A reply to “On Structure-Dependent Grammars: A reply to Mabry” by Nathan Stemmer

The Analysis of Verbal Behavior -     

Anger in black and white: race, alienation, and anger

Using data from the 1996 General Social Survey and the 1973 Chicago Crowding Study, we test the hypotheses that African Americans feel and express more anger than whites, that sense of control (versus powerlessness) lessens anger and mistrust increases anger, and that these indicators of alienation affect anger differently for African Americans and whites. We find that when age and gender are controlled, African Americans neither feel nor express more anger than whites, despite having a lower average sense of control and higher mistrust. This is partly because the effects of sense of control and mistrust on anger differ by race. Sense of control reduces feelings of anger and anger expression more for African Americans than whites. Mistrust increases feelings of anger for whites, but not African Americans. The results provide further evidence that, in the stress process, social structural location may moderate the effects of "detriments" and "resources" on emotional upset.     

Perceptions of Substance Abuse on College Campuses: Proximity to the Problem,Stigma, and Health Promotion

For college students recovering from substance addiction, the path to sobriety is fraught with challenges. Many campuses offer recovery support resources, but students indicate stigma associated with recovery prevents them from using these services. This problem could be ameliorated through communication campaigns addressing misperceptions of substance abuse and recovery. The purpose of this study was to understand how students’ perceptions of addiction and recovery vary based on their experience and background. A quantitative survey was employed to examine stigma beliefs among 2 subpopulations of college students at a large Southwestern university. Findings indicate students with exposure to issues surrounding substance abuse and recovery held fewer stigmatized beliefs, emphasizing the importance of identifying and researching a target audience before developing a health promotion campaign.     

Review of R. A. Harris’ Linguistics Wars

The Analysis of Verbal Behavior -     

John L. Michael’s Early Career: Houston to Arizona

The Analysis of Verbal Behavior -     

Ethics in program evaluation

As is the general practice, the evaluation of social work is fitted with ethical structures, some of them encoded, most of them implicit in the activities, rationales, and compassions of the profession. It is useful to have multiple codes, expressing ethical concern from different perspectives, for each reaches into different shadows. Ethical behavior is not so much a matter of following principles as of balancing competing principles. Realization and resolution of ethical conflict come largely from within the individual social worker and evaluator. We describe three program evaluation situations to illustrate these points.     

Review of Pinker’s The Language Instinct

The Analysis of Verbal Behavior -