Nicholas P. Lovrich

Social integration, individual perceptions of collective efficacy, and fear of crime in three cities

Several rival explanations have been advanced to account for fear of crime among neighborhood residents. Social integration is the least developed concept in this regard. We assess the mediating role that perceptions of neighborhood collective efficacy, defined as the trustworthiness of neighbors and their willingness to intervene as informal social control agents, have in the relationship between social integration and fear of crime. Our data were obtained from random sample surveys of residents conducted in three cities. Structural equation models indicate that social integration operates through perceptions of collective efficacy in predicting fear of crime, and similar results appear across three cities.

Access to health care and community social capital.

OBJECTIVE To test the hypothesis that variation in reported access to health care is positively related to the level of social capital present in a community. DATA SOURCES The 1996 Household Survey of the Community Tracking Study, drawn from 22 metropolitan statistical areas across the United States (n = 19,672). Additional data for the 22 communities are from a 1996 multicity broadcast media marketing database, including key social capital indicators, the 1997 National Profile of Local Health Departments survey, and Interstudy, American Hospital Association, and American Medical Association sources. STUDY DESIGN The design is cross-sectional. Self-reported access to care problems is the dependent variable. Independent variables include individual sociodemographic variables, community-level health sector variables, and social capital variables. DATA COLLECTION/EXTRACTION METHODS Data are merged from the various sources and weighted to be population representative and are analyzed using hierarchical categorical modeling. PRINCIPAL FINDINGS Persons who live in metropolitan statistical areas featuring higher levels of social capital report fewer problems accessing health care. A higher HMO penetration rate in a metropolitan statistical area was also associated with fewer access problems. Other health sector variables were not related to health care access. CONCLUSIONS The results observed for 22 major U.S. cities are consistent with the hypothesis that community social capital enables better access to care, perhaps through improving community accountability mechanisms.

Sources of stress in academe: A national perspective.

The purpose of the national faculty stress research project was to examine stress experienced by faculty in institutions of higher education. The study sample of 80 institutions was drawn from the population of all U. S. doctoral-granting institutions in the United States. One thousand twenty faculty were selected and stratified by academic rank and Biglans academic discipline model. The response rate was 75.28 percent. In general, faculty reported 60 percent of the total stress in their lives came from work. The majority of the top 10 stressors related directly to time and/or resource constraints. When faculty stressors were compared across disciplinary groupings, more similarity than difference existed. Also, faculty reported similar degrees of stress associated with the teaching, research, and service functions, with teaching as the most stressful activity.

Staff turnover in new generation jails: An investigation of its causes and prevention

Abstract A high turnover rate among carefully selected and monitored personnel signifies that the long-term return on selection and training resources invested in correctional staff too frequently is being lost. High negative turnover (loss of desirable employees) in New Generation Jails portends a serious compromise of long-range organizational effectiveness, but too often jail administrators are preoccupied with more immediate facility problems such as jail overcrowding. Despite the scale of this widely acknowledged problem, there is little direct evidence available as to the extent or likely causes of the staff turnover problem in such jails. Using survey and organizational profile data from six New Generation Jails, this study estimated the extent of turnover occurring in podular/direct supervision jails, identified causes, and has provided some preliminary recommendations for its reduction. Means of enhancing the “person-to-job” fit and the “person-to-organization” fit in such facilities are discussed in some detail in this article.

Culture, Politics and Mass Publics: Traditional and Modern Supporters of The New Environmental Paradigm In Japan and the United States

This paper examines the putative link between Postmaterial values and the New Environmental Paradigm (NEP) among mass publics in Japan (Shizuoka Prefecture) and the United States (Spokane, Washington). Unlike Western postindustrial nations, in Japan support for environmentalism comes from two distinct sources--one traditional and the other modern. In Japan, materialist supporters of the NEP are generally indistinct from materialist nonadherents to the NEP, but they are quite distinct in political and personal attributes from the postmaterialist supporters of the NEP. In the U.S., in contrast, the materialist NEP support group is indeed distinct from both the materialist non-NEP group and from the postmaterialist pro-NEP group. This pattern of findings is attributed to the traditional Japanese view of the unity of nature and humans, a view that is mirrored in the New Environmental Paradigm. Unlike the United States, then, in Japan the New Environmental Paradigm is not really all that new.

