HIV Risk Behaviors in the U.S. Transgender Population: Prevalence and Predictors in a Large Internet Sample

To study the influence of gender on HIV risk, a sample of the U.S. transgender population (N = 1,229) was recruited via the Internet. HIV risk and prevalence were lower than reported in prior studies of localized, urban samples but higher than the overall U.S. population. Findings suggest that gender nonconformity alone does not itself result in markedly higher HIV risk. Sex with nontransgender men emerged as the strongest independent predictor of unsafe sex for both male-to-female (MtF) and female-to-male (FtM) participants. These sexual relationships constitute a process that may either affirm or problematize gender identity and sexual orientation, with different emphases for MtFs and FtMs, respectively.     

Multidisciplinary Child Protection Decision Making About Physical Abuse: Determining Substantiation Thresholds and Biases

The current study examined the threshold at which multidisciplinary child protection team (CPT) professionals substantiate physical abuse allegations and the extent that they utilize potentially biased constructs in their decision making when presented with the same case evidence. State legal definitions of child maltreatment are broad. Therefore, the burden of interpretation is largely on CPT professionals who must determine at what threshold physical acts by parents surpass corporal discipline and constitute child physical abuse. Biased or subjective decisions may be made if certain case-specific characteristics or CPT professionals' personal characteristics are used in making physical abuse determinations. Case vignettes with visual depictions of inflicted injuries were sent to CPT professionals in Florida and their substantiation decisions, personal beliefs about corporal discipline, and coercive discipline were collected. Results of the study demonstrated relatively high agreement among professionals across vignettes about what constitutes physical abuse. Further, CPT professionals strongly considered their perceptions of the severity of inflicted injuries in substantiation decisions. Although case specific characteristics did not bias decisions in a systematic way, some CPT professional characteristics influenced the substantiation of physical abuse. Practice implications and future directions of research are discussed.     

Rationality,external norms,and the epistemic value of menus

Ever since Sen’s criticism of internal consistency properties of choice, there exists a perception that the standard rational choice approach has difficulties in coping with the existence of external norms, or the information a menu of choice might convey to a decision maker. This article provides a brief survey of possible responses to these criticisms of traditional rational choice theory. We review approaches to the internalization of external norms as well as ways to formulate norm-conditional rationalizability. Furthermore, we illustrate how the epistemic value of an opportunity set can be incorporated into rational choice theory.     

The Implications of Sex Differences on Volunteer Preferences

This study explores the relationship between sex differences and preferences for volunteer roles, organizations, and supervision. A series of hypotheses were developed from prior research on sex differences from the fields of biology, neuroscience, and psychology to determine whether such preferences can be predicted. An online survey panel of over 700 individuals comprised the sample. Many of the hypotheses were supported. Implications of the findings on future research and on volunteer recruitment and retention are discussed.     

Transformational leadership climate: Performance linkages, mechanisms, and boundary conditions at the organizational level

Transformational leadership (TFL) climate describes the degree to which leaders throughout an organization engage in TFL behaviors. In this study, we investigate performance linkages, mechanisms, and boundary conditions of TFL climate at the organizational level of analysis. In a sample of 158 independent organizations, 18,094 employees provided data on TFL climate, positive affective climate, trust climate, and employees' task performance behavior and organizational citizenship behavior. In addition, human resource managers rated overall employee productivity. Study results yielded a pattern of moderated mediation for overall employee productivity and employees' aggregate task performance behavior, in that an organization's TFL climate was indirectly (through positive affective climate) related with these outcome variables under conditions of high trust climate, but not under conditions of low trust climate. Further, we found an organization's TFL climate to indirectly relate with employees' aggregate organizational citizenship behavior through positive affective climate, largely independent of the level of trust climate.     

Does the internet change how we die and mourn? Overview and analysis

The article outlines the issues that the internet presents to death studies. Part 1 describes a range of online practices that may affect dying, the funeral, grief and memorialization, inheritance and archaeology; it also summarizes the kinds of research that have been done in these fields. Part 2 argues that these new online practices have implications for, and may be illuminated by, key concepts in death studies: the sequestration (or separation from everyday life) of death and dying, disenfranchisement of grief, private grief, social death, illness and grief narratives, continuing bonds with the dead, and the presence of the dead in society. In particular, social network sites can bring dying and grieving out of both the private and public realms and into the everyday life of social networks beyond the immediate family, and provide an audience for once private communications with the dead.     

Modified two‐sided normal tolerance intervals for batch acceptance of dose uniformity

We consider modified tolerance intervals for assessing content (dose) uniformity from one‐ and two‐stage designs. This work was motivated by a proposal from the International Pharmaceutical Aerosol Consortium on Regulation and Science (IPAC‐RS) to modify tolerance intervals to reduce their known conservatism away from the centre of the acceptance interval. IPAC‐RS's original proposal suffers from anti‐conservatism, but we find this is due to the choice of constants, not the form of the acceptance rule. We propose an alternative basis for choosing the constants in the acceptance rules and compare attained levels to those of other choices, including revised constants proposed by IPAC‐RS. These alternate choices of the constants lead to modified tolerance intervals that are either conservative at the sample sizes for which they were chosen or may have slight anti‐conservatism, within the limits of the simulations. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Cognitive Self‐Regulation and Depression: Examining Academic Self‐Efficacy and Goal Characteristics in Youth of a Northern Plains Tribe

The relationship between cognitive self‐regulatory processes and depression was examined in American Indian adolescents from a Northern Plains tribe. Students completed measures of negative life events, self‐efficacy, goals, and depressive symptoms. Results indicated that academic self‐efficacy was strongly associated with depression. Academic self‐efficacy also correlated with intrinsically motivating goal representations, such that students who indicated high academic self‐efficacy had goals that were more important to them, goals they thought more about, and goals they viewed as wanted by the self instead of as imposed on by others. However, we did not find the hypothesized mediational model in which academic self‐efficacy influenced depression indirectly by influencing goal characteristics. Rather, this indirect model varied by grade, and differed from what we expected. Specifically, for older adolescents, higher levels of academic self‐efficacy predicted goals that were more likely to be identified as the adolescent's own, and in turn, these self‐ as opposed to other‐oriented goals predicted higher levels of depressive symptoms. Results are discussed as providing support for continued investigations into the role of specific cognitive self‐regulatory processes in youth adjustment.     

Meeting the statistical needs of 21st-century science

Kanti Mardia and Walter Gilks consider the future role of statistics in scientific explanation and prediction, through views expressed by eminent scientists, philosophers and statisticians and through their own experience, particularly in the field of bioinformatics.