The child's right to a family environment: Why children's rights and family values are compatible.

Critics of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (U.N. General Assembly, 1989) have lobbied against its ratification on the grounds that its impact in the United States would be antifamily. Careful reading of the Convention shows, however, that it not only is supportive of strong families but offers a creative and conceptually coherent foundation for government action to promote and protect family life. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child: A cross-cultural view.

The U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child (U.N. General Assembly, 1989) enumerates substantive children's rights and implementation processes through which these rights are to be realized. Cultural differences in interpreting the Convention could occur in both of the aforementioned areas. This article examines cultural variability in beliefs about (a) the appropriate distribution of power in families and institutions; (b) the degree to which behavior should be regulated by individuals versus through external rules; (c) the scope of responsibility individuals should have for themselves, their immediate and extended families, and society's children; and (d) the importance of individual rights versus group and family loyalties in the ordering of society. Cultures may vary widely in how the best interests of the child are defined. Awareness of these areas of cultural divergence could help decision makers draft and implement culturally sensitive international policy. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

International children's rights. Can they make a difference in American family policy?

The United States' actual and potential use of international children's rights' standards are detailed, and the substance and aspirations of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (U.N. General Assembly, 1989) with current U.S. family policy and jurisprudence are compared. The examination highlights the importance of considering diverse forums and forces that may influence the eventual implementation of children's international human rights. The analysis also underscores the striking divergence between international and U.S. approaches to children's rights. The author concludes that current efforts to play down differences and obligations create a danger of making eventual ratification of international children's rights' treaties a Pyrrhic victory, if any.     

U.S. Workplace bullying: Some basic considerations and consultation interventions.

Bullying in the workplace is a worldwide phenomenon. There is a sizable professional literature on workplace bullying based largely on studies in European and other countries in comparison to studies involving U.S. corporations. Psychological consultants to U.S. corporations need to know and understand how certain considerations such as prevalence, legal reform and issues, and employers’ response to bullying differ in the United States compared with other countries. This article provides an overview of these considerations, emphasizing prevalence studies on bullying in the United States. It then describes one successful consultation intervention that targeting bullying in a U.S. corporation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The role of research in implementing the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child.

The most realistic hope that the Convention on the Rights of the Child (U.N. General Assembly, 1989) actually will bring about changed conditions and changed behavior is through promoting research, because research is the only enforcement tool provided for in the Convention. Articles 43, 44, and 45 of the Convention invite a collaboration among signatories, the U.N. Committee on the Rights of the Child, and researchers who can help design studies and provide technical assistance. This article examines some of the difficulties that research on this subject will need to consider and overcome if the effort is to succeed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The case against corporal punishment of children: Converging evidence from social science research and international human rights law and implications for U.S. public policy.

Although support for corporal punishment of children remains widespread in the United States, there is a substantial body of research from psychology and its allied disciplines indicating corporal punishment is ineffective as a disciplinary practice and can have unintended negative effects on children. At the same time, there is a growing momentum among other countries to enact legal bans on all forms of corporal punishment, bolstered by the fact that the practice has come to be regarded as a violation of international human rights law. The authors summarize these developments in research and law as well as the current legal status of corporal punishment of children in the United States. The authors conclude with 4 proposed program and policy strategies to reduce the use of corporal punishment in the United States by both parents and school personnel. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

In search of value: an international comparison of cost, access, and outcomes

The United States spent the most resources on health care of all the twenty-nine industrialized countries in 1996 by a wide margin. Managed care and other recent initiatives have been credited with slowing the rate of increase in the U.S. health care spending in recent years. Although the rate of increase slowed, it was still more rapid than the rate in most other industrialized countries between 1990 and 1996. Among the twenty-nine industrialized countries, the United states had the lowest percentage of its population eligible for publicly mandated insurance in 1995. Since 1960 Greece, Korea, and Mexico have surpassed the United States on this measure. AMong the twenty-nine industrialized countries, only the United States had less than half of its population eligible for publicly mandated health insurance in 1995. The United States appears to be comparable to the other G7 countries in terms of access to physicians, in-patient hospital services, and pharmaceuticals. However, on outcomes indicators such as life expectancy and infant mortality, the United States is frequently in the bottom quartile among the twenty-nine industrialized countries, and its relative ranking has been declining since 1960.     