Predicting Five Dimensions of Police Officer Stress: Looking More Deeply Into Organizational Settings for Sources of Police Stress

Research on police officer stress has focused primarily on the rather atypical nature of police work and extent of adherence by law enforcement agencies across the nation to the Weberian bureaucratic form of organization and management practices. This study explores the effect of individual perceptions of work environment on male officer stress. Survey data from two large police departments in the northwestern United States are used in the analysis. The findings observed suggest that the levels of five dimensions of workplace stress are similar to adult males in the U.S. workforce and that an individuals perceptions of their work environment do have a significant impact on police officer stress.

Community policing: is it changing the basic functions of policing?: Findings from a longitudinal study of 200+ municipal police agencies

Abstract This article examines change in the organizational priorities of the three core functions of American policing — crime control, order maintenance, and service provision — in an era of community policing. The nature of contemporary organizational change in policing is analyzed using panel data from national surveys of 200+ municipal police departments conducted in 1993 and 1996. Two competing perspectives, contingency theory and institutional theory, are tested for their ability to account for survey findings. The primary findings indicate that police core function priorities have remained largely unchanged during this period. Rather than represent a systematic adaptation to a changing environment, in many police agencies, community-oriented policing (COP) seems to represent a method of strategic buffering of a largely unaltered core police operation reflective of the professional model.

The multiple sources of workplace stress among land-grant university faculty

Workplace stress has received a fair amount of treatment in the research literature over the past decade. What has not been examined, at least not systematically, is this same phenomena inacademe. Our study looked at stress among university faculty at a land-grant university located in the western region of the U. S. Analyses from the self-assessment mail survey (N = 786) reveals that faculty in the Hard Pure Nonlife (e. g., Astronomy, Math, Physics), Hard Applied Nonlife (e. g., Civil Engineering, Nuclear Engineering, Computer Science) and Soft Applied Life (e. g., Education Administration, Special Education) experience more stress than faculty in disciplines such as Hard Pure Life (e. g., Botany, Zoology) and Soft Pure Nonlife (e. g., English, Philosophy, Communications). Careful attention was paid to the different levels of stress reported by male and female faculty, with women professors reporting a higher level of stress than their male counterparts. We provide an assessment and explanation for this finding. Research ends with several proposals for individual faculty, department chairs and academic administrators for addressing the problem of workplace pressure and work overload.

Political culture, postmaterial values, and the new environmental paradigm: A comparative analysis of Canada and the United States

This study investigates the relationship between postmaterial values and the New Environmental Paradigm in Canada (Ontario) and the United States (Michigan). Based on survey data collected among both citizens and environmental activists, it is evident that among both Canadian and American respondents of both citizen and activist type the two value dimensions are similarly multidimensional and separate. Rather than reflecting a single larger dimension of value orientation, as claimed by some, it is clear that the Inglehart postmaterialist value measure and the Dunlap and Van Liere NEP index are separate constructs in the thinking of the Canadians and Americans surveyed. While these findings were parallel in the Canadian and American settings, a number of cross-national differences in how these values influence attitudes and behaviors are reported. In general, these findings underscore the need to continue to focus on variations in the cultural context of citizen responses to postindustrial change.

The status of community policing in American cities

“Community policing” has become the watchword for organizational change among law enforcement agencies across the USA over the past several years. In particular, concerted efforts to internalize this new policing philosophy have intensified with the passage of the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act in 1994, and since the strong endorsement of the community policing concept by the Clinton administration. Our analysis of data collected from a representative sample of 281 American police agencies in 1993 and again in 1996 permit a compelling examination of the community policing movement in this country over time. Our findings suggest that there has been a significant increase in community policing activities in recent years. Further, the level of interest in community policing training has intensified and impediments to the adoption of the community policing philosophy have become more easily identifiable. In addition, the results reported here also suggest that this change process has been quite dynamic, but the ultimate and widespread institutionalization of community policing still remains somewhat uncertain.