Sin vergüenza: addressing shame with Latino victims of child sexual abuse and their families

This article explores shame issues for Latino children who have been sexually abused and their families. Latino cultural concerns around shame that are associated with sexual abuse include: attributions for the abuse, fatalism, virginity, sexual taboos, predictions of a shameful future, revictimization, machismo, and fears of homosexuality for boy victims, and the intersection of shame from sexual abuse with societal discrimination. Quotes and case material are drawn from the author's research and clinical work. The article includes clinical suggestions.     

Presenting Uncertainty in Health Risk Assessment: Initial Studies of Its Effects on Risk Perception and Trust

Some analysts suggest that discussing uncertainties in health risk assessments might reduce citizens'perceptions of risk and increase their respect for the risk-assessing agency. We tested this assumption with simulated news stories varying simple displays of uncertainty (e.g., a range of risk estimates, with and without graphics). Subjects from Eugene, Oregon, read one story each, and then answered a questionnaire. Three studies tested between 180 and 272 subjects each. Two focus groups obtained more detailed responses to these stories. The results suggested that (1) people are unfamiliar with uncertainty in risk assessments and in science; (2) people may recognize uncertainty when it is presented simply; (3) graphics may help people recognize uncertainty; (4) reactions to the environmental problems in the stories seemed affected less by presentation of uncertainty than by general risk attitudes and perceptions; (5) agency discussion of uncertainty in risk estimates may signal agency honesty and agency incompetence for some people; and (6) people seem to see lower risk estimates (10^-6, as opposed to 10^-3) as less credible. These findings, if confirmed, would have important implications for risk communication.     

A Factor Analysis Approach Toward Reconciling Community Vulnerability and Resilience Indices for Natural Hazards

The concepts of vulnerability and resilience help explain why natural hazards of similar type and magnitude can have disparate impacts on varying communities. Numerous frameworks have been developed to measure these concepts, but a clear and consistent method of comparing them is lacking. Here, we develop a data-driven approach for reconciling a popular class of frameworks known as vulnerability and resilience indices. In particular, we conduct an exploratory factor analysis on a comprehensive set of variables from established indices measuring community vulnerability and resilience at the U.S. county level. The resulting factor model suggests that 50 of the 130 analyzed variables effectively load onto five dimensions: wealth, poverty, agencies per capita, elderly populations, and non–English-speaking populations. Additionally, the factor structure establishes an objective and intuitive schema for relating the constituent elements of vulnerability and resilience indices, in turn affording researchers a flexible yet robust baseline for validating and expanding upon current approaches.     

Experiments in Lay Cues to the Relative Validity of Positions Taken by Disputing Groups of Scientists

Risk analysis and hazard management can prompt varied intra‐scientific disputes, some which have or will become public, and thus potentially available for lay judgments of the relative validity of the positions taken. As attentive laypeople may include elites as well as the general public, understanding whether and how cues to credibility of disputing groups of scientists might shape those lay judgments can be important. Relevant literatures from philosophy, social studies of science, risk analysis, and elsewhere have identified potential cues, but not tested their absolute or relative effects. Two experiments with U.S. online panel members tested multiple cues (e.g., credentials, experience, majority opinions, research quality) across topics varying in familiarity subject to actual intra‐science disputes (dark matter, marijuana, sea‐level rise). If cues supported a position, laypeople were more likely to choose it as relatively more valid, with information quality, majority “vote,” experience, and degree source as the strongest, and interest, demographic, and values similarity as the weakest, cues. These results were similar in overall rankings to those from implicit rankings of cue reliability ratings from an earlier U.S. online survey. Proposed moderators were generally nonsignificant, but topic familiarity and subjective topic knowledge tended to reduce cue effects. Further research to confirm and extend these findings can inform both theory about citizen engagement with scientific and risk disputes, and practice in communication about science and risk.     

