The effects of building size on personal crime and fear of crime

The research that formed the basis of Newman's bookDefensible Space demonstrated that building height is one of the leading predictors of robbery rate in low-income public housing projects. Research reported in this article was undertaken to extend the scope and detail of the earlier work and, most importantly, to examine the causal mechanisms underlying the relationship of physical design to crime and fear of crime. The study sites in this new research are moderate-income, federallyassisted housing developments and low-income public housing projects. The major source of data is a household survey of residents. The findings provide important empirical support for the postulates of defensible space theory by showing that building size affects personal crime and fear of crime through residents' control and use of the space outside their apartments. Building size has a large total effect on residents' fear of crime, but despite its important indirect effects on personal crime, the total effect of building size on personal crime is not as strong as expected. Possible reasons for this unexpected finding are used to suggest refinements to defensible space theory.This paper is based on the final report of a study of crime and instability supported by the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration, U.S. Department of Justice, Grant 76-NI-99-0036-S-2. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Annual Meetings of the American Sociological Association in Toronto, August, 1981. The authors are grateful to Ralph Taylor and anonymous reviewers for their suggestions.     

TEACHING TRAINEES TO THINK IN TRIADS

This article briefly reviews the concept of triads in family therapy theory and practice. It describes in detail an original exercise designed to teach trainees about triads.     

Managing not-for-profit enterprises.

The popular belief that business management concepts can be applied readily to not-for-profit enterprises needs qualification. Not-for-profit enterprises differ widely; each has its own managerial needs, and many have discriminating constraints that sharply modify which concepts will be effective.     

Occupational Structure and the Employment of American Mothers of Young Children

Explanations for the increase of employment for American mothers with young children have focused on womens motivations and skills or on increased wages. Instead, this analysis considers how access to professional and managerial occupations may explain this employment trend. Relying on Current Population Survey data (1968–1995), the study reports that growing availability of these occupations explains less than 1/4 of employment growth. The percentage of full-time employed newer mothers in professional and managerial occupations, while having grown substantially over time, remains relatively small. Part-time employment does not explain the trend. Relatively high rates of full-time work, even for low-prestige occupations, affirm existing research emphasizing family economic need and validate questions about the structure of work for accommodating family obligations.The author thanks Paul Burstein, Charles Hirschman, Sharon Reitman, and the anonymous reviewers of JFEI for their helpful comments. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the annual meetings of the American Sociological Association in Washington, DC, August 2000.     

Strengths, uses and problems of global scales as an evaluation instrument

A global scale can provided means for integrating a variety of client/patient assessment techniques to complement each other in a useful manner. Global scales have been applied to service planning and evaluation as well as being useful for the on-going communication of clients' clinical/functioning status. Global scales are attractive to many service programs because of their apparent ease of implementation and their apparent face validity. Furthermore, there is an extensive body of literature describing global scales as hightly reliable and valid when properly implemented and maintained. The literature also suggests that there are some serious pitfalls. While initial implementation of a global scale is easy, the maintenance of a reliable, valid and useful scale appears to require their active use in treatment planning, treatment review and clinical supervision processes. It also requires that more extensive multidimensional ratings be made at intake, review and termination. Furthermore, staff training and development sessions two or three times a year are needed to surface and deal with differences in clinician ratings. Given these sorts of supports, then, a global scale has been demonstrated as a useful tool in service program management as well as clinical process and outcome studies, including studies of cost effectiveness. Since the major use of a global scale is as an integrating construct, a quantitative model is offered to describe the relationship between global scale ratings and multidimensional facets influencing the global ratings.     

Married Persons’ Subjective Class Identification: The Role of Individual Gender Ideologies from 1972 to 2002

This study examined married men and women’s subjective class identification between 1972 and 2002, and the role of individual gender ideologies in married persons’ shifting status-evaluation models. We used nationally representative trend data gathered as part of the General Social Survey. Consistent with previous theoretical predictions, results indicated that overall, husbands and wives used status-sharing models of status-evaluation. Interestingly, however, in the late 1990s and early 2000s women shifted toward a status-borrowing model of status-evaluation. Results suggested that gender ideologies did not explain recent trends in the importance of wives’ and husbands’ class attributes for models of status-evaluation. We concluded that shifts in hegemonic gender beliefs, rather than individual gender ideologies, are a more likely explanation of changes in couples’ models of status-evaluation.

Anabolic androgenic steroids: use and perceived use in nonathlete college students

OBJECTIVE: The authors investigated the use and perceived use of anabolic androgenic steroids (AAS) among nonathlete college students. PARTICIPANTS: The authors surveyed a sample of 485 nonathlete college students at a major metropolitan university. METHODS: They administered a survey on use and perceived use of AAS to the students. RESULTS: Forty-two participants (9%) reported using AAS (37 men, 5 women). Seniors were the most likely to use AAS (36%), and freshman the least likely (7%). Thirty-four percent of nonusers and 41% of users indicated they knew between 1 and 5 AAS users. Of the total sample, 36% perceived that 5% to 10% of nonathlete college students used AAS. Reasons for AAS use were because friends were using (7%), a desire to enhance physical appearance (45%), and a desire to increase physical performance (48%). CONCLUSIONS: These findings may have significant implications in planning strategic preventive educational programs, and health educators should target incoming college freshmen with the intent of dissuading AAS use.     

Vygotsky,Wittgenstein, and sociocultural theory

This paper considers the use made of Vygotsky's work by many who take a sociocultural perspective and, in particular, by those who use his work to advance a particular view of second language acquisition and the ‘silent period’. It is argued that Vygotsky's account as represented in Thought and Language (Vygotsky, 1986 ) needs to be thought of as consisting of two distinct aspects: first, the observations he made (or claimed to have made) and, second, the theoretical account he proposed to explain them. It is shown that some of Vygotsky's observations are problematic but that, even if they are accepted, Vygotsky's theoretical account suffers from fundamental difficulties. Thus the support claimed from Vygotsky in accounts of second language acquisition is misplaced, first because of those difficulties and, second, because many who claim support from Vygotsky, do not need or even use his theory but instead focus their attention on his empirical observations and assume incorrectly that if their own empirical observations match Vygotsky's, then Vygotsky's theory can be accepted. Wittgenstein's later philosophy is shown to provide a perspective which dispels confusions about, and gives us a clearer insight into, the issues.     

Home Ownership, Affordability, and Mothers' Changing Work and Family Roles

Objective . Elaborating on conventional explanations for rapid employment growth of married mothers of preschoolers, I propose that pursuit of home ownership contributed to this trend differently in different decades since 1950. Methods . Measuring husbands' income in terms of mortgage qualification and using logistic regression analysis of pooled Current Population Survey data to estimate trends standardized for compositional change, I compare hypothetical with observed trends since 1970. Results . Declining ability of husbands' income to qualify for mortgages and rising educational attainment of mothers explains the post-1970 accelerated employment growth for preschoolers' mothers. By the 1980s, other influences have greater relative effects on young mothers' employment. Conclusion . Home ownership contributed to slower growth in preschoolers' mothers' employment through the 1950s and 1960s, raising standard-of-living expectations. Declining affordability in the 1970s inspired even more rapid growth. Pursuit of prescribed standards of living has increasingly motivated families to embrace dual-earner work and family arrangements.