Substance use, self-esteem, and depression among Asian American adolescents

The relationship of self-esteem and depression with alcohol, tobacco, and other drug (ATOD) use was tested in a California statewide sample of more than 4,300 Asian American high school students comprising five subgroups: Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Filipino, and Vietnamese. Estimated prevalence rates of alcohol, tobacco, and marijuana use among males and females from these Asian American subgroups are presented. Correlations revealed that cigarette, alcohol, and marijuana use were generally more related to high depression and low self-esteem in females than in males. Logistic regression analysis with only the female subjects investigated whether the relationship between the psychological variables and ATOD use was maintained even after controlling for traditionally important constructs in ATOD use (grade level in school, born in the United States, ethnicity, and ATOD use by friends). These results indicated that for females, depression was significantly related to alcohol and tobacco use, but self-esteem was not. Neither self-esteem nor depression was a significant contributor to marijuana use. Issues related to the application of these results are discussed.     

Risk Target: An Interactive Context Factor in Risk Perception

The effect of specification of the target on risk evaluation was examined. A whole set of hazards, covering most of the domains, were considered: common individual hazards, outdoor activities, medical care, public transportation, energy production, pollutants, sex, deviance, and addictions. Three human targets were introduced: personal health risk (including personal risk of death), health risk for people in the country, and health risk for people in the world. The basic design was a between-subjects design. The first hypothesis was that risk judgments made in the "world" condition should be higher than risk judgments made in the "country" condition, and risk judgments made in this condition should be higher than risk judgments made in the "personal" condition. This is what was observed. The second hypothesis was that the target effect should differ as a function of the kind of hazards considered. This also is what was observed. In two domains--pollutants, and deviance, sex, and addictions--the target effect was important. It corresponded to about one-tenth of the response scale. In the four remaining domains, the target effect was unimportant or absent.     

Identifying Participation in the Informal Economy Using Survey Research Methods1

Abstract There is growing interest in the extent of informal economic activity as a form of income generating or subsistence activity within first world economies, but little agreement exists in the literature as to what constitutes informal work, what activities in addition to monetary exchanges make up the informal economy, and where these activities are located. The lack of consensus on the proper definition of the activities ,that make up the informal economy is reflected in the lack of systematic data available to investigate these forms of work. This paper investigates using telephone survey research techniques to develop inexpensive and efficient data sources to answer questions about the forms, prevalence, and location of informal work. The research uncovers problems associated with developing survey based measures of informal activity, but it also demonstrates the viability of this approach as well as the generally high level of participation in both rural and urban places.     

Pressures from stakeholders hit Japanese companies

In recent years few US and European executives have been faced with the task of managing in a highly complex, dynamic business environment. There is a growing awareness of the need to consider the interests of a variety of stakeholder groups when making business decisions. This awareness has quickly become a requirement for executives across the globe, even among those in Japanese firms who have historically been less encumbered due to different societal, cultural, and business expectations. This article addresses these differences and discusses the global evolution of stakeholder group influence with an emphasis on US, European, and Japanese executives.     

The effects of distance and individual differences in arousability on nonverbal involvement: A test of discrepancy-arousal theory

Mutual influence in human interaction refers to the tendency for persons to alter their verbal, vocal, and kinesic behaviors in response to the intensity, frequency or duration of those behaviors emitted by their partners. Numerous explanations of these processes have been put forward involving principles of approach-avoidance conflict, arousal, reward, and cognitive processes. These explanations are reviewed with special attention given to an arousal based theory, discrepancy-arousal. This theory holds that mutual influence is primarily the result of arousal changes due to the degree of discrepancy of partner's behavior from the receiver's expectation.The theory predicts that persons who differ in reaction to arousal should also differ in their response to a partner's immediacy. This hypothesis was tested on high and low sensation seekers under conditions of near and normal distances during an interview. Several different behavioral responses were coded, including eye gaze, posture and orientation, smiles and laughter, object- and body-focused gestures, vocalization, pauses, and latencies to respond. The hypothesized interaction did not materialize with a median split on sensation seeking. A measure of state-trait sensation seeking (STSS) was developed. The interaction between distance and a median split on the state-trait measure was significant for eye gaze and posture and orientation, with the high STSS subjects compensating less than the low STSS subjects.     