Americans’ Views of Voluntary Protective Actions Against Zika Infection: Conceptual and Measurement Issues

Understanding factors affecting decisions by people to protect themselves, or not, is critical to designing supportive communications. Here, threat, protective‐action, and stakeholder perceptions were evaluated for effects on mainland Americans’ behavioral intentions regarding Zika in April 2017, as postulated by the Protective Action Decision Model. Although all three perception types (including a novel resource sufficiency measure) affected intentions, these relationships varied widely depending upon the method used to measure adoption of actions (e.g., total count of all behaviors adopted vs. behavior‐specific analyses), the behaviors involved, and whether analysis focused on the full sample or only on people who had a reasonable opportunity to enact the behavior or who believed it relevant to their lives. There was a general contrast between mosquito control actions (removal of mosquito breeding areas and pesticide spraying) and travel‐related behaviors (avoiding travel to areas of local transmission of the virus, protecting oneself from mosquito bites after potential exposure, and practicing safe sex after potential exposure). Reported action or inaction during the 2016 mosquito season, and stages of behavior change, were both elicited in January–February 2017; both drove intentions in April 2017 for the upcoming season, although direct and indirect effects varied widely. Collectively these findings present theoretical, measurement, and practical implications for understanding, tracking, and promoting voluntary protective actions against hazards.     

Min-Sum Bin Packing

We study min-sum bin packing (MSBP). This is a bin packing problem, where the cost of an item is the index of the bin into which it is packed. The problem is equivalent to a batch scheduling problem we define, where the total completion time is to be minimized. The problem is NP-hard in the strong sense. We show that it is not harder than this by designing a polynomial time approximation scheme for it. We also show that several natural algorithms which are based on well-known bin packing heuristics (such as First Fit Decreasing) fail to achieve an asymptotic finite approximation ratio, whereas Next Fit Increasing has an absolute approximation ratio of at most 2, and an asymptotic approximation ratio of at most 1.6188. We design a new heuristic that applies Next Fit Increasing on the relatively small items and adds the larger items using First Fit Decreasing, and show that its asymptotic approximation ratio is at most 1.5604.     

Climate change communication: a provocative inquiry into motives, meanings, and means

The deliberately provocative theme of this article is that perceived difficulties in climate change communication (CCC)--e.g., indifference about or denial of climate change's reality, negative consequences, anthropogenic causes, or need to mitigate or adapt to it-are partly the fault of climate change communicators. Fischhoff's model of risk communication development is used to demonstrate that CCC to date has tended to stress persuasion, rather than social movement mobilization or deliberation, and with a focus on the model's early stages. Later stages are not necessarily better, but a more diverse strategy seems superior to a focus perhaps narrowed by empathic, ideological, psychological, and resource constraints. Furthermore, even within persuasion, emphasizing a wider set of values, consequences, and audiences could be fruitful. Social movement mobilization has its own set of weaknesses, but usefully complements persuasion with a focus on developing power, subverting mainstream assumptions, and engaging people in collective action. Deliberation similarly has its drawbacks, but unlike the other two approaches does not define the solution-or even, necessarily, the problem-in advance, and thus offers the chance for people of contending viewpoints to jointly develop concepts and action agendas hitherto unimagined. Simultaneous pursuit of all three strategies can to some degree offset their respective flaws, at the potential cost of diffusion of energies and contradictory messages. Success in CCC is by no means guaranteed by a more diverse set of strategies and self-reflection by communicators, but their pursuit should better reveal CCC's limits.     

Differences in Managerial Cognitions of Competition1

It has been assumed that strategic decision making and implementation are both achieved through managers' sharing homogeneous cognitions of competition (e.g. Porac and Thomas, 1990). This paper tested the assumption of homogeneity of cognitions of competition, using a sample of 24 managers from the off-shore pumps industry. A variety of cognitive mapping techniques were used and maps were compared using a self-rating methodology. The results indicated that managers' mental models of competition are diverse, rather than homogeneous, but that this diversity increases as company boundaries are crossed and as functional boundaries are crossed. Therefore, it is concluded that future cognitive studies of competitive industry structures should assume diversity of cognitions rather than homogeneity. Specific propositions with regard to such research are drawn from the findings.     

Reports of Conferences, Institutes, and Seminars

Late winter and early spring of 2009 was a busy conference time for librarians. Some of the conferences held during that time are reported herein: the American Library Association Midwinter Conference, January 23–28; Electronic Resources and Libraries (E&RL), February 9–12; the North Carolina Serials Conference, March 27; the New England Technical Services Librarians' (NETSL) Spring Conference, April 17; and the Technical, Electronic and Digital Services Interest Group (TEDSIG) Spring Meeting, April 24.