Relevant Background Factors Research Articles

Court Response to Petitions for Civil Protection Orders

Civil protection orders offer abused women a legal means to maintain their residences apart from the abuser and exert some autonomy in their relationships. The implementation of protection order statutes remains, however, largely unclear. Court records were examined for 200 petitioners randomly selected from 674 petitions for protection orders filed in one Pennsylvania county court during the year 1990. Court dockets, court petitions, and protection orders were coded for petitioner background, court factors, case disposition, and protective provisions. Approximately three quarters (76%) of the petitioners did receive a final protection order. In the majority of cases not receiving a protection order, the petitioners withdrew or dropped their petitions. The final protection orders limited the batterer's contact in some way and prohibited his future acts of abuse. However, the provisions regarding restricted contact, child custody and visitation, financial support, and property allocation were much less extensive than requested. Relevant background factors and court factors were not significantly associated with the outcome of the case, except for being in a marriage relationship. While protection orders were liberally granted, the provisions for the orders appeared inadequate to ensure separation from the abuser, given the low financial status of many petitioners and the abuser's visitation or joint custody of the children. Means to ensure more extensive and more comprehensive provisions may be needed.

Key Determinants of Motivation of Non-Traditional Aboriginal Students in School Settings: Recommendations for Educational Change

This research was designed to investigate culturally specific elements of non-traditional Aboriginal motivation. Among the aims of the research were to study: (a) the salient determinants of motivation of urban and rural non-traditional Aboriginal students in mainstream educational settings; (b) the relevant background factors that influence Aboriginal motivation in these settings; (c) the dynamics of decision making that orient the Aboriginal student to continue with school beyond the minimum school leaving age, and (d) ways in which education programs may be made more adaptive to the special needs of Aboriginal children. A consistent picture of the urban Aboriginal child at school emerged from the analyses. In contrast to the Anglo and migrant comparator groups, the explanatory base for the Aboriginal child's decision making within the school environment appears restricted to a small number of key variables.

SOCIAL BACKGROUND AND THE SENTENCING BEHAVIOR OF JUDGES*

This paper explores the extent to which the social background of judges affects their sentencing behavior. An analysis of data on felons convicted in Georgia suggests that background has little direct bearing on sentencing outcomes. Instead, it conditions the weight judges attach to legally relevant and social background factors. Expectations about the role of the judge's age, religion, prior prosecutorial experience, and local background received mixed support. Older judges were selectively more punitive than their younger colleagues, but they did not direct this punitiveness toward disadvantaged offenders. Nor was there evidence that male judges were paternalistic toward female offenders. Baptist and Fundamentalist judges also sentenced more punitively, but they were not more likely than other judges to discriminate against black or disadvantaged offenders. Rather, they appeared to hold white and older offenders to a higher standard of behavior. Former prosecutors were selectively punitive and applied the law more uniformly than nonprosecutors. Local judges appeared to be more responsive to public demands for incarceration and sentenced more particularistically. These results illustrate the importance of considering judicial background in conjunction with case attributes, and they underscore the need for research that increases our understanding of judicial background as a conditioner of differential treatment during sentencing.

Bone-metal interface in osseointegration

D ental implants have been used clinically for more than 30 years with a variety of implant materials and different designs, and with poorly described surface properties and surface structures, without the benefit of scientific: experience and investigation. Furthermore, clinical follow-up of the patients has been of unacceptably poor quality with inadequately defined success criteria. In a recently published article, American, Japanese, and European dental implant systems were evaluated against a strictly defined success protocol.’ The conclusions were alarming. Of all the currently used dental implants, only two passed the defined success criteria: the Small transosteal implant2 and the Branemark osseointegrated screw.3 In addition, a few directly bone-anchored systems including the IMZ implant (Friedrichsfeld BmBh, Mannheim, Germany) of commerical pure CP titanium, the IT1 CP titanium screw (Inst. Straumann, Waldenburg, Switzerland),5 and the Frailit-Tubingen aluminum oxide implant6 (Friedrichsfeld BmBh) were investigated scientifically with promising results. However, they were not followed up for an adequate time period, which Albrektsson et al.’ defined as minimally 10 years. Commonly used dental implants including blade-vents, subperiosteal implants, or the Core-Vent system (CoreVent Corp.., Encino, Calif.) were found to be poorly investigated or with unacceptable clinical results. The clinical success achieved with the Brinemark osseointegrated, titanium screw is based on a meticulous method of follow-up and a thorough scientific examination of relevant background factors of a functioning dental implant. Many articles have been published in refereed journals on various aspects of the implantation procedure and the clinical results of the Brinemark screw.3’7 An essential reason for the observed clinical success is the interface that is established between oral hard and soft tissues and the Brinemark implant. The present article reviews important implant parameters determining the bone-metal interface reactions used around an inserted titanium screw. The concept of

Using the Melbourne Family Survey in migration research: Reply to Santow

As Gigi Santow points out, only married women are included in the sample, so younger women are self-selected for earlier marriages. Rather than abandoning the sample for this reason, however, I included ages of women as a continuous covariate in analysis of variance calculations (see table 2 in Carlson 1985a). Similarly, Southern Europeans are more concentrated in more recent migrant marriage cohorts. Again rather than rejecting the sample I included region of origin as one of several factors in table 2. It doesn't seem fair to dismiss the resulting detailed breakdown of factors affecting marriage age (including education, father's occupation, premarital work experience, and family status at arrival, as well as age and region of origin) as a global summary measure. The liabilities of the sample are taken into account by introducing appropriate control variables in the analysis of marriage timing. As noted in the original article, the possibility of significant distorting interaction effects among these variables also was explored. On the other hand, the same objections are perfectly valid with respect to analysis of birth timing-table 3 shows no such controls. The question is, how serious are such biasing factors? I examined this issue and decided such biases would not dispel my results. I demonstrated this by including relevant background factors (age, region of origin, education, family status at arrival, and work experience after marriage) in a detailed study of the likelihood of having a first birth within two years after marriage in the Melbourne sample (Carlson 1985b). Women arriving as childless wives were less than half as likely as other categories of immigrants to become mothers in the first two years of marriage, even after controlling for such factors. The pattern was strongest among women who worked after marriage, and much fainter among immigrant women who did not do so. I believe these patterns show two things. First, important new insights into migration as an influence on family building can be gained by introducing such control factors. Second, such new insights seem to clarify and focus the basic conclusions about disruption of fertility arrived at in my original article, rather than negating them.

Citizen Awareness and Involvement in Poverty Action

This study examines citizen awareness of the war on poverty in a community of 250,000 with a large local community action agency (CAA). Interviews were conducted with a sample of the city's population, stratified to include approximately equal numbers of target and non-target area residents, both black and white (n = 801). Awareness measures are cross tabulated with relevant background factors with the following results: awareness of the CAA as an organization and as a potential source of aid is greatest among blacks, non-target area residents, those under 30, and those in upper occupation, education and income categories. Awareness of service is greater than awareness of community organizing programs. Implications of these findings are discussed in light of the organization's mandate and objectives.

Islam, Other Factors and Malay Backwardness: Comments on an Argument

An anthropologist has recently remarked on an ‘orthodoxy’ of economic development that has grown up among some economists. The same writer continues with the observation thatthere is also, among some economists, an orthodoxy of the relevant background factors in development. When the tools of economic analysis appear inadequate fully to deal with specific instances of economic change or economic stagnation, the psychology and attitudes of the people concerned are invoked, as is the inertia of indigenous institutions.