. The examination shows that documents do more than satisfy bureaucratic demands for record keeping about the delivery of child protection services. These records also serve as distributors of social identities and social positions for children and their families. Moreover, the examination also reveals the contours of a paradox whereby, activities intended to help and to protect some children often involve using these youngsters to reaffirm normality in society and to confirm the existing social order. These findings indicate that there is a need for greater sensibility to ethical issues involved in documents writing.     

A Comparison of Unconstraining Methods to Improve Revenue Management Systems

Asuccessful revenue management system requires accurate demand forecasts for each customer segment. The forecasts are used to set booking limits for lower value customers to ensure an adequate supply for higher value customers. The very use of booking limits, however, constrains the historical demand data needed for an accurate forecast. Ignoring this interaction leads to substantial penalties in a firm's potential revenues. We review existing unconstraining methods and propose a new method that includes some attractive properties not found in the existing methods. We evaluate several of the common unconstraining methods against our proposed method by testing them on intentionally constrained simulated data. Results indicate our proposed method outperforms other methods in two of three data sets. We also test the revenue impact of our proposed method, expectation maximization (EM), and “no unconstraining” on actual booking data from a hotel/casino. We show that performance varies with the initial starting protection limits and a lack of unconstraining leads to significant revenue losses.     

Mothers' Cognitions about Relational Aggression: Associations with Discipline Responses, Children's Normative Beliefs, and Peer Competence

Prior research has shown that parental social cognitions are associated with child outcomes such as aggression. The goal of this study was to examine mothers' cognitions about relational aggression, and to explore linkages between mothers' attributions and normative beliefs about aggression and children's competence with peers. Participants included 103 mothers and children in grades 3 through 6. Results showed that mothers viewed relational aggression as more acceptable and normative than physical aggression, and they attributed less responsibility to children for using relational aggression. Maternal cognitions also predicted levels of sternness and disapproval in response to child relational aggression, and children's beliefs about the acceptability of relational aggression, which were associated with children's teacher-rated peer competence. Sex differences in the patterns of associations between maternal cognitions, discipline responses, child norms and peer competence were found. Applications of these results to parent education programs that are focused on relational aggression are discussed.     

Comparison of older adult performance during the functional-reach and limits-of-stability tests

Despite widespread use of the functional-reach (FR) and limits-of-stability (LOS) tests, comparisons of postural strategies and postural limits for these tests have not been previously reported. The purpose of this study was to compare postural strategies as determined by cross-correlation analyses of trunk and lower leg angular displacements and postural limits as assessed by maximum center-of-gravity (COG) excursions as older adults at low fall risk completed the FR and LOS tests. Fourteen older adults completed three FR and LOS trials while standing on a Balance Master force platform. Results indicated that despite relatively similar instructions to reach or lean as far as possible without losing balance or altering the base of support, their performance differed with regard to postural strategies employed and maximum COG excursions produced. These findings suggest that because of differences in task constraints, FR and LOS tests should not be used interchangeably.     

Inconsistencies in reporting the occurence and timing of first intercourse among adolescents

Two types of reporting inconsistency for sexual initiation were analyzed--event occurrence and its timing--using data from two waves of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health). Overall, 11.1% of those who reported they were sexually active at the time of first interview denied this at the subsequent one. Males of each race/ethnic group had higher percentages of inconsistency than their female counterparts. Being older, not living with parents, or having a highly educated mother was negatively associated with rescinding. Among those reporting sexual experience at both interviews, only 22.2% reported the same date of first sex. On average, teens revised their age at first sex to older ages, and boys, especially African American boys, had large variability in reporting dates, as did teens with lower verbal ability. Seven strategies for resolving inconsistent reports are presented and implications for substantive findings are discussed.     

Social determinants of facial displays

A primary function of facial displays is to communicate messages to others. Bavelas and Chovil (1990) proposed an Integrated Message Model of language in which nonverbal acts such as facial displays and gestures that occur in communicative (particularly face-to-face) interactions are viewed as symbolic messages that are used to convey meaning to others. One proposition of this model is that these nonverbal messages will be shaped by the social components of the situation. The present study attempted to delineate more precisely the components of sociality that explicitly affect the use of facial displays in social situations. Frequency of motor mimicry displays in response to hearing about a close-call experience was examined in four communicative situations. In one condition, participants listened to a tape-recording of an individual telling about a close-call event. In two interactive but nonvisual conditions, participants listened to another person over the telephone or in the same room but separated by a partition. In the fourth condition, participants listened to another person in a face-to-face interaction. The frequency of listeners' motor mimicry displays was found to vary monotonically with the sociality of the four conditions. Actual presence and visual availability of the story-teller potentiated listener displays. The results support the proposition that facial displays are mediated by the extent to which individuals can fully interact in communicative situations.This study was conducted at the University of Victoria, Victoria, B.C., Canada, as part of the author's doctoral dissertation and was partly supported by a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada doctoral fellowship. I thank Janet Bavelas for her assistance in the development of the study and her valuable comments on earlier drafts. Alan Fridlund helped in the analysis of the data and provided comments on earlier drafts. Linda Coates, Jennifer Halliday, Laura Lane, and Doug Laurie assisted in the collection of data. Laura Lane also helped in the scoring of facial displays.     

Adolescents coping with mom's breast cancer: developing family intervention programs

The purpose of this pilot study was to gain a deeper understanding of how adolescents are affected by their mothers' breast cancer and to discover their opinions about how future intervention programs should be designed. Three focus groups were conducted with a total of 10 adolescents. Findings indicate that adolescents' lives had been complicated by their mothers' illness, as they often felt burdened with additional roles and responsibilities. Adolescents suggested that future intervention programs should have the following elements: Adolescent group comprised of boys and girls within 4 months of cancer diagnosis; psychoeducation; target coping skills sensitive to girls and boys of different ethnic and racial backgrounds; and after the adolescent groups, have multiple-family therapy groups that promote shared family understanding and open communication between parents and adolescents.