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Despite more than 30 years of public health programs to reduce tobacco use, smoking is still the leading preventable cause of death in the United States. In response to this continuing epidemic, voters in California (1988), Massachusetts (1992), Arizona (1994), and Oregon (19%) approved ballot initiatives that established state- wide tobacco control programs funded by cigarette excise tax revenues. Evaluating these innovative public health interventions is important, both to improve existing programs and to guide other states in developing and implementing similar interventions. In this paper we describe the methods being used to evaluate the statewide anti-tobacco campaigns in California and Massachusetts, and review the findings of process and outcome evaluations of both programs. Our review suggests that both programs have had a substantial impact on the public `s health by reducing cigarette consumption and stimulating the development of policies to reduce environmental tobacco smoke exposure. However, it does not appear that either program has reduced smoking initiation among adolescents. Our evaluation suggests three problems in pm gram implementation that future anti-tobacco campaigns must avoid in order to produce long-term, sustained effects: (1) the gradual erosion of program funding by the state legislatures and governors; (2) the lack of a consistent, supportive constituency within state government and (3) inconsistency in campaign themes, messages, and programs. We conclude by offering recommendations to correct these problems so that state- wide cigarette-tax -funded anti-tobacco campaigns can realize their potential to become one of the most effective public health interventions available. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Large numbers of patients leave mental hospitals to become residents of community-based sheltered-care facilities, yet little is known about how they use particular local environments to satisfy their needs and wants. This paper considers a crucial issue in community care placement, person-environment fit, using survey data from interviews with 397 residents in 211 sheltered-care facilities, drawn from 157 census tracts in California. It studies how individual characteristics interact with eight environmental contexts to influence sheltered-care residents' external social integration. The results underline the power of social norms to determine ex-patient outcomes within specific environments. Ex-patients do relatively better in facility/community environments that allow their independent outreach, and also where they either share personal characteristics with the dominant social group or the dominant group is able to tolerate behavioral differences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents editorial notes. It states that readers wishing to discuss or comment upon any of the articles in various issues of the Journal of Social Issues may submit their reactions or criticisms to the editor, Bertram H. Raven, Department of Psychology, University of California, Los Angeles. Criticisms or observations of general interest will be published in a Comments and Rejoinders section of the journal. The Selected Articles Issue will receive approximately 25% of the yearly page total of the Journal of Social issues and will be devoted to individual articles consistent with the journal's policy.

We examined views on same-sex marriage in the context of California's Proposition 8 among a community sample of non-Black gay men, lesbians, and bisexual men and women (GLBs) as well as Black heterosexuals. Additionally, we investigated whether GLBs' perception of Blacks' views on same-sex marriage influenced the extent to which they blamed Blacks for the passage of Proposition 8. As expected, GLBs viewed same-sex marriage as a civil rights issue significantly more than a moral issue and as analogous to the 1960s Civil Rights Campaign. The views of Black heterosexuals, however, varied greatly by their vote on Proposition 8. Furthermore, the more GLBs perceived Blacks to view same-sex marriage as a civil rights issue, the less they blamed Blacks for the passage of Proposition 8. These findings suggest that GLBs and Blacks frame the issue of same-sex marriage differently and point to important intergroup consequences of perceived views of others. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study of civic participation and social capital in the United States has, until recently, been silent on the role of immigrant-serving organizations. There is a new line of scholarship, which indicates that ethnic organizations are generally disadvantaged in relation to White mainstream organizations on factors such as resources and political visibility. Our fieldwork on Mexican hometown associations (HTAs) in Los Angeles shows that transnational associations are even more disadvantaged than ethnic organizations that primarily serve the native born. However, this marginality leaves some counterintuitive advantages, namely the creation of safe spaces where undocumented immigrants, recent immigrants, and those with limited English proficiency can get involved in civic and political activities. We explore the extent to which these dynamics vary by gender and immigrant generation, and over time as Mexican hometown associations increasingly turn their attention to political issues in the United States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research elicited and assessed the perspectives on violence of 41 middle–school students attending a unique school in a low–income section of a large northern California city. Through participation in and observation of instruction and other school–related activities, the researchers explored ways that these students experienced and reflected on violence in their lives and in popular culture. The researchers probed ways that these students’ interpreted or reflected upon rap music and hip–hop culture, particularly its representations of violence, crime, and sex. This research provided insights into what these youth thought about violence in their lives including its depictions in electronic media. Additionally, it revealed ways that they resisted and/or critiqued some negative images and influences of hip–hop and rap. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Analysis of the California State Civil Service indicates that the salary structure established in the 1930s explicitly lowered salaries for female-dominated job titles simply because these jobs were filled by women. Moreover, this wage structure continues to influence current wages, even while controlling for the wages paid by similar establishments. The stability of the wage structure results from the state's policy of maintaining the relative salary structure, despite conflicting market wages. As a result of maintaining this wage structure, female-dominated jobs have been underpaid between $202 -$990 million in the period from 1973 to 1986. