Farm Parents' Attitudes Towards Farm Safety Experts*

Abstract Using both qualitative and quantitative data, this article analyzes farm parents' attitudes towards the trustworthiness, usefulness, and use of advice from farm safety experts. The article evaluates four different perspectives on trust in expert: the Validity of Knowledge perspective, the Salient Values Similarity perspective, the Diffusion of Innovation perspective, and the Local Knowledge perspective. Among other factors, the results show that negative attitudes towards experts are strongly influenced by attitudes towards the validity of scientific knowledge vs. farm experience. They also show that experts who are more involved in farm production have higher levels of trust and usefulness. While all of the perspectives receive some degree of support, the results suggest that local knowledge and culture are critical in shaping attitudes towards experts. Attitudes towards experts are shaped not solely by expert characteristics but by the meanings and significance they assume in specific socio‐cultural contexts.     

Operational research at the National Defence Research Institute of Sweden (FOA)

This paper gives an account of an institute for applied research so as to enable comparisons to be made with other institutes: such comparisons need not be limited to defence establishments. In elaborating the methodology of the institute its local concepts are applied, a conceptualisation which has proven useful outside defence [I]. Defence methodology still creates civilian spin-off.     

Multicultural Meanings of Social Support among Immigrants and Refugees

Canada continues to be a prominent immigrant and refugee‐receiving country in worldwide migration, resettlement, and search for refuge, yet there is a gap in our understanding of these newcomers’ views of the specific meanings of social support and their support needs and resources. The purpose of this study was to understand the meanings of social support for immigrants and refugees in Canada, and to explore the types and adequacy of formal supports. Individual interviews were conducted with 60 service providers and policymakers initially (Phase 1), and 120 immigrants and refugees (60 Chinese, 60 Somali) in the second phase. The implications of these findings were elicited in group interviews (Phase 3) of policy decision‐makers, advocates, service providers, and managers. This investigation revealed many interrelated challenges facing refugees and immigrants such as language difficulties, inadequate information on services, poor health, racism, needs for retraining, rejection of foreign qualifications, unemployment, social isolation, social insecurity, dwindling social networks, and family conflicts. The study also illuminated culturally and socio‐economically determined perceptions of social support and support‐seeking strategies. Limited personal resources and dwindling social networks are an impediment to coping with integration and settlement challenges. In many cases, newcomers’ efforts to seek help are thwarted by systemic obstacles. Newcomers experienced extensive unmet support needs, which service providers cannot adequately meet due to bureaucratic and resource constraints. Policies in various sectors that affect the lives of immigrants and refugees are inadequate for bridging their support deficiencies. These support gaps hinder the successful settlement and integration of newcomers. Policies and programs fostering culturally relevant support, and inter‐sectoral collaboration among organizations addressing the support needs of immigrants and refugees are timely.     

Anticipating relocation: concerns about moving among NORC residents

Most older adults prefer to live at home as long as possible, requiring supports and services to help them age in place. This study examines the relocation concerns of a group of older adults in a suburban naturally-occurring retirement community (NORC). Twenty-six percent of the 324 residents interviewed expressed concern about having to move in the next few years. Residents who were worried differed from those who did not worry on a number of demographic and biopsychosocial characteristics. Overall, residents present a profile of vulnerability that calls for preemptive action to help them stay in their homes. A NORC is an ideal setting in which to provide supportive services.     

Computer crime motives: Do we have it right?

Academic, legal and practitioner responses to cyber threats have been predominantly reactive, punitive, and deterrence-based, with limited attention given to the motives underlying computer criminals' behaviors. This paper reasons that new and better theoretical perspectives are needed to explain computer criminals' motives. Following a review of the computer crime behavioral literature, a summary review of core philosophies and theories used to explain generalized crime and criminal motives is provided. A framework is proposed suggesting that criminological theories have evolved along two categorical dimensions: determinism-indeterminism, and individualism-collectivism. The paper then reasons that future computer crime research will benefit by considering indeterminist-collectivist (constructivist) theories. Two such theories, social construction of technology, and actor-network theory, are proposed in the discussion section, along with some cybercrime examples. The paper invites a deeper consideration of the origins and motivations of computer-based criminality as a means of building stronger theory and ultimately advancing more proactive and effective solutions.     

THE PREDICTABILITY OF COLLEGE FINANCIAL AID OFFERS: EVIDENCE FROM THE CLASS OF 1972

Two aid predictor models (binomial logit/regression and Tobit) were fitted to the subset of aid applicants from the National Longitudinal Survey of the High School Class of 1972 who had been accepted for admission by at least one college. Although undergraduate financial aid programs are designed to compensate for financial need, variables related to financial need were found to be relatively poor predictors of college aid offers and the inclusion of "non-need" variables did not measurably improve the predictive power of the model. These results suggest that disbursement of financial aid funds through college aid offices in 1972 was both inefficient and inequitable.     

Emotion Socialization as a Framework for Understanding the Development of Disorganized Attachment

Recent years have seen the emergence of accounts of the origins of the Disorganized attachment relationship in early mother–infant interaction, each building on the pioneering work of Main and Hesse—dysfunctional emotional processes figure prominently in all these accounts. This paper applies a framework based on two complementary theories of emotion socialization, Gianino and Tronick's (1992 ) Mutual Regulation Model and Gergely and Watson's (1996 ) Social Biofeedback Theory, to suggest an emotion‐based mechanism consistent with recently proposed models of the development of Disorganized attachment. The framework is used to generate hypothetical accounts of the role of dysfunctional emotional processes and maladaptive emotion socialization in early mother–infant interaction in the development of Disorganized attachment along two distinct pathways, one associated with actual abuse of the infant and the other associated with maternal unresolved trauma.     

The changing role of the European company

The European Company was originally perceived as a means of encouraging the concentration of companies within the EEC to form enterprises of ‘European’ dimensions. However, with recent changes in Community attitudes towards the desirability of concentration, the reluctance of national governments to allow freedom of movement in some important areas of industrial activity and a feeling of frustration in the Commission that progress in related areas of industrial policy is slow or non-existent, a significant change in emphasis in the role of the European Company can be detected.