Socioeconomic disparities in preventive care persist despite universal coverage. Breast and cervical cancer screening in Ontario and the United States

OBJECTIVE: To compare the association of income and education with breast and cervical cancer screening in Ontario, Canada, and the United States. DESIGN: Survey using data from the Ontario Health Survey and the US National Health Interview Survey. PARTICIPANTS: A multistage random sample of women aged 18 years and older living in households in Ontario (N = 23,521) and the United States (N = 23,932) in 1990. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURE: Persons were considered screened if they reported a Papanicolaou test within the previous 2 years, a clinical breast examination within the previous year, or a mammogram within the previous year. RESULTS: Papanicolaou test and clinical breast examination rates were similar between countries, but mammography rates were two to three times higher in the United States across all age groups. Compared with women with less than a high school degree, college graduates were more likely to receive screening (odds ratio [OR], 1.5; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.2 to 1.7) and there was no difference between countries. Across all procedures, women with higher incomes were more likely to receive screening. For Papanicolaou test and clinical breast examination, there was no difference between countries. Compared with the lowest income, the OR was 1.7 (95% CI, 1.3 to 2.1) in Ontario and 1.9 (95% CI, 1.6 to 2.2) in the United States for Papanicolaou test and 2.1 (95% CI, 1.6 to 2.8) in Ontario and 2.1 (95% CI, 1.8 to 2.6) in the United States for the clinical breast examination for women with income greater than $45,600 (US dollars). For mammography screening, the association of income with use was greater in the United States: the OR was 1.8 (95% CI, 1.3 to 2.6) in Ontario and 2.7 (95% CI, 2.3 to 3.2) in the United States for women with income greater than $45,600 (US dollars). CONCLUSIONS: Despite the long-time presence of universal insurance coverage in Ontario the disparities in the use of cancer screening procedures by the poor were similar to the United States. Universal coverage is not sufficient to overcome the large disparities in screenings across socioeconomic status demonstrated in both countries.     

Tobacco psychopharmacology and public health policy: It takes a community.

This commentary is based upon the author's lecture given as the 2010 recipient of the award named in honor of Drs. Joseph V. Brady and Charles R. Schuster, given by the Psychopharmacology and Substance Abuse Division (Division 28) of the American Psychological Association (APA). The focus is on the contributions of many behavioral pharmacology researchers who collaborated very much in the spirit of an interactive community dedicated to the common cause of advancing science in service of public health. Division 28 and its members hold a prominent place in this account because, throughout the 1980s and 1990s, the Division was the lead scientific forum for bringing together researchers addressing the behavioral pharmacology of tobacco and nicotine. The commentary provides an overview of how advances utilizing animal and human models of dependence and withdrawal came to inform public health policy and more recently, tobacco product regulation. The commentary also recounts how efforts by the tobacco industry collided with those of nonindustry researchers, including Division 28 members, and how this was taken up in congressional hearings that addressed behavioral pharmacology research on tobacco. The review concludes with an overview of current challenges to behavioral pharmacology researchers to assist in guiding the regulation of tobacco products by the United States Food and Drug Administration and other national regulatory authorities, as well as guiding the implementation of the international tobacco treaty—the World Health Organization Framework Convention on Tobacco Control. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

The right to a family environment for children with disabilities.

To access services for children with disabilities, the children often have been required to leave their families of origin. However, social science evidence indicates that there are substantial psychological benefits for children to remain with their families whenever possible. The U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child (U.N. General Assembly, 1989) supports policies and programs that enable children with disabilities to receive services without leaving their family environment. This article briefly reviews the social science literature and the U.N. Convention, and it documents trends in U.S. law consistent with the implications of the scientific evidence and international consensus. The authors conclude that it is important for the federal government to maintain these progressive programs and policies even as responsibilities for social programs shift to the states. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Health spending, delivery, and outcomes in OECD countries

Data comparing health expenditures in twenty-four industrialized nations show that the United States continues to lead the world in health spending as a percentage of gross domestic product. In 1991 the United States spent $2,868 per person on health care, compared with an average of $1,305 in Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries. The U.S. figure exceeds spending in Canada, the next-highest spender, by 50 percent. Measures of health care use and health status do not provide convincing evidence that the United States has a superior health care system for its larger expenditure levels.     

