Effectiveness of antismoking public service announcements on children's intent to smoke.

The authors randomly assigned 5th- and 8th-grade students to 1 of 3 treatment conditions to study the effects of frequency of exposure to an antismoking public service announcement (PSA) on the students' intent to smoke over time. They found that, among younger children only, viewing an antismoking PSA at least once reduced smoking intentions, although these positive effects did not remain over time. However, the antismoking PSA was effective for younger at-risk children. After younger at-risk children viewed the antismoking PSA once, their intent to smoke decreased significantly. Notably, these positive effects remained stable over time and mirrored the smoking intentions of younger children who were not identified as at risk. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Distinguished professional contributions to public service: Lenore Walker.

Presents the citation, biography, and selected bibliography for Lenore Walker, one of the 1987 recipients of the American Psychological Association's Award for Distinguished Professional Contributions to Public Service. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Distinguished professional contributions to public service: Edwin Shneidman.

Presents the citation, biography, and selected bibliography for Edwin Shneidman, one of the 1987 recipients of the American Psychological Association's Award for Distinguished Professional Contributions to Public Service. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Distinguished professional contributions to public service: Eric Schopler.

Presents the citation, biography, and bibliography for Eric Schopler, the 1985 recipient of the American Psychological Association's Award for Distinguished Professional Contributions to Public Service. Schopler was honored for his research and the clinical program that followed which were instrumental in establishing autism as having a biological basis which could not be attributed to family behaviors. His research excellence and humane, effective clinical program have dramatically changed the lives of countless families around the world and have been of tremendous public benefit. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

An experimental investigation of infant social referencing: Mothers' messages and gender differences.

Examined infant social referencing by observing how 37 12-mo-old infants sought and used maternal messages concerning the affective significance of novel objects during 4 conditions that varied the content (happiness or fear) and presentation mode (unconstrained or trained facial expression) of maternal messages. Findings indicated that mothers, when permitted, supplemented facial expressions with verbal messages that refer both directly and indirectly to the object. Even so, their messages of fear lacked clarity and intensity, especially when directed toward daughters. Infants were able social referencers who often sought and used maternal appraisals even after they had reacted to an object. Maternal messages regulated daughters' but not sons' distance from the objects. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Award for distinguished professional contributions to public service: Cecil Peck.

Presents the citation, biography, and bibliography for Cecil Peck, the 1984 recipient of the American Psychological Association's Award for Distinguished Professional Contributions to Public Service. Peck was honored for, among other things, his thoughtful guidance, tempered with foresight and compassion, which has forged an impregnable bond between professional, clinical, and counseling psychologists and American veterans suffering from psychological or physical disabilities. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Covariates of infant mortality in China: an exploratory approach

To elucidate the nature of the relationship between infant mortality in China and a variety of covariates using data from the 2/1000 Chinese Fertility Survey, we use a logistic regression model where the covariates are transformed with the help of Alternating Conditional Expectation (ACE) algorithm. This approach is used to overcome the general problem in multivariate regression analysis of coding the independent variables so that relationship between independent variables and response variables is best described, rather than coding such variables in an arbitrary way. The study demonstrates the procedures and usefulness of the ACE guided transformation in multivariate analysis. The transformed covariates are then used to estimate the effects of a series of socioeconomic and demographic factors collected in the study of infant death in China. The study shows that after appropriate transformations, all the demographic and socioeconomic variables selected have statistically significant and direct influence on infant death.     

Knowledgeable respondents: Private club or public service?

The Cartter Report and Roose-Andersen Reports (sponsored by the American Council of Education) on quality of graduate education in American universities have been used as a basis for national policy and funding judgments, and for institutional, academic discipline, and student applicant uses. It is argued that instead of serving the public purposes for which they were intended, these reports serve more directly private guild interests of the participating disciplines, particularly psychology. Reasons include the fact that psychology has become increasingly technician-oriented, and the sampling procedure used to select raters and the questions asked were biased. These issues could be better approached by defining appropriate models of excellent graduate programs, developing scales for rating the variables considered to contribute to excellence, and then assessing the validity of those measures. The consequences of present biased rating procedures are far too significant for society and students for psychologists to continue to ignore. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Public policy and public service: Our professional duty.