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Brunswik's probabilistic functionalism and the lens model offers a conceptual framework for linking environmental assessment with environmental perception and cognition in the study of such urban problems as inference and action regarding crime opportunity and crime vulnerability. An adaptation of Brunswik's lens model is applied to analysis of inferences about urban conditions. The ecological validity of cues generated by technical and observational assessments of residential streets in San Francisco is gauged for three conditions: traffic volume, average family income and residents' concern about crime. The functional validity of estimates of these conditions by expert judges is also appraised, and policy capturing is illustrated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study of consumers of erotica is based upon observational data from adult movie theaters, bookstores, and arcades, and upon indepth questionnaires from two samples of movie theater patrons. Data from over 4000 observations and 251 questionnaires were compared. The average consumer of erotica in San Francisco appears as a white, middle-aged, married male, neatly attired and shopping alone. Questionnaire data reveal that these patrons are also well-educated, highly paid, and employed in white-collar or above occupations. Most consumers lead an active and varied sex life and report that involvement in the erotic marketplace increases their social and sexual interaction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines trends in mental hospital commitments among the Chinese in California over the past one hundred years. There has been a two-fold increase for the general population compared to a seven-fold increase among the Chinese; while initially the Chinese had substantially lower rates of commitment, since the 1930s they have been roughly equal to the general population. Rates of increase within the Chinese population were not uniform; males, the aged, and the foreign born experienced substantially greater increases. Changes have also occurred in patterns of diagnosis and length of hospitalization over the century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Los Angeles riot participants, both actual and "psychological," were compared with nonparticipants to see if participation could be predicted, using stepwise multiple linear regression analysis and a second form of linear regression analysis (Wood's algorithm). Data were from 586 interviews of black residents, representing a random sample of the riot curfew area. Neither active nor psychological riot participation could be predicted when age and sex were not controlled, but significant prediction was possible when the population was divided into four groups by age and sex. The usefulness of the regression in characterizing rioters versus nonrioters is limited because a large number of independent variables is needed. Results support the theory that rioting is a community phenomenon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The data presented discuss the motivations and personality of the female medical school student from the University of California, San Francisco campus. Inductive analyses of conscious reasons for entering medical school reveal the importance of encouragement from others, long-standing interest, self-development motives, and altruism. In contrast to studies reported on male subjects, economic and prestige factors as well as the unreachable aspect of other occupations are seldom mentioned by women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Longitudinal data from the University of California at Berkeley are analyzed to test the relevance of New Left explanations of student protest politics when applied more generally to the study of student libertarianism. After first noting the predominance of change (more often in a libertarian direction) among the Berkeley panel, analysis turns to several prominent New Left themes purporting to help account for student activism in the sixties. These include a concern with students' class origins, dissatisfaction with the modern university, rejection of conventional achievement values, and intellectual competence. Except for dissatisfaction with the university, all of these themes are found to be of relevance iii understanding student libertarianism. It is argued that the well-known association between social class background and student activism not only does not extend to the realm of attitudes regarding political tolerance, hut has also been over-emphasized in its own right. The analysis suggests that a complex pattern of intellectualism and ascetic idealism may under- lie the emergence of political tolerance among college undergraduates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The basic hypothesis offered here is that the outbreak of mass violence was an almost inevitable consequence of the major population changes that American Negroes have been undergoing in recent years. (1) The most important of these population changes have been the movement from the South to the North, the movement from rural areas to the largest metropolitan centers, and the rapid rise in the average level of education, in combination with the extreme youth of the black population. (2) Individuals from the "new" background (the young natives of Northern cities) were considerably more active in the riots than were those from the "old" background (the older migrants from the South). (3) Two principal socio-psychological mediators were offered to explain this finding: the attitudinal and behavioral effects of changes in black racial socialization, and of differential comparison levels. (4) Evidence was presented that early racial socialization produces predispositions that tend to endure through life. For Negroes, contemporary Northern socialization is generally thought to involve more abrasive and assertive norms of behavior toward white authority and white-dominated social institutions than does Southern socialization, particularly that of earlier times. Data from the Watts riot suggest that young Northern natives were more disaffected from the political structure, and were more likely to endorse violence, than were older and migrant residents. The disaffected were also considerably more likely to have been involved in the riot. (5) The Northern natives also appear to feel more deprived than do the Southern blacks. And dissatisfaction in this sense was related to participation in the riot. It goes without saying that no single explanation or set of explanations is likely to be adequate for such complex and massive social events as the recent race riots. However, the evidence presented here suggests that fundamental and irreversible social changes in the location and characteristics of the black population have produced important social-psychological changes within individual blacks. These, in turn, have increased enormously the probability that blacks will respond to white racism with intransigence, vigorous protest, and even violence. The further implication is that the apparently centrifugal movement represented by the Deacons, the Black Panthers, and the wavering attachment of some young militants to the American political and economic system are not epiphenomena; nor are they merely representative of a small minority's peculiar and disreputable ideas. They symbolize, although in more extreme form, the direction being taken by young ghetto natives throughout the country. Our data suggest that the direction and thrust of this movement are irreversible without extreme measures that white Americans presumably would not condone. The question appears to be whether or not institutional America, and the white population more generally, are prepared to accept the new "black man" as a replacement for the old "Negro." There seems to be little chance that the latter will return. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a comparative analysis of militant and non-militant views of the riots that took place in Los Angeles, California. The author states that in August 1965, the date of the Los Angeles riot, most Afro-American militants did not fulfill the criteria necessary to be identified as a formal political group. They did not have and did not belong to organizations having a systematic political ideology, nor did they have any articulated programs for social change. The Revolutionary Action Movement and the Black Panthers had not been heard from and most of the currently popular local nationalist groups were nonexistent. In the main, those Afro-Americans who are now called radical were simply militantly, that is, vigorously and aggressively, pro-Afro-American. Their militancy laid in their endorsement of Afro-American action that served to provide an image of black strength against white society. In the eyes of most Afro-American and white citizens, the Afro-American Muslims were the only exponents of black radicalism.