“They wouldn't get away with it at McDonalds”: Decriminalization,work, and disciplinary power in New Zealand brothels

New Zealand decriminalized sex work in 2004 with the passage of the Prostitution Reform Act (2003), which sets an explicit intention to prevent exploitation of sex workers and improve their welfare. This has demonstrably improved conditions for sex workers and provides a necessary context for addressing exploitation. However, little research has looked at how this works for brothel-based sex workers in New Zealand. This paper responds to that gap by examining how brothel operators in New Zealand exercise power and control and how sex workers experience that. The study draws on in-depth interviews conducted across New Zealand with 33 participants. These include staff from the New Zealand Sex Workers' Collective (2), brothel-based sex workers (18), operators (8), and sex worker/operators (5). We use a Foucauldian framework and Foucauldian Discourse Analysis to examine how disciplinary power informs brothel management, prompting the production of normative discourses of work that destabilize sex workers' safety at work. We conclude that decriminalization nevertheless provides an essential framework by which sex workers are able to resist disciplinary control (W/C 171).     

Lavender Islands: the New Zealand study

Lavender Islands: Portrait of the Whole Family is the first national strengths-based study of lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) people in New Zealand. The 133-item survey was made available both by website and paper copy from April to July 2004. Multidisciplinary interest areas were developed by a community reference group, and included identity and self-definition, families of origin, relationships and sexuality, families of choice, immigration and internal migration, wellbeing, politics, income and spending, education, careers and leisure, community connections, challenges, and spirituality. A four-axis model of sexual identity was also tested; 2,269 responses were received. Of these 83% were from the website; 45% of responses were from women and 54% from men. Responses identified a robust, highly educated, relatively high-income, politically active LGB community. Male and female respondents experienced same-sex relationships and identity in significantly different ways.     

Factors associated with long-term benzodiazepine use among elderly women and men in Quebec

The goal of this study was to compare factors associated with long-term benzodiazepine use by elderly women and men (n = 1701) who participated in the Quebec Health Survey (QHS). Data from the 1998 QHS were linked with data from the administrative files of the Régie de l'assurance maladie du Québec. Results showed that elderly women were more at risk than men for long-term benzodiazepine use. Results of the multivariate logistic regression did not show a significant difference between women and men on any of the risk factors studied. Other factors such as elderly and physician attitudes deserve further study to explain differences in long-term benzodiazepine use between elderly women and men.     

The Relationship Between Peer Victimization and Children's Humor Styles: It's No Laughing Matter!

This study assessed the concurrent and prospective (fall to spring) associations between peer victimization and four humor styles, two of which are adaptive (affiliative and self‐enhancing) and two maladaptive (aggressive and self‐defeating). Participants were 1234 adolescents (52 percent female) aged 11–13 years, drawn from six secondary schools in England. Self‐reports and peer reports of peer victimization were collected, as were self‐reports of humor styles. In cross‐sectional analyses, peer victimization was associated with all four humor styles, most strongly with self‐defeating and affiliative humor. Across the school year, peer victimization was associated with an increase in self‐defeating humor and a decrease in affiliative humor (and vice‐versa). These results have implications for models of humor development and how we understand the continuity of peer victimization.     

Is Local Office a Springboard for Women to Dáil Éireann?

Previous research has found the single transferable vote electoral system is relatively friendly to women candidates. Despite this, female representation in the Irish Parliament remains substantially lower than in most other democracies. Drawing on pipeline theory and localism, we assess the impact of local officeholding on the success of male and female major party candidates in the 2007 and 2011 Irish general elections. We find previous experience in local office is a key springboard to higher office for men and women, and when women serve in local government, the likelihood of election increases significantly.     

Leaving the door open for “tune ups”: Challenging notions of ending working relationships in family work

The working relationship is considered a central feature of direct practice with human services clients. There are many challenges when it comes time to end a working relationship, yet limited guidance for workers on successful relationship ending. This paper aims to increase understanding of the process of the ending phase of the working relationship for parents and workers working with families where child neglect is an issue. The paper draws on data from a small‐scale qualitative Australian study of perceptions of parents, family workers, and supervisors involved in eight parent‐worker relationships. Using semistructured interviews, participants were asked to explore how they experienced the relationship. The findings illuminate important aspects about the ending phase of the relationship; in particular, challenging the idea that parents' returning to services for support is a sign that the service has not provided a successful intervention. The paper challenges social workers to consider recurring parent–worker relationships similar to other professional relationships where there are episodes of service but the relationship is there to be reactivated where needed.     

