Elder abuse is recognized as an underdetected and an underreported social problem. Difficulties in detecting elder abuse are compounded by lack of a standardized, psychometrically valid instrument for case finding. The authors examined the construct validity of the 15-item Hwalek- Sengstock Elder Abuse Screening Test (H-S/EAST). Nine items were found to discriminate significantly among three groups: (a) elders whose reported abuse was substantiated by adult protective services (APS) case workers, (b) elders whose reported abuse was not substantiated by APS workers, and (c) a community-based comparison group. The data suggest that this short, easy-to-administer screening device can be useful to service providers interested in identifying people at high risk of the need for protective services.

Kell, L. T., Mosqueira, I., Grosjean, P., Fromentin, J-M., Garcia, D., Hillary, R., Jardim, E., Mardle, S., Pastoors, M. A., Poos, J. J., Scott, F., and Scott, R. D. 2007. FLR: an open-source framework for the evaluation and development of management strategies. – ICES Journal of Marine Science, 64: 640–646. The FLR framework (Fisheries Library for R) is a development effort directed towards the evaluation of fisheries management strategies. The overall goal is to develop a common framework to facilitate collaboration within and across disciplines (e.g. biological, ecological, statistical, mathematical, economic, and social) and, in particular, to ensure that new modelling methods and software are more easily validated and evaluated, as well as becoming widely available once developed. Specifically, the framework details how to implement and link a variety of fishery, biological, and economic software packages so that alternative management strategies and procedures can be evaluated for their robustness to uncertainty before implementation. The design of the framework, including the adoption of object-orientated programming, its feasibility to be extended to new processes, and its application to new management approaches (e.g. ecosystem affects of fishing), is discussed. The importance of open source for promoting transparency and allowing technology transfer between disciplines and researchers is stressed.

Two motives for alcohol consumption have been emphasized in the etiological and the reasonsfor-drinking literature: (a) people drink alcohol to cope with stress, and (b) people drink alcohol because of social influences. There is support for both of these hypotheses, but the results are usually modest and most authors agree that more complex theories of alcohol consumption are needed. This study examined the interactional effects of reasons for drinking alcohol and situational factors on alcohol consumption. Standardized telephone interviews were conducted with 781 randomly selected Michigan drinkers. Hierarchical multiple regression analyses indicated that gender, friends' alcohol consumption, coping, and social motives for drinking were significant predictors of study participants' alcohol consumption. As predicted, there was a significant interaction between drinking to cope with stress and perceived stress, and there was also a significant interaction between drinking for social reasons and friends' alcohol consumption. Similarities and differences in the results for women, men, Blacks, and Whites are described. Individuals' expressed reasons for drinking alcoholSince the 1950's, researchers have examined people's self-reported reasons for drinking alcohol (Cahalan, Cisin, & Crossley, 1969;Cooper, Russell, & George, 1988;Farber, Khavari, & Douglass, 1980;Johnson, Schwitters, Wilson, Nagoshi, & McClearn, 1985;Novacek, Raskin, & Hogan, 1991;Straus & Bacon, 1953). People do not have complete understanding of the nexus of physiological, psychological, social, and environmental factors that influence their behavior (Nisbett & Wilson, 1977). Nonetheless, self-reports of motives for drinking alcohol provide insight into people's psychological state and have empirically been related to consumption levels (Cahalan et al., 1969;Cooper et al., 1988;Farber et al., 1980). Most authors have focused on general samples of the adult population or college students, rather than alcoholics or identified problem drinkers. The majority of these studies have focused on the factor structure of individuals' motives for drinking, as well as determining if some types of motives are more strongly related than others to heavy alcohol consumption.Requests for reprints should be sent to: Antonia Abbey, PhD, Department of Community Medicine, Wayne State University, 4201 St. Antoine, Detroit, MI 48201. Cahalan et al. (1969) found that social reasons were more commonly given for drinking alcohol, but that heavy drinkers chose more coping reasons than did infrequent drinkers. Many researchers have found that drinking alcohol to cope with problems is more likely to lead to abusive drinking than is social drinking (Cahalan et al., 1969;Cooper et al., 1988;Farber et al., 1980;Johnson et al., 1985). There is also evidence, however, that social motives for consuming alcohol can lead to heavy drinking (Brennan, Walfish, & AuBuchon, 1986;Ratliff & Burkhart, 1984). For example, Brennan et al. (1986), in their review of the longitudinal liter...

The present investigation was designed to gain a better understanding of the psychosocial factors that predict reasons for drinking alcohol and how these drinking motives differentially relate to alcohol consumption. Four distinct reasons for drinking alcohol scales were established through factor analysis: drink to cope, drink to be sociable, drink to enhance social confidence, and drink for enjoyment. Multiple regression analyses showed that 1) each reason for drinking was predicted by a somewhat different set of demographic and psychosocial variables, and 2) the reasons for drinking, in turn, differentially predicted multiple indicators of quantity and frequency of alcohol consumption. Theoretical implications of the study results and suggestions for future research are discussed.

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