Pornography Actresses: An Assessment of the Damaged Goods Hypothesis

The damaged goods hypothesis posits that female performers in the adult entertainment industry have higher rates of childhood sexual abuse (CSA), psychological problems, and drug use compared to the typical woman. The present study compared the self-reports of 177 porn actresses to a sample of women matched on age, ethnicity, and marital status. Comparisons were conducted on sexual behaviors and attitudes, self-esteem, quality of life, and drug use. Porn actresses were more likely to identify as bisexual, first had sex at an earlier age, had more sexual partners, were more concerned about contracting a sexually transmitted disease (STD), and enjoyed sex more than the matched sample, although there were no differences in incidence of CSA. In terms of psychological characteristics, porn actresses had higher levels of self-esteem, positive feelings, social support, sexual satisfaction, and spirituality compared to the matched group. Last, female performers were more likely to have ever used 10 different types of drugs compared to the comparison group. A discriminant function analysis was able to correctly classify 83% of the participants concerning whether they were a porn actress or member of the matched sample. These findings did not provide support for the damaged goods hypothesis.     

Measuring Subjective Well-Being and its Potential Role in Policy: Perspectives from the UK Office for National Statistics

Measures of subjective well-being are one component of the measurement of the quality of life and progress of a nation. The Office for National Statistics approach, as part of the Measuring National Well-being programme, has been to include such measures alongside more objective measures in order to gain a full picture of “how things are going” and to better inform public policy. These estimates are considered experimental and further testing and development is underway. However, it is argued that subjective well-being measures have a potential role in the policy process and this article considers how they could be used in policy making within the UK.     

Assessing the validity of a single-item HIV risk stage-of-change measure

This study examined the validity of a single-item measure of HIV risk stage of change that HIV prevention contractors were required to collect by the California State Office of AIDS. The single-item measure was compared to the more conventional University of Rhode Island Change Assessment (URICA). Participants were members of Los Angeles County-defined behavioral risk groups recruited from a mobile HIV testing program (N = 123). The study found low correspondence between participants' stage of change on the single-item and the URICA, suggesting that they do not assess the same construct, and that the single item may not provide a valid measure. The current data suggests that the single-item measure should be revised or abandoned in favor of more conventional stage-of-change measures.     

Family Therapy into the 21st Century: Can we Work our Way out of the Epistemological Maze?

Family therapy is a generic term used to describe a paradigm within the helping professions that encompasses a range of competing approaches which share a common view about the importance of family to maladaptive behaviours and disorders. The various family therapies have evolved rapidly over the last three decades, at a time when society has been attuned to innovation, and eager to try new products. Thus, they soon found a niche in the partial void created by the demise of some of the previously dominant psychological paradigms. While collectively the family therapies have been demonstrated to be generally efficacious as a treatment approach, the last two decades have witnessed an avalanche of theorising and conceptualising that has created an epistemological maze through which practitioners must find their way. In this paper we ask whether this trend is moving the family therapies too far away from the core issues involved in the helping professions.     

A Social Relations Analysis of Children's Trust in Their Peers across the Early Years of School

Two hundred and five (103 female and 102 male) children enrolled in school years 1 and 2 in the UK (mean age 6 years 1 month at Time 1) were tested twice over a 1‐year period. The children reported the promise keeping and secret keeping behaviours of classmates (all peers and same‐gender peers) and provided friendship nominations (Time 2 only). Round robin social relations analyses for all peers and same‐gender peers revealed: (1) perceiver variance, demonstrating consistent individual differences in trust beliefs in peers; (2) target variance, demonstrating consistent individual differences in eliciting trust from peers; and, (3) dyadic reciprocity, demonstrating reciprocal trust between individuals. Replicability across measures, stability, and cross‐measure stability of these effects were found for all peers only. As hypothesized, the perceiver and target effects of trust were associated with the number of friendships. The findings support the conclusion that young children demonstrate multiple components of trust in dyadic relationships, which are associated with their social relationships.     

Being evaluated: a practitioner's view

The impacts of evaluation exercises on people and services being evaluated are examined, including those that are unintended. Using the example of a parents' centre in central London, the paper asks whether evaluators are measuring the right things, whether the resulting ‘evidence’ is valid, and what effects an evaluation may have on the service. It seeks to identify the features of research and evaluation exercises that are most likely to justify the time spent on data collection by leading to improvements in services for children and families. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Gender and Infrastructure in the World Bank

This article conducts a critical analysis of the World Bank's current infrastructure strategy from a feminist perspective, arguing that failures to define gender and set meaningful targets and indicators have meant that gender has not been integrated into the implementation of infrastructure projects. It sets out three limitations to the Bank's approach to gender and infrastructure: lack of awareness of gender in the four sectors that comprise infrastructure; the Bank's narrow approach to gender equality and women's empowerment; and the failure of the Bank to mainstream gender in its current infrastructure strategy.