Bad News about Bad News: The Disclosure of Risks to Insurability in Research Consent Processes

Many people have difficulty in generating random numbers. This difficulty suggests that potentially fabricated numbers encountered in investigations of scientific misconduct be examined for nonrandom behavior. The present paper shows that even with a conscious effort to construct random digits, many subjects are unable to produce digits with a uniform distribution. For this study, subjects were directed to try to produce random digits in three places in order to fabricate a series of “pick 3”; lottery numbers. Subjects were most successful at producing a random (uniform) distribution of digits for the leftmost place; however, success at one place was not associated with success at another. In addition, subjects did not select all digits with equal frequency. Of 8,280 digits chosen in this study, the order from most to least chosen was 1, 2, 3, 6, 4, 9, 7, 0, 8, 5. Finally, no strong correlations among subjects’ digit choices were found. The conscious effort by these subjects to produce random digits stands in contrast with the usual case of data fabrication in which the fabricator must devote a conscious effort to choose leftmost digits so the number has the magnitude desired and pays little or no attention to the fact that the rightmost digits should be random. The results of the present paper indicate that even if a data‐fabricator were aware that error digits would be examined for uniformity, success in constructing uniform error distributions is not guaranteed. The difficulty that people have in creating random error digits supports the utility of examining such digits in investigations of scientific misconduct.     

Muslims in France: identifying a discriminatory equilibrium

We analyze the assimilation patterns of Muslim immigrants in Western countries with a unique identification strategy. Survey and experimental data collected in France in 2009 suggest that Muslims and rooted French are locked in a suboptimal equilibrium whereby (i) rooted French exhibit taste-based discrimination against those they are able to identify as Muslims and (ii) Muslims perceive French institutions as systematically discriminatory against them. This equilibrium is sustained because Muslims, perceiving discrimination as institutionalized, are reluctant to assimilate and rooted French, who are able to identify Muslims as such due to their lower assimilation, reveal their distaste for Muslims.     

The logistics and mechanics of conducting tracer injection experiments in urban streams

Field-based environmental tracer studies are commonly used to investigate hydrological and ecological processes in flowing waters. These studies involve injecting a conservative tracer into a stream or into a near-stream well and monitoring the surface and subsurface waters at downgradient locations. Results have been used to quantify stream velocity, inflow, outflow, dispersion, and transient storage exchange processes. However, no single source provides a detailed methodology for conducting these tests in streams within urbanized watersheds. Working in urban watersheds brings with it unique problems such as private property access, vandalism, encounters with police and the lay public as well as long-term, intermittent and ephemeral hydrologic modifications. We present such a methodology based on results of 20 tests conducted in streams with urban watersheds ranging in size from 0.39 km² to 60 km² in Pennsylvania and Maryland. The tracer injection period ranged from instantaneous to 24 h with monitoring lasting from 8 h to 5 days. The methodology is demonstrated with a 5-day tracer test in which sodium bromide was injected into Dead Run, Baltimore, Maryland for 24 h.     

Effects of Conditioning Voices as Reinforcers for Listener Responses on Rate of Learning,Awareness, and Preferences for Listening to Stories in Preschoolers With Autism

We used a delayed non-concurrent pre- and post-intervention probe design to test the effects of a voice conditioning protocol (VCP) with 3 preschoolers with autism on (a) rate of acquisition of listener curricular objectives, (b) observing voices and the presence of adults across 3 settings, (c) selecting to listen to adults tell stories in free play setting, and (d) the occurrence of stereotypy in the story setting. The VCP conditioned voices as reinforcers for listening to recordings of voices via stimulus-stimulus pairing, which resulted in the children listening to audio recordings of voices in 90% of intervals in 5-min concurrent-operant preference tests. After voices became conditioned reinforcers, all 3 children's learning accelerated; 2 children's observing responses increased in the 3 settings; and 2 children selected to listen to stories and also showed decreased stereotypy in the story setting. The data suggest that conditioned reinforcement for observing responses may be a verbal behavior developmental cusp that acts to accelerate learning that involves listening, and that the cusp may be induced using the VCP.