Comparisons of organizational constraints and their relations to strains in China and the United States.

Organizational constraints is an important source of job stress. To study the relations between organizational constraints and four indices of job strains in cross-cultural work settings, both self-report and coworker-report data were collected from university employees in two culturally dissimilar countries: China and the United States. As predicted, U.S. university employees reported more interpersonal constraints than did their Chinese counterparts. No country difference was found for job context constraints. Both self-report and coworker-report data revealed significant correlations between organizational constraints and job strains in both countries. Country moderated the relations between interpersonal constraints and negative emotions/job satisfaction/voluntary lateness, with stronger correlations in the United States than in China. Country also moderated the relations between job context constraints and all four indicators of job strains, indicating that U.S. university employees were more sensitive to workplace constraints than were their Chinese counterparts. Suggestions are provided for future research and practice applications. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

ISO 9000 and the U.S. Construction Industry

ISO 9000, the series of quality management standards issued by the International Organization for Standardization, is being used by organizations involved in construction all over the world. The construction industry in the United States has generally lagged behind other industries and other countries in the acceptance and implementation of ISO 9000 standards. Differing opinions surround the issue of ISO 9000 in the U.S. construction industry; it has received either the support or the criticism of experts, who weigh the effects of ISO 9000 as a matter of real improvements in quality against competitiveness and specific requirements at a domestic and international level. This paper attempts to determine the applicability and effectiveness of ISO 9000 in U.S. construction firms and the barriers that hinder its acceptance. The methodology used consists of a literature review and a survey distributed to a sample of firms that have or have not received ISO 9000 certification. After analyzing the gathered data, it was concluded that ISO 9000 is an appropriate and effective tool for construction firms in the United States, although several obstacles affect its implementation and acceptance among construction organizations.     

The U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child: lost in the clash of adverse opinions

Discusses The World Declaration on the Survival, Protection, and Development of Children (1989, 1990) and some of the possible reasons that the document has not been broadly publicized by professionals in mental health and human services in the US. The author believes that part of the problem is the ambiguity of the language in which some of the 54 articles of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989) are formulated. Two specific examples are given. The 1st example includes challenges by the conservative groups regrading the antifamily impact of the Convention, which to the author, seem unfounded. The 2nd concerns the Convention's preamble which the author fears may be interpreted by abortion rights advocates as an attempt to curb women's reproductive rights. It is concluded that it is necessary to rise about ideological clashes in order to gain a clear view of the future of children. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Fairness reactions to personnel selection techniques in France and the United States.

The authors examined the bases for fairness reactions to different selection practices and considered cross-cultural differences in these reactions by comparing respondents from 2 cultures. College students (N?=?259) from France and the United States rated the favorability of 10 selection procedures and then indicated the bases for these reactions on 7 procedural dimensions. Selection decisions based on interviews, work-sample tests, and resumes were perceived favorably in both cultures. Graphology was perceived more favorably in France than in the United States, but even French reactions toward graphology were somewhat negative. The perceived face validity of the selection procedure was the strongest correlate of favorability reactions among both samples. Beyond comparing the results from each culture, the discussion addresses implications for multinational companies establishing selection systems in foreign countries. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Abortion among adolescents.

In most countries, adolescents' access to abortion is limited by restrictions on legal abortion. Abortion is legal in the United States, but many states require parental consent or notification. Legislation mandating parental consent has been justified by several assumptions, including high risk of psychological harm from abortion, adolescents' inability to make an adequately informed decision, and benefits of parental involvement. Empirical data raise questions about the first 2 assumptions: Studies suggest a relatively low risk associated with abortion, and adolescents seeking abortion appear to make an informed choice. Less is known about effects of parental involvement. The authors review available research and discuss policy debates over parental consent in the United States and the international context. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Application of the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child to the United States.

