In memory of Bernie Zilbergeld 1939–2002

This study examined perceptions of sexual harassment based on belief in women's use of token resistance and a victim's physical or verbal resistance to unwanted sexual attention, described in experimentally manipulated vignettes. Findings from 541 undergraduates revealed that a stronger belief in token resistance was associated with weaker perceptions of sexual harassment. Results showed that any type of resistance led to stronger perceptions of sexual harassment than no resistance at all, except for those with a stronger belief in women's use of token resistance. Perceptions among those with a stronger belief strengthened only when there were two forms of resistance offered simultaneously. These findings extend the literature by investigating the influence of physical resistance on sexual harassment perceptions.     

Exploring the Potential of Shadow Controls in the Evaluation of Children’s Services

This article describes and presents a framework for an under‐used evaluation technique in the context of an evaluation of a programme for disaffected young people. Shadow controls—the use of expert judgement to estimate the success of a programme—are often dismissed in research design as an unreliable form of comparison, but can be useful in situations where there is limited scope for a control group or to enhance the causal inference attributable to non‐experimental evaluations. The exercise described uses a practice tool as a structure for making predictions about the situations of the young people on the programme, assuming they do not receive an intervention. These predictions (shadow controls) are then compared to outcome data for the young people at the end of the programme. The results of the exercise provide some important messages about the programme’s effectiveness and the potential for strengthening non‐experimental evaluation methods. The article also discusses how the method can usefully inform evaluations of social programmes and encourage agency and user collaboration.     

Clarifying the merits of argument in evaluation practice

In prior writings, we have explored alternative means of justifying claims in evaluation practice. After a brief review of these previous investigations, we provide an analysis employing Toulmin's (1958) jurisprudence metaphor in the assessment of evaluative arguments. Applications and implications for evaluation practice are discussed.     

Achieving impact in ergonomic research

People are central to system functioning and this role has been dramatically extended by new information technology. This makes possible the fundamental transformation of processes across systems of systems. Can Ergonomics research play an effective role in systems integration innovation? To have real world impact on such problems the system of R and D needs to sustain strong designs that address the functionality of socio-technical systems and support the implementation of innovations, taking into account the complexity of change, the importance of values of dignity and trust, and creating a common understanding amongst all stakeholders to enable design for operations. Strong research designs are more expensive, difficult, risky and prolonged than more commonly practiced weaker designs. They require active engagement with the industrial or service provider and involve overcoming cultural and other barriers to effective implementation and change. To create a virtuous cycle of research-generated impact it is necessary for strong designs to be well supported in the research community and for real world impact to be central to performance criteria of research excellence. Unfortunately neither of these criteria appear to be fulfilled. To ameliorate this, deficiencies in the full cycle of systems integration innovation need to be addressed.     

PATTERNS OF RELIGIOUS MOBILITY AMONG BLACK AMERICANS

Using data from the National Survey of Black Americans (NSBA) and the General Social Survey (GSS), this study tests hypotheses distilled from two competing perspectives on black religious mobility. First, some analysts during the 1960s predicted that the rise of economic ambition and political militancy among blacks would foster discontent with the "otherworldly" black mainline churches. These researchers projected high levels of switching and burgeoning apostasy. Second, however, there are reasons to anticipate much more stable patterns of black religious affiliation. Recent research stresses that social embeddedness, cultural solidarity, and personal spirituality are more important influences on black religious behavior than are status-seeking or sociopolitical concerns. Except for rising apostasy, the findings of this study are broadly consistent with the second perspective. Several directions for future research on the religious mobility of black Americans are suggested.     

Catch,class and bureaucracy: the meaning of Joseph Heller's Catch 22

The expression‘Catch 22’has become part of the language, routinely employed without further explanation in newspapers, television programmes and everyday speech, and invoked without further reference in the learned papers of both British and American authors.¹ A related, but less common tendency, which serves to identify admirers of the novel, is the predisposition to see particular incidents and characters as exemplars of the world beyond its pages.² Ransacking the text for such Goffmanesque parallels can, at a minimum, contribute to a kind of world weary higher gossip and a repertoire of novel epithets for characterising faculty committees. This is clearly not what so perceptive a political theorist as John Schaar had in mind when he located Catch 22 between Horatio Alger and Goodman's Growing Up Absurd as one of those books which, for Americans at least, has ‘had important effects on our political life’.³ Indeed one critic has even suggested that Yossarian, the central character, was a role model for those Vietnam war draft resisters, evaders and AWOL veterans who chose exile in Sweden and elsewhere.⁴ Whatever the status of this and similar contentions (and prescience seems a more plausible claim than influence) my intention is not to establish the precise impact of Catch 22 on attitudes and action. I am, however, concerned to explain the basis of its popularity. Hence my tactics are to reconstruct how the novel works on its reader and to suggest the ways in which this connects with, and selects for, a public which occupies a distinctive social and cultural situation. That public, it is argued, is all but coextensive with Gouldner's ‘New Class’,⁵ and the form style and structure of Catch 22 dramatises the sociolinguistic implications of the contradiction which characterises the New Class's social position. Moreover the book provides a symbolic solution to that contradiction. For Heller, method, ideas and sensibility are linked in a strategy which both uncovers the use of language as a bureaucratic resource and uses the resources of language to uncover bureaucracy.⁶     

Deprivation and Child Abuse: Implications for Strategic Planning in Children's Services

SUMMARY. The paper reviews the association between material deprivation and child abuse and considers the implications of the association for preventive strategies. The authors conclude that community-wide strategies aimed at supporting all child carers are more likely to succeed in preventing child abuse than those based on identification of high risk' groups. Common elements of successful community-wide strategies are presented as are the implications for child protection policy making.     

Seeing 'Karen' in the Union of Myanmar

Karen identity is problematic, as peoples known as 'Karen' do not share a common language, culture, religion or material characteristics. Most of the research on Karens has been conducted in Thailand, but the dominant 'pan-Karen' identity is a product of social and historical forces in Myanmar, where this study is focused. In the main part of this paper, I reveal the subjective criteria that have come to signify pan-Karen identity. My primary source material consists of internal literary discourses. In particular, I have drawn on the historical texts of two British colonial-era authors: T. Thanbyah and Saw Aung Hla. Three significant concepts appear in their works and subsequent internal discourses on Karen identity: that Karens are oppressed, uneducated and virtuous. In the latter part of the paper, I review contemporary Myanmar government policy on ethnic identity, highlighting the assigned role of 'Union Spirit' among all groups in the country towards overcoming superficial differences. State policies are designed--among other things--to emphasise a myth of common descent of all 'national races'; construct a unifying national culture, and concentrate administrative power at the centre. Both Karen identity and the Union of Myanmar are products of the same historical and social conditions. Both appeal to a supposed unity, but in other characteristics differ. State discourses suggest accommodation, but are directed towards social control. Karen identity is born of primordial statements but is manifest in structural opposition to the state. Ultimately, while the state seeks to assimilate all, Karen nationalists aim towards the assimilation of their own and separation from others.