Psychology is a steadily maturing profession, and we psychologists are finally beginning to accept our societal responsibility to be involved in the public policy and political process. Although psychologists have shown increased involvement in the recent past, there are still many areas in which psychologists could become markedly more involved—especially in the area of programs that affect the quality of life of our nation's elderly, disabled, and poor citizens. As our profession seeks to become more active in the overall health care arena, we will, of necessity, begin to define the parameters of "quality of care" for other professions. In doing so, we must closely explore the "outer limits" of our own practice. We must ensure that all state and federal legislative (and administrative) policies do not impose arbitrary limitations on the scope of practice. To accomplish this objective, we must seek to influence our subset of our nation's health policy priorities and policies that we have traditionally shunned—the subset that affects "the public good." (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Disease ecology and a reformist alternative: the case of infant mortality

This paper attempts to shed some light on the recent debate between those who advocate a reformed medical geography and those who respond that reform is not necessary. We show that disease ecology and a reformist alternative display certain tendencies in the ways in which they address issues of health and disease. We use the example of geographic variations in infant mortality rates to show how two non-positivist perspectives from social theory, political economy and humanism, support a reformist viewpoint, while also acknowledging the value of a complementary disease ecology approach. Two concepts, the social construction of health and illness and social relevance, are used to portray the political economy approach; humanism is described in terms of the meaning of individual experience and the importance of place. The paper concludes with a discussion of the respective roles of disease ecology and a reformist approach in models of infant mortality and a summary of the main differences between the two perspectives.     

国外公共服务创新理论与实践对中国的启示

作为西方行政改革典型代表的新公共管理理论、新公共服务理论、治理理论均从不同角度提供了公民参与公共服务创新的战略思路.英国、法国、加拿大等国的创新实践中,也积极鼓励公民参与公共服务创新过程.从中可吸收和借鉴一些共性的、有益的东西,以加速推进中国的公共服务创新进程,即要坚持以公民为中心的公共服务创新战略,创设公民参与公共服务创新的制度环境,增加公民参与公共服务创新的实践锻炼,大力促进社会组织的发展.     

Children's responses to ambiguous messages: A response to Ackerman's reply.

Responds to B. P. Ackerman's (see record 1987-03694-001) reply to the present authors' (see record 1985-25142-001) test of Ackerman's (see record 1982-05434-001) conclusions concerning the ability of young children to understand that verbal messages can be ambiguous, particularly the idea that children's understanding is masked in standard referential communication tasks because of performative bias. (4 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Returns on investment in public health: effect of public health expenditures on infant health, 1983-1990

In this paper a number of methodological issues relating to research on the relationship between the menopause, mood and hormone replacement therapy (HRT) are discussed. These issues relate to problems of design and statistical analyses, problems which have prevented the reaching of definite conclusions regarding the relationship between menopause, mood and hormones. These problems are discussed under three main headings, namely, the assessment of menopausal status, statistical modelling and the design and analyses of clinical trials. Problems relating to concepts and measurement of dependent variables are the subject matter of the papers that follow. Within the three main headings more specific issues are detailed. The paper concludes with a list of recommendations on how research in this important area might be further advanced.     

Needs assessment for reducing infant mortality in Baltimore City: the Healthy Start Program

Needs assessments are essential for policy formulation and the appropriate design of intervention programs. Recent nationwide data show that among large metropolitan areas of the United States, Baltimore has one of the highest infant mortality rates and ranks in the worst top 10 for blacks and the top 5 for whites for most indicators of poor pregnancy outcome. In this paper, we present the methods and results of a needs assessment that used multiple sources of routinely collected data and was conducted for the purpose of identifying intervention factors contributing to infant mortality in Baltimore City. This needs assessment was used by the Baltimore City Health Department to successfully secure funding for the federal Healthy Start Infant Mortality Prevention Initiative. We present the results of the analyses, along with some of the proposed interventions that resulted from the needs assessment. We also discuss the limitations of this type of needs assessment as well as suggestions for future needs assessments for the design of interventions to improve perinatal health.     

Transition from rocking to crawling: Postural constraints on infant movement.

Fifteen infants were videotaped weekly, beginning at 6 months, until they began to crawl. At each observation, infants were also videotaped as they reached to midline (to assess hand use preference). Of interest were the relative contributions of head orientation, hand use, and kicking for the development of crawling. During early stages, active orienting of the head to one side while prone was associated with particular patterns of both arm position and leg activity. At later stages, hand preference was associated with the transition from the stage of rocking to that of crawling: Infants rocked during a period when they showed ambilaterality during reaching, and they crawled when there was a strong hand preference. Thus, unimanual reaching promoted falling foward onto one hand and extending with the other. The co-occurrence of orienting, reaching, and kicking under particular postural and muscular constraints may account for the stage-like development of crawling. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)