Safety culture: under-specified and overrated?

Is the measurement of 'safety culture' a valid management tool in the effort to reduce accident rate and improve safety performance, or is it a fuzzy academic concept, lacking empirical validation? The answer to this question seems to depend on whom one asks. The UK Health and Safety Commission has encouraged companies to improve their safety performance through the development of a 'positive safety culture'. However, academic discussions in this area suggest that the concept remains vague, lacks empirical validation and is used as an 'umbrella term' for all the social and organizational factors that affect accident rate. This paper reviews the existing literature on safety culture and provides some clarification in terms of definition, empirical evidence and theoretical development. A theoretical framework of the mechanisms by which safety culture affects safety behaviours in organizations is proposed. The implications for practical management issues are discussed and future challenges and areas for further research are identified.     

Gender-Specific Changes in Students' Sexual Behaviors and Attitudes at a Southeastern University between 1973 and 1988

Abstract

This study investigated the gender-specific, self-reported sexual behaviors and attitudes of never-married college students attending a southeastern university in 1973 and 1988. Data were collected by means of a mailed questionnaire that remained essentially unchanged for both years. The authors found that both men and women reported an increase in heterosexual relationships that included sexual intercourse and a decrease in nonsexual relationships with the other gender. The majority of the students perceived themselves as adequately informed about sexuality and satisfied with their relationships, although the proportion of men who reported being satisfied with their relationships declined over the 15 years. The students indicated that sexuality education should focus primarily on information about AIDS and on preparation for marriage.     

Social Fathers and Child Well‐Being

Many young children born to unwed parents currently live with their biological mothers and their mothers’ new partners (social fathers). This study uses data from the Fragile Families and Child Well‐Being Study (N = 1,350) to assess whether involvement by resident social fathers is as beneficial for child well‐being as involvement by resident biological fathers and whether the involvement of the child’s nonresident biological father alters the relationship between resident social father engagement and child outcomes. Results indicate that involvement by resident social fathers is as beneficial for child well‐being as involvement by resident biological fathers and that frequent contact with the child’s nonresident biological father does not diminish the positive association between residential social father involvement and child well‐being.     

Working with Southeast Asian refugees

Increasingly, refugees from Laos, Cambodia and Viet Nam are coming to Mental Health Centers for help. For the Indo Chinese patient, an emotional problem may have a very different meaning—a meaning not immediately obvious to the Western mind. The emotionally troubled individual may feel that he or she is being punished, and that confiding to a psychotherapist is shaming or betraying the family and the ancestors. Consequently, emotional problems may be converted to somatic complaints, particularly of the respiratory and gastrointestinal variety. Psychotherapy with the refugee involves different techniques as well as different meanings. Confrontation and exploration, for example, may be misunderstood by the patient. In working with the Indo Chinese refugee it is recommended that the clinician be flexible, persevering, and open minded.     

Self-Medication, Traumatic Reenactment, and Somatic Expression in Bulimic and Self-Mutilating Behavior

A psychoanalytic framework provided direction for research on the association between binge-purging (bulimic) and self-mutilating behaviors, comparing them for similarities and differences. The similarities in the multiple functions and psychosomatic processes served by these behaviors are presented, as well as the phenomenon of symptom substitution. Both behaviors tend to be practiced by those with severe personality and dissociative disorders and post-traumatic stress disorder. Both serve ego-compensatory needs in the absence of the adequate ability to regulate and modulate emotions, moods, and tensions. They may serve as compensatory attempts to differentiate self and object, define and differentiate body boundaries, master severe childhood trauma by means of psychophysiological addictive reenactments, and to express emotion.     

You Must Be Joking: The Sociological Critique of Humour and Comic Media

Recent work in the sociological critique of humour and comic media has challenged the notion that humour is an absolute good. In this article, we review some of the most interesting work that takes humour seriously and addresses the difficult topic of whether there are ethical limits to humour and media comedy. We outline three main reasons for taking humour seriously and review some of the ways in which humour has been studied sociologically through a consideration of how British 'alternative' comedy directed the work of those interested in the limits of humour in relation to gender, race and ethnicity. We also summarise some of the most controversial examples of contemporary media comedy – the comedic performances and personae of Sacha Baron Cohen (Ali G and Borat) and the Danish cartoons of the Holy Prophet Muhammad – in order to illustrate the importance of the critical analysis of humour and how the ethics of humour can be applied to comic media.     

The Process of Cognitive Liberation: Cultural Synapses,Links, and Frame Contradictions in the U.S.-Central America Peace Movement*

Based upon qualitative interviews with thirty-two Central American peace activists, this article elaborates the process of “cognitive liberation” through the application of frame analysis. In addition, I seek to explain the diffusion of this social-psychological state from Central to North America. Attention is given to the role of the church as a common cultural link that functioned as a micro-mobilizing context, which provided missionaries who served as “meso-mobilizing actors.” The term frame contradictions is introduced to specify the condition in which irreconcilable differences between a movement's frame and its opponent's frame are exposed, thereby facilitating frame adoption. I conclude that some type of cultural link is necessary for the development of a common frame that can integrate groups cross-nationally and that can provide agents of mobilization to serve as a synapse through which frames can be transmitted from one country to another.