Television viewing and adolescents' sexual behavior.

Over the past two decades the sexual content on television has increased in frequency and explicitness but has seldom included depiction of the use of contraceptives. Concurrently, the age of initiation of heterosexual intercourse has decreased and the number of teenaged pregnancies has remained high. Are these trends related? This survey of 391 adolescents found that those who chose heavier diets of sexy television shows were more likely than those who viewed a smaller proportion of sexual content on television to have had sexual intercourse. This relationship held regardless of perceived peer encouragement to engage in sex and across race and gender groups. While causal direction is not clear from these data, the relationship suggests that either sexual activity results in increased interest in sexual content in the media and/or that viewing such content leads to sexual activity. In either case, the finding points to the need for further research and increased discussion and portrayal of the use of contraceptives on television.     

Validating Benefit and Cost Estimates: The Case of Airbag Regulation

Preregulation estimates of benefits and costs are rarely validated after regulations are implemented. This article performs such a validation for the mandatory automobile airbag requirement. We found that the original 1984 model used to estimate benefits became invalid when 1997 values were input into that 1984 model. However, using a published 1997 cost-effectiveness model, we demonstrate, by replacing the model inputs with the values from 1984, that the 1997 cost-effectiveness ratios, based on real-world crash data and tear-down cost data, are less attractive than what would have been originally anticipated. The three most important errors in the 1984 input values are identified: the overestimation of airbag effectiveness, the overestimation of baseline fatality/injury rates, and the underestimation of manual safety belt use. This case study, which suggests that airbags are a reasonable investment in safety, shows that the regulatory analysis tools do not always produce findings that are biased against health, safety, and environmental regulation. Future validation studies of health, safety, and environmental regulation should focus on validation of benefit and risk estimates, areas where we found significant error, as well as on cost estimates.     

Circular Questioning: An Introductory Guide

This paper presents a simplified model that has been found to be useful for those learning questioning skills within the Milan systemic approach to family therapy as well as for those who simply wish to develop some skills in circular interviewing. The model begins with the premise that clients frequently describe a problem in terms that are either too broad or too narrow. The model has two categories of questions: those that draw connections and thus broaden a client's understanding of their context and those that draw distinctions and thus narrow a client's focus where generalisations predominate. The model is presented within the context of other models of Milan systemic questioning and the contributions they have made.     

H-likelihood: problems and solutions

In recent issues of this journal it has been asserted in two papers that the use of h-likelihood is wrong, in the sense of giving unsatisfactory estimates of some parameters for binary data (Kuk and Cheng, 1999; Waddington and Thompson, 2004) or theoretically unsound (Kuk and Cheng, 1999). We wish to refute both these assertions.     

A simple monotone process with application to radiocarbon-dated depth chronologies

Summary.  We propose a new and simple continuous Markov monotone stochastic process and use it to make inference on a partially observed monotone stochastic process. The process is piecewise linear, based on additive independent gamma increments arriving in a Poisson fashion. An independent increments variation allows very simple conditional simulation of sample paths given known values of the process. We take advantage of a reparameterization involving the Tweedie distribution to provide efficient computation. The motivating problem is the establishment of a chronology for samples taken from lake sediment cores, i.e. the attribution of a set of dates to samples of the core given their depths, knowing that the age–depth relationship is monotone. The chronological information arises from radiocarbon (¹⁴C) dating at a subset of depths. We use the process to model the stochastically varying rate of sedimentation.     

Behaviour Exchange Systems Training: The ‘BEST’ Approach for Parents Stressed by Adolescent Drug Problems

Parents are challenged in the adolescent years by attempts to increase adolescent responsibility while also managing separation issues. Adolescent drug use can exacerbate parental concerns. Parental fears and anxieties surrounding adolescent drug use can undermine opportunities to respond effectively. This paper describes the theoretical rationale for, and early experience of delivering, a brief intervention program designed to assist parents coping with adolescent drug problems. The program emerges out of a hybrid of systems and behaviour therapy principles and has been designed to address issues associated with parenting characterised by a high level of emotional involvement and/or ineffective parental control. Group work encouraging more adolescent responsibility-taking can assist parents disabled by feelings of guilt and failure. As parents develop emotional independence from adolescent behaviour, an appropriate expectation for adolescent control is established.     

Turning a blind eye: racial oppression and the unintended consequences of white ‘non-racism’*

The paper is based upon ethnographic research undertaken in a large metropolitan Careers Service in England. A consideration of differences between the intent and the outcome of action leads to an exploration of the ways in which white people come to understandings of their superordinate position relative to black people. By emphasising the concept of the materiality of ideology, the analysis attempts to go beyond a functionalist model which would regard a state apparatus as meeting the‘requirements’of capital in an unmediated and direct way. It is argued that racist ideology, as a specific set of linked but contradictory ideas, must inhere unevenly within the structures of everyday life and that struggles against racism have to take into account the discriminatory nature and importance of white‘non-racism’     

The Time Squeeze: Parental Statuses and Feelings About Time With Children

Policy makers, parents, and the public are concerned with perceived declines in parents’ time with children. Data from two national surveys (N = 1,159 and N = 821) used in this study show that nearly half of parents report feeling too little time with children. Work hours are strongly related to these feelings, even controlling for time spent with children, and explain why fathers more than mothers feel time strain. For fathers, those whose youngest child is an adolescent feel more strain than similarly situated mothers. Controlling for work hours, single parents are not more likely than married parents to feel that they spend insufficient time with children.     

A common open space or a digital divide? A social model perspective on the online disability community in China

This paper explores the use and impact of the Internet by disabled people in China, informed by the social model of disability. Based on survey data from 122 disabled individuals across 25 provinces in China, study findings suggest that there is an emerging digital divide in the use of Internet amongst the disability community in China. Internet users in our study do not appear to be representative of most disabled people in China. For the minority of disabled people who do have access to the Internet, however, its use can lead to significantly improved frequency and quality of social interaction. Study findings further suggest that the Internet significantly reduced existing social barriers in the physical and social environment for disabled people. Implications for future research, and strategies for increasing reducing the digital divide between the minority of Internet users and the majority of disabled people in China are discussed.