Parental involvement laws, religion, and abortion rates

This article explores whether policy endogeneity partially explains the negative relationship generally reported between parentll involvement laws and abortion rates, since parental involvement laws are found to be negatively related to both teen and adult abortion rates. Since parental involvement laws may be more likely to be passed in jurisdictions with a higher level of antiabortion sentiment, both the law and anti-abortion sentiment may be responsible for lower abortion rates. To explore this possible interrelatedness, a religiosity level variable was used as a proxy for anti-abortion sentiment, since anti-abortion sentiment might affect abortion rates directly and indirectly through the greater likelihood of the enactment of parental involvement laws. The relationship of parental involvement laws and religiosity level to abortion rates was analyzed for teens and adults; regressions were estimated for four age groups: 15–19, 20–24, 25–29, and 30–34 years old. Residence county-level 1995 abortion rates were regressed against parental involvement laws and religiosity levels as well as several control county-level variables—restrictive public funding, unemployment rate, population density, percent of college graduates, extent of poverty, percent of married-couple families, and geographic region. The sample consisted of the 1,008 counties from the 17 states that reported abortion numbers by county and by age group. Using log transformations of the dependent variable abortion rates, log-linear weighted regression models were run for the four age groups. Parental involvement laws were highly statistically significantly related (p<0.1) to lower abortion rates for all four age groups; the coefficient was larger, however, when the religiosity level variable was excluded from the model. The coefficient for the religiosity level was highly statistically significant (p<01) for all four age groups when the parental involvement variable was excluded from the model; when the parental involvement variable was included in the model, the coefficient for the religiosity level decreased for all four age groups and was statistically significant for only three of the four age groups. Since the coefficients for both the religiosity level and the parental involvement law decrease when both variables are included, the negative relationship between parental involvement laws and abortion rates does seem to reflect some policy endogeneity so that the reported impact of parental involvement laws may be overstated. Her primary research interestes are gender-related, currently in the area of abortion rates.     

The journal readership survey

In the early part of last year the Editorial Board commissioned a study to investigate readers' attitudes to this journal. The journal is produced for a highly specialist audience, located in a wide spectrum of industries and institutions, with considerable diversity in their application of the planning function. The board was therefore concerned to discover the extent to which the journal satisfied the varied interests of readers and to identity any aspects of the content and presentation of the journal which could be improved in the future.     

“I've been independent for so damn long!”: Independence, masculinity and aging in a help seeking context

This paper draws on semi-structured interviews conducted with 36 older men to examine how older men's understandings of independence relate to their help seeking behaviours and health service use. We argue that discourses of masculinity and successful aging are both represented in men's talk about independence. Recognising that these discourses are intertwined is important for understanding how older men seek help and use health services. We outline the practice and policy implications of viewing older men's help seeking behaviours in this way, and how it might be useful for promoting older men's health.     

Religion and Conflict in Marital and Parent-Child Relationships

This article discusses how religion can substantively influence the manifestation and resolution of conflict in marital and parent-child relationships. Religious systems of meaning are proposed to influence conflict by promoting which goals and values should be sought in family life and the appropriate means to achieve these ends. Conflict can be amplified or inhibited based on the extent to which family members differ and agree about such religiously based parameters. Religion also offers families strategies that may facilitate or hinder the resolution of conflict after it erupts. The limited amount of empirical research on how religion shapes the manifestation and resolution of marital and parent-child conflict is highlighted, and suggestions are made to advance research and clinical practice on this topic.     

THE PROFESSIONAL FARMER

The Australian farmer faces important and interconnected management challenges on both the economic and ecological fronts. To confront these challenges effectively, farmers would be well advised to constitute themselves as a professional body along the lines of the Bar Association. Making farming a professional activity in this sense would provide a number of important benefits and advantages. It would facilitate the provision and delivery of the needed educational resources for economic and ecological land management, and help farmers avoid the pressures of heavy‐handed government centralism. At the same time, such professionalism would encourage more efficient use of sector resources by minimising the need for direct political lobbying and intra‐farm group competition for membership. As a professional body, farmers could hope for increased public standing and the economic clout that would come from having control over the supply of skilled land managers.     

The United States Economic Crisis: Young Adults’ Reports of Economic Pressures, Financial and Religious Coping and Psychological Well-Being

Using a sample of 222 young adults attending college, the present study examined the relative contribution of young adults’ perceived economic pressures, financial coping and religious meaning-making coping strategies in accounting for variation in their reports of psychological well-being within the context of the United States economic crisis. Results suggest a direct relationship between perceived economic pressure and psychological well-being such that young adults who reported having to make more economic adjustments as a result of economic crisis also reported higher levels of depressed mood and anxiety. Young men and women who reported having to make fewer economic adjustments and being able to meet their material needs reported higher levels of life satisfaction. Regardless of young adults’ self-reported level of economic pressures, the use of education and communication financial coping strategies was related to lower levels of self-reported anxiety and depressed mood and greater life satisfaction. Viewing the financial crisis as a punishment from God was generally associated with young adults’ reports of greater depressed mood and less life satisfaction. Implication of findings for research and practice are discussed.     

Multistage Models of Carcinogenesis: An Approximation for the Size and Number Distribution of Late-Stage Clones

Multistage models have become the basic paradigm for modeling carcinogenesis. One model, the two-stage model of carcinogenesis, is now routinely used in the analysis of cancer risks from exposure to environmental chemicals. In its most general form, this model has two states, an initiated state and a neoplastic state, which allow for growth of cells via a simple linear birth-death process. In all analyses done with this model, researchers have assumed that tumor incidence is equivalent to the formation of a single neoplastic cell and the growth kinetics in the neoplastic state have been ignored. Some researchers have discussed the impact of this assumption on their analyses, but no formal methods were available for a more rigorous application of the birth-death process. In this paper, an approximation is introduced which allows for the application of growth kinetics in the neoplastic state. The adequacy of the approximation against simulated data is evaluated and methods are developed for implementing the approximation using data on the number and size of neoplastic clones.     

Early Word Segmentation by Infants and Toddlers With Williams Syndrome

This study tested the ability of English infants and toddlers with Williams syndrome to segment, that is, to extract from fluent speech, bisyllabic nouns that had either a strong–‐weak stress pattern (predominant in English), or a weak–‐strong stress pattern. The testing procedure was the same for both types of words: Children were familiarized with instances of isolated nouns, and then tested on their recognition of these nouns embedded in passages. In English, typically developing infants start segmenting strong–‐weak nouns by 7.5 months of age, and weak–‐strong nouns by 10.5 months. Our clinical population was able to segment strong–‐weak nouns, but failed, despite chronological ages above 15 months, to segment weak–‐strong words. These results suggest that the development of word segmentation is seriously delayed in Williams syndrome. This deficit in early phonological processing may contribute to a fuller understanding of the late lexical onset in this population, a phenomenon that had hitherto only been explained in terms of cognitive and semantic deficits.