Ego strength and achievement motivation in pathological gamblers

This paper argues that there area priori reasons to extract measures of ego strength and achievement motivation from the psychometric data base routinely collected from inpatient pathological gambers in order to clarify the meaning of these constructs and to evaluate their roles in personality organization. A sample of 57 subjects engaged in an inpatient treatment program for pathological gamblers was studied using Barron's Ego Strength Scale (ES) from the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory and two measures of achievement motivation from the California Personality Inventory, Achievement via Conformance (Ac) and Achievement via Independence (Ai). Compared to the standardization group norms on these instruments, pathological gamblers are significantly deficient in both ego strength and one type of achievement motivation, Ac. Clinical impressions of gamblers in treatment suggest that narcissistic characteristics are a major problem in treatment and that future research should attempt further detailed studies of ego structure in order to refine treatment objectives.     

Behavioral quality assurance: a transforming experience

The captains of the health care industry are leading a transformation in health care. Increasing numbers of physician executives are acquiring the knowledge, skills, and attitudes essential to both the science and the art of management. If they wish to practice the art of management at a high professional level, however, physician executives must be willing to experiment with their behavior in interactions. Change and growth in this aspect of human nature will also bring them face-to-face with their self-images. More important, attention throughout an organization to behavior toward one another will have a significant bearing on the quality of the organization's services to clients.     

Targeting lifesaving: Demographic linkages between population structure and life expectancy

Life expectancy in a heterogeneous population can be increased by lowering mortality rates or by averting deaths at different ages, from different causes, or for different groups, as well as by changing the proportions of individuals in various risk groups, perhaps by altering the transition rates between groups. Understanding how such changes in population structure affect life expectancy is useful in evaluating alternative lifesaving policies.     

GOODNESS-OF-FIT AND DISCORDANCY TESTS FOR SAMPLES FROM THE WATSON DISTRIBUTION ON THE SPHERE

The only parametric model in current use for axial data from a rotationally symmetric bipolar or girdle distribution on the sphere is the Watson distribution. This paper develops methods for evaluating the model as a fit to data using graphical and formal goodness-of-fit tests, and tests of discordancy.     

The effects of children's presence on woman abuse

The association between the presence of children and woman abuse was investigated. Data were collected from 419 women who had called the police because of an abusive incident involving their male partner. Minor children were present in the home in 3/4 of the cases and were frequent witnesses to the abusive incident. In more than 1/2 of the cases, children had witnessed the assault according to the victims; 2/3 of the victims reported that children had seen the police when they arrived. There was almost no association between the presence of children in the home and assault on women: the presence of children was not associated with cumulative incidence of abuse, severity of abuse, degree of injury, or the victim's decision-making process in calling the police. However, police were more likely to provide information and referrals to shelters when children were present.     

Experimental avoidance and high-risk sexual behavior in survivors of child sexual abuse

While many long-term correlates of child sexual abuse (CSA) have been identified, theories to explain the development of these correlates have received little empirical validation. The process of experiential avoidance is one theory that has been proposed to account for many of the correlates of CSA. The purpose of the current study was twofold: (1) To attempt to develop a more complex measure of experiential avoidance in women with and without a CSA history, and (2) to explore variables related to two of the long-term correlates of CSA, general psychological distress and high risk sexual behavior. Levels of current distress, high-risk sex, and experiential avoidance were examined in 257 undergraduate females (mean age 20.0) using self-report questionnaires. The results of the current study indicate that CSA survivors report higher levels of experiential avoidance and high-risk sexual behavior with persons other than their primary partners. Implications of these findings for theory development, therapy with CSA survivors, and HIV prevention programs are discussed.     

The new age of ethical marketing for the 21st century

The premise of this paper is that the strong trends toward ever increasing centralization in the agricultural producing sector of the United States in the 1980s will exacerbate in the middle-to-late 1990s. This, in turn, will lead to both radical changes in the consumer movement by the year 2000, and also to a completely redefined mission for the corporate marketing function as well. Specifically, the deliberate federal policies of the 1980s which led to a “shake-out” of the small family farm units in favor of large agri-business concerns in order to reduce federal subsidies will lead, in the 1990s, to the most noted of deleterious consequences of monopolization, namely ever increasing prices and lowered quality. The authors believe that by the late 1990s the American public will perceive this state of affairs as being intolerable and it will lead them to organize “Big Consumerism”, a cohesive, much strengthened version of the consumer movement of the 1980s. This movement will, among other major activities, establish consumer cooperatives as a way to control costs through the elimination of unnecessary middlemen. In addition, this new consumerism will demand a change in the ethical standards of business behavior which, in turn, will result in a reformation in the role of the “New Marketer”. This “New Marketer” function will be envisioned and practiced by incumbents as informational and educational, adhering to the highest standards of truthfulness concerning the products they are attempting to market. In this regard, the role of governmental agencies will be greatly strengthened and expanded to insure that the marketing profession lives up to these highest ethical standards and practices.