Using social marketing to increase the use of helmets among bicyclists

In this study, the authors investigated a social marketing intervention to increase the use of bicycle helmets on a university campus in the southeastern United States. Focus groups of students developed a bicycle helmet program slogan and logo (ie, "The Grateful Head"). The authors trained student bicyclists who already used helmets (n=15) as peer agents. These agents provided bicycle helmet information and asked fellow bicyclists to sign a pledge card to wear a helmet. They gave a coupon for a free helmet to those who pledged to wear a helmet. The authors received a total of 379 pledge cards and distributed 259 helmets. Bicycle helmet use rose from a baseline mean of 27.6% to a mean of 49.3% by the last week of the intervention.     

Kuznets’s Inverted U-Curve Hypothesis: The Rise,Demise, and Continued Relevance of a Socioeconomic Law

This paper provides a historical analysis of the changing significance of the most influential statement ever made on inequality and development—Simon Kuznets’s “inverted U-curve hypothesis.” The shifting interpretations and appropriations of the hypothesis over time—from its status as a speculative supposition in 1955, to its rise and fall as a reified socioeconomic law, to its contested standing in the social sciences today—demonstrate how Kuznets’s arguments, originally advanced under more limited conditions, became transformed into overarching theoretical, empirical, and political constructions. This history suggests that even empirically grounded and testable social science models are contingent on the broader social and political contexts in which they are produced and negotiated.     

Social services: the Navajo way

The development of child welfare services in Indian Country followed enactment of the 1975 Indian Education and Self-Determination Act and the 1978 Indian Child Welfare Act. These acts allow tribal contracting with the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) to provide social services. Because the BIA model has not fit well with Navajo needs, the Navajo Nation Division of Social Services is creating a more holistic case management paradigm for child and family services, which is more congruent with its culture and its rural, sparsely populated land.     

The Social Meaning of Children's Narratives: A Review of the Attachment-Based Narrative Story Stem Technique

Recent attachment-based research with the Narrative Story Stem Technique (NSST), a laboratory method using family doll figures and structured story stems, has proven to be useful in assessing young children's perceptions of social relationships. Eleven studies are reviewed that have validated this method with measures of children's social behavior or experience, contributing to a long-needed empirical basis for interpretations of children's play. Meaningful themes found in children's responses with the NSST are presented and organized with concepts from attachment theory, particularly the child's perception of the caregiver's trustworthiness and self-perception of worthiness to receive care. Implications for continuing research and for clinical interviewing are discussed.     

Regional variation in the effect of structural factors on homicide in rural areas

A significant literature has evolved in the last 40 years investigating regional variation in lethal violence, with most studies focusing on Southern homicide rates. One question posed by this research involves the effect of structural conditions on violence in the context of a regional culture of violence. We take a unique approach to this problem by detailing two distinct conceptual processes, amplification and attenuation of structural influences on violence. We then investigate regional variations in the effects of resource deprivation on White homicide in rural areas—a context in which the Southern culture of violence should be most prominent. The results of our county-level analyses of census and homicide data around the year 2000 reveal that White homicide rates are higher in Confederate South states and that resource deprivation has a positive association with White homicide. The effect of resource deprivation also accounts for the Confederate South effect, and an interaction model indicates that the effect of this variable is significantly stronger in the non-South as predicted by the attenuation argument. Overall, these results suggest that both structural and cultural forces contribute to rural White homicide rates.     

Biomedical research and the commercialization agenda: a review of main considerations for neuroscience

This article reviews a range of issues associated with the commercialization of biomedical research and speculates on how these issues might apply to the neuroscience context. Drawing on existing studies of the impact of research commercialization activities on various areas of biotechnology research, the authors explore normative benchmarks for assessing and resolving issues likely to arise from the commercialization of neuroscientific research, including such topics as patenting, marketing pressures, and representations of research prospects.