This article raises and reviews the Constitutional and political issues likely to be considered as the Convention on the Rights of the Child (U.N. General Assembly, 1989) moves toward ratification within the U.S. Senate. After reviewing four key areas of potential conflict with U.S. law (provisions related to juvenile justice, education, religious freedom, and definitions of the child), the authors conclude that political rather than genuine Constitutional issues pose the greatest barrier to ratification. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Premarital sexual standards among U.S. college students: comparison with Russian and Japanese students

The study of the sexual permissiveness of young adults has been popular topic in sociology and social psychology, especially since the empirical and theoretical work of Reiss. We extended previous research on premarital sexual standards by examining the degree of sexual permissiveness and the endorsement of the traditional double standard in a large sample of young adults in the United States (N = 1043). In addition, comparative data were collected from young adults in two other countries: Russia (N = 401) and Japan (N = 223). American subjects expressed more acceptance of premarital sex than did the Russian and Japanese subjects. Men were more sexually permissive than women in the U.S. and in Russia but not in Japan. The degree to which the double standard was endorsed also depended on culture and gender. Russian subjects were more likely to endorse the double standard than Japanese and American subjects. However, American men were most likely to endorse the traditional double standard concerning sex early in the dating relationship.     

Review of The health planning predicament.

Reviews the book, The health planning predicament by Victor G. Rodwin (1984). There are many different ways health care can be distributed and paid for. Medical care utilization is an important behavior widely studied by health services researchers and by economists. Planning in health care requires an understanding of the need for services and the mechanisms required to pay for them. In this book, Rodwin presents a thoughtful analysis of the new challenges for health planners in four Western countries. Most Western cultures are guided by the assumption that medical care is good. Thus, most developed countries have increased access to medical care by creating systems for third-party payment of expenses. As a result, the availability of services for underserved groups has greatly improved. In addition, health care costs have steadily increased in most Western countries. A growing number of critics now argue that developed countries spend too much on health care and that ease of access has created new problems, including increased iatrogenic illness and threats to economic solvency. Rodwin addresses these and other questions by comparing health services systems in the United States, France, Canada, and England. Although these four countries have similar cultural and economic characteristics, they differ in the way they distribute health care services. The differences among the systems considered by Rodwin provide for many interesting comparisons of physician behavior, and of patient service utilization. They also provide a new basis for the evaluation of different health care policies. In summary, Victor Rodwin has produced an interesting and readable comparison of health planning in different countries. Despite different approaches to the same problem, all four governments are faced with a health planning predicament. The book is full of interesting insights and may stimulate new thinking about some very serious policy questions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The U.S. pediatric cancer clinical trials programmes: international implications and the way forward

The four national paediatric cancer clinical trials organisations in the United States--the Children's Cancer Group, the National Wilms' Tumor Study Group, the Intergroup Rhabdomyosarcoma Study Group and the Pediatric Oncology Group--were formed in 1955, 1969, 1972 and 1979, respectively. Together, the Children's Cancer Group and Pediatric Oncology Group serve as a national registry of nearly all childhood cancers in the United States, provide a national network of communication for researchers, care providers and families of paediatric patients with malignant disease and conduct laboratory investigations and clinical trials of new treatments of cancers in infants, children, adolescents and young adults. Nearly 95% of patients with cancer in the United States who are below 15 years of age are registered by the Children's Cancer Group and the Pediatric Oncology Group and more than half of American children with cancer are entered into at least one trial by a paediatric group. Improved survival of children receiving treatment according to well-defined protocols in specialised children's centres, in contrast to children who received treatment outside of these centres, has been shown for those with acute lymphoblastic leukaemia, lymphoma, Wilms' tumour, medulloblastoma, rhabdomyosarcoma and Ewing's sarcoma. By the year 2000, the overall cure rate for United States children and adolescents with cancer should exceed 85%. To reach this goal, the way forward will depend on international collaboration, implementation of global harmonisation, prevention of the erosion of biomedical research and clinical trials by the managed health care industry, increased public and private financial support and continued recruitment into paediatric oncology of brilliant and dedicated young investigators. The specific challenges ahead include: (1) transferring the knowledge, methodologies and technologies to countries that are less fortunate; (2) conducting multinational clinical trials in conjunction with paediatric cooperative groups in other countries; (3) accessing older adolescent patients who currently do not participate in cooperative group trials; (4) merging clinical trials by adult collaborative groups that overlap with the paediatric groups, as in acute lymphoblastic leukaemia, acute myelogenous leukaemia, Hodgkin's disease, osteosarcoma and germ cell tumours; (5) establishing a stable source of funding for national and international cooperative paediatric cancer clinical trials; (6) creating an informatics system that can link paediatric cooperative group operation centres around the world, and the institutions within each collaborative group; and (7) securing the support of the insurance industry and government in covering clinical trials.