Harnessing the reliability of outcome measures

A method is presented for engineering the necessary levels of measurement reliability for evaluating ongoing programs. Two studies of levels of client functioning at a community mental health center (CMHC), in which an outcome measure, the Global Assessment Scale (GAS), did not perform as expected, drew attention to the need for better control of outcome measure reliabilities. Drawing from generalizability theory, a study was conducted of three sources of GAS score variance — clients, raters, and training in the use of the scale. Several estimates of reliability (ERs) were developed, depending on the manner in which the GAS ratings were, or would be, obtained in the CMHC. The differences among these ERs clarified why the GAS had lower reliability when used in our setting. Finally, two hypothetical examples are described to illustrate the utility of applying generalizability theory to achieve higher reliabilities for outcome measures.     

Gaze toward and avoidance of the handicapped: A field experiment

Kleck has discovered more eye contact directed toward a handicapped than a nonhandicapped confederate. He suggested that this was due to the information seeking function of eye contact. Langer et al. argued that this occurred because a handicap is a novel stimulus and that, when socially acceptable, people are motivated to look at something unusual. The present study posited that Kleck's findings occurred because of the experimental setting and that the Langer et al. hypothesis holds true only when interaction with the handicapped person will not occur. A field experiment indicated less gaze toward and more avoidance of handicapped than nonhandicapped confederates when conversation was required and more staring toward the handicapped than the nonhandicapped when conversation was not likely.Portions of this article were reported by Teresa L. Thompson and Bonnie Bell Cundiff, Communication between the handicapped and nonhandicapped: Avoidance and uncertainty, Presented at the Annual Convention of the International Communication Association, Philadelphia, 1979. The author would like to thank Louis P. Casella for helpful assistance.     

Effect of Level of Disaggregation on Conjoint Cross Validations: Some Comparative Findings*

Early formulations of conjoint models focused on part-worth estimation at the individual level. As the methodology's popularity grew so did industry demands for increasingly larger numbers of attributes and levels. In response to these demands, new approaches, based on partial or full data aggregation (such as clusterwise/latent class conjoint and choice-based conjoint), have appeared. This paper suggests that pooled-data models will often be successful in predicting market shares when researchers employ monotonic attributes. In these cases more of a good attribute (or less of a bad attribute) is always more preferred. In the more realistic case, in which some of the attributes may be nonmonotonic, we find that data aggregation does not predict holdout sample preferences as well as individual part-worth models.     

The Quality of Skill Acquisition in Young Workers' First Job

Young workers' experiences of their first job form an important stage in the transition from school to work, and the quality of that experience is likely to have a strong bearing on future chances in the labour market. We provide evidence on a key aspect of that experience, namely, whether the skills acquired during the first job are firm-specific or in some degree transferable. More than one in six young people acquired only firm-specific skills in their first substantial job. High levels of prior human capital, short training spells or training leading to qualifications tend to raise, while being in casual or temporary jobs tends to lower, the likelihood that transferable skills are acquired.     

Mapping Social Capital: A Critical Contextual Approach For Working With Low-Status Families

Promoting justice in therapeutic work with families demands an analysis of contextual factors such as race, ethnicity, gender, and social class in relationship to societal systems of power, privilege, and oppression. A broad understanding of these dynamics, however, is inadequate to inform our work with families whose social capital severely limits available life choices, social influence, and material resources. In this article, we describe working from a critical contextual perspective to consider how families gain and/or lose social capital through participation in multiple contexts. We introduce a technique for mapping social capitol within and across multiple systems as well as suggestions for interventions aimed at increasing the social well-being of low-status families. These include considering the dynamics of boundary crossing, recognizing and optimizing resistance to oppressive dynamics, finding ways to limit constraints and optimize opportunities, and developing webs of allies to support family functioning and access to resources. We offer the example of 13-year-old Pepe as a case in point.