GM Foods and the Misperception of Risk Perception

Public opposition to genetically modified (GM) food and crops is widely interpreted as the result of the public's misperception of the risks. With scientific assessment pointing to no unique risks from GM crops and foods, a strategy of accurate risk communication from trusted sources has been advocated. This is based on the assumption that the benefits of GM crops and foods are self-evident. Informed by the interpretation of some qualitative interviews with lay people, we use data from the Eurobarometer survey on biotechnology to explore the hypothesis that it is not so much the perception of risks as the absence of benefits that is the basis of the widespread rejection of GM foods and crops by the European public. Some respondents perceive both risks and benefits, and may be trading off these attributes along the lines of a rational choice model. However, for others, one attribute-benefit-appears to dominate their judgments: the lexicographic heuristic. For these respondents, their perception of risk is of limited importance in the formation of attitudes toward GM food and crops. The implication is that the absence of perceived benefits from GM foods and crops calls into question the relevance of risk communication strategies for bringing about change in public opinion.     

What shall we do with the cyclic profile?

A Condorcet method for a single-seat preferential election is defined by the way it handles cases without a Condorcet winner. Such cases are described in terms of cyclic candidate triples. Sometimes election theory considers intricate patterns of intersecting cyclic triples. In practice, cyclic triples are rare, but they may be created as part of strategic voting against a Condorcet winner. This strategy, often called burying, is difficult to apply, but critics will detect a missed opportunity and regard it as a punishment for honest voting. A new Condorcet method, SV, lets a cyclic triple be won by the candidate with the smallest opportunity to defeat a Condorcet winner this way. A new geometric model allows visual comparison of the opportunities under various methods.     

Quality of Life in a City: The Effect of Population Density

There exist a number of concepts andoperational definitions of quality of life. Inthe present study the aim has been to develop acomprehensive, global index of quality of life,and relate the sub-indexes and global index tovarious socio-demographic variables, somatichealth and density of population in theresidential area. The sample consisted of 2066individuals between 18 and 65 years old fromthe common population. Seven sub-indexes weredeveloped. They constituted one factor withmoderate intercorrelations between thesub-indexes. Good somatic health, living in astable relationship with a partner, preferablymarried, in a less densely populated area,having a good education, a good income andbeing a younger female were the independentstatistical determinants of global quality oflife. However, various sub-indexes were relatedto different socio-demographic variables. Agewas oppositely related to differentsub-indexes. The study shows the importance ofwhat type of quality of life is investigated.To our knowledge, this is the first study ofthe effect of population density on quality oflife.     

Effectiveness of the International Child Development Programme: Results from a randomized controlled trial

This study aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of the International Child Development Programme (ICDP), a group-based parenting programme used internationally and implemented nationally in Norway. We used a cluster randomized controlled trial in which 81 groups were randomly assigned to either the intervention or waitlist control condition after the baseline data collection. A total of 590 parents completed at least one of three questionnaires (administrated before and after ICDP and 4 months after completing the intervention). Primary outcomes included parental self-efficacy, parental emotion sensitivity and positive involvement with their child. Secondary outcomes included parents' perceptions of their relationship with the child, child-rearing conflicts and the child's psychosocial health. We found significant effects favouring the intervention arm following the intervention and at follow-up on two primary outcomes (parental self-efficacy and emotion sensitivity). For the secondary outcomes, we found a significant reduction in child-rearing conflict at the 4-month follow-up, increased closeness to the child, reduced child internalizing difficulties and increased prosocial behaviour immediately following the intervention. However, ICDP seems to have limited effects on parent-reported changes in children. We conclude that ICDP as a universal preventive programme offered to parents in groups can be effective in strengthening parental self-efficacy and improving parental emotion sensitivity.     

Party on wheels: mobile party spaces in the Norwegian high school graduation celebration

Research on partying and nightlife often emphasizes commercial control while overlooking participants’ creativity and agency. Due to their age, appearance and transgressive partying, participants in the Norwegian high school graduation celebration have limited access to bars and pubs in the ordinary night‐time economy. To create alternative party spaces under their own control they utilize the spatial opportunities offered by automobility. Groups of students get together many years in advance and buy old buses which they refurbish to become rolling nightclubs that enable them to ‘transcend space’ through partying while on the move. These mobile party spaces provide a material and symbolic centre of communion and a tight space for physical assembly that enhances the production of intense positive emotions. In a cat‐and‐mouse game with the police, the buses provide a sense of nomadic autonomy, and enable participants to drink heavily for days on end. The study examines how youth may creatively zone their own party spaces within the context of automobility and how these mobile spaces again shape the partying that goes on within them. While this party practice opens up for autonomy, creativity and social transgressions reminiscent of liminal phases or carnivals, at a deeper level participants clearly reproduce class‐based differences and exaggerate conventional practices and symbols.     

