Factors influencing middle and high schools' active parental consent return rates

The authors examined factors influencing the return rates for attempting to collect active parental consent forms from 21,123 students in the 7th through 10th grades in 41 middle and high schools. Overall return rates from middle schools were higher than from high schools. Schools that offered high levels of staff support for collecting consent forms had higher return rates. Procedures where the consent form was attached to a school form that parents had to complete and return to the school yielded the highest return rate. Implications for how researchers can obtain a high parent consent form return rate are discussed.     

Community corrections officers' attributions for sexual offending against children

The present research examined gender differences in community corrections officers' (CCOs') attributions for child sexual offending. Eighty-five CCOs were asked to write down the reasons why they thought men sexually abused children, and then rate their reasons using Benson's Attributional Dimensions Scale. The results found that CCOs' reasons regarding why men sexually abuse children strongly paralleled current scientific theories on the etiology of child sexual abuse. Also, significant gender differences were found regarding the frequency with which participants cited certain types of reasons for child sexual abuse. Female CCOs were more likely to cite power and control as a reason, while male CCOs were more likely to cite psychopathology as a reason for child sexual abuse. No other gender differences were found. The research, clinical, and educational implications pertaining to these findings are discussed.     

Misgivings of medicine?: African Americans' skepticism of psychiatric medication

Research has consistently documented black-white differences in rates of voluntary psychiatric treatment that cannot be reduced entirely to differences in either need or access. A variety of explanations have been offered for the gap that remains, but the empirical testing of alternative propositions has thus far been minimal. Using the 1998 General Social Survey's Pressing Issues in Health and Medical Care module (n = 1,387), I find consistent and substantial black-white differences in a variety of beliefs about psychiatric medications, one of the most common treatments for mental illness, and the predisposition to use them. Specifically, blacks express less willingness to use psychiatric medications themselves or to administer them to a child for whom they are responsible. Neither socioeconomic status, knowledge, religious involvement, nor trust in medicine appears to explain this reluctance. Rather, it stems almost entirely from blacks' beliefs about psychiatric medications' efficacy and side-effects. The results indicate, first, that researchers should not assume that African Americans will use psychiatric medications at rates similar to whites if offered equal access. Second, the results indicate that blacks' skepticism of psychiatric medications may be rooted in specific beliefs about psychiatric medications, rather than general ideologies about medical practice. Health beliefs about psychiatric treatment, therefore, will continue to play an important role in understanding race differences in the use of psychiatric medications.     

Psychiatric inpatients' experience of nursing observation. A United Kingdom perspective

1. Nursing observation is a key component of psychiatric inpatient nursing care. 2. Patients' experiences of being observed are strongly influenced by the attitudes and behaviors of the observing nurses. 3. Patients prefer to be observed by nurses they know and who talk to them.     

Foxing the nation: the economic (in)significance of hunting with hounds in Britain

The election in 1997 of a new Labour Government and the publication of the Wild Mammals (Hunting With Dogs) Bill provided an opportunity for the re-opening of the public and political debate about hunting wild animals with hounds in Britain. A significant new dimension to the 1997/98 debate was the increasing emphasis on the claimed economic importance of hunting and its provision of rural jobs. This paper critically examines the nature of such claims. It argues that economic claims about hunting should be assessed in the context of a changing rural economy, and demonstrates how the pro-hunting lobby's predictions of job losses from banning hunting are difficult to sustain. It suggests that if our starting point is a concern for the rural economy, then hunting is a minor issue compared with other pressing issues of the late 1990s such as, for example, European rural policy reforms. Moreover, a wider economic analysis suggests that hunting wild mammals imposes other social costs, in the form of disruption and damage to property, which could be avoided by switching to non-quarry hunts. The paper concludes by examining the reasons for the rise of this economic dimension to the hunting debate.     

Towards Being Down Without Being Out: Self Help on Skid Row

If the lot of the homeless man in Australian cities is to improve the impetus will have to come largely from within—that is through self help. Amelioration of the skid row life style in Australia will probably come in the form of increased sense of group identity, the establishment of clearly defined home territories, improved communication among those agencies that cater to the needs of homeless persons, and a change in the general public's perception of what constitutes skid row and its inhabitants. Brisbane's 139 Club, a drop in centre for the homeless, is an example of self help approaches to bringing about this amelioration of the skid row life style.