Understanding dissociation in relation to child trauma,mental health needs,and intensity of services in child welfare: A possible missing link

Abstract

While there is limited research on the role of dissociation among children and adolescents, emerging evidence links child trauma history, dissociation, risk behaviors, and other negative outcomes among youth. This study examined dissociation in relation to mental health needs and intensity of services among a large sample of youth in Illinois child welfare, upon entry into care and in residential treatment settings. The Child and Adolescent Needs and Strengths (CANS), a comprehensive, trauma-informed assessment strategy and information integration/planning tool was the primary measure. This study included two overall samples of child welfare-involved youth, ages 3–18: at entry into care (N?=?27,737) and in residential treatment (N?=?5,758). Findings indicated that rates of clinically significant dissociation were generally highest among younger youth (under age 14) and among youth with more cumulative and severe trauma. Dissociative youth were significantly more likely to exhibit several risk behaviors (e.g., fire setting and self-harm) and mental health symptoms (e.g., psychosis and somatization). Those youth with significant dissociation at entry into care were more likely to be psychiatrically hospitalized, placed into residential treatment, with greater likelihood of placement disruptions within the 2 years following entry into care. Implications of these findings are discussed in terms of the value of identifying and assessing dissociation and other trauma-related symptoms that may be less recognized but can be linked to high-risk behaviors and other negative outcomes within child welfare and across child-serving systems. Understanding dissociation may be an important component of training, service/treatment planning, and clinical care within child-serving systems.     

Departies: conceptualizing extended youth parties

Every year, millions of young people travel away from home to party for days or weeks on end in permissive environments, such as music festivals, dance parties, and nightlife resorts. The studies that have been conducted on these extended youth parties have focused primarily on specific risk-taking behaviors, such as drug use and violence. Here, we scrutinize the research on extended youth parties to identify general changes that young people undergo at these events. We call these celebrations departies, because they center on the organization and facilitation of momentary departures from the participants’ everyday life. Participants depart (1) spatially, by traveling to locations that are constructed as sites of opportunity and excess; (2) temporally, by partying for several days in a row and focusing on immediate gratifications; (3) morally, by engaging in activities that are widely deemed immoral; (4) stylistically, by altering their stylistic expressions through dress, demeanor, and consumption; and (5) experientially, because the parties generate mood and mind alterations. These are overlapping and intertwined elements, the combination of which amounts to a distinct type of youth party. Departies constitute exceptional events in the lives of many young people, and ought to be studied from a comparative perspective.     

Internal and external motivation in phonetic change: Dialect levelling outcomes for an English vowel shift

This article is a contribution to the debate about the primacy of internal versus external factors in language change ( Farrar and Jones 2002 ; Thomason and Kaufman 1988 ). Taking Labov's Principles of Vowel Shifting ( Labov 1994 ) as representing internal factors, we examine a vowel shift in Ashford, south‐east of London. F1 and F2 measurements of the short vowels suggest a classic chain shift, largely following Labov's Principles II and III (though Labov's assumption that London short front vowels are rising is shown to be wrong). However, corresponding data from Reading, west of London, evidence no signs of a chain shift. The two datasets show identical targets for the changes in each town. Thus, there has been convergence between the two short vowel systems – from different starting points. We argue that a dialect contact model is more explanatory than internal factors in this case of regional dialect levelling in the south‐east of England.     

Ordering of Sequentially Sampled Exponential Experiments

Let X ₁, X ₂, ... be a sequence of i.i.d. random variables, X _i∼ F _θ, θ∈Θ. Let N ₁ and N ₂ be two stopping rules. For a class of exponential families { F _θ: θ∈Θ} we show that the experiment Y ₁ = ( X ₁, ..., X _N1) carries more statistical information than Y ₂ = ( X ₁, ..., x _N2) only if N ₁ is stochastically larger then N ₂     

Voces populi and the art of listening

The strategy most damaging to many preferential election methods is to give insincerely low rank to the main opponent of one’s favourite candidate. Theorem 1 determines the 3-candidate Condorcet method that minimizes the number of noncyclic profiles allowing the strategic use of a given cyclic profile. Theorems 2, 3 and 4 establish conditions for an anonymous and neutral 3-candidate single-seat election to be monotonic and still avoid this strategy completely. Plurality elections combine these properties; among the others ‘conditional IRV’ gives the strongest challenge to the plurality winner. Conditional IRV is extended to any number of candidates. Theorem 5 is an impossibility of Gibbard–Satterthwaite type, describing three specific strategies that cannot all be avoided in meaningful anonymous and neutral election methods.