Objective: Differences between biologic and non-biologic parents' acceptance and use of ordinary corporal punishment and use of explaining/reasoning as a disciplinary tool are examined from a sociobiological theoretical perspective. Method: Cross tabulations are used on data from a national survey conducted by the Gallup Organization in 1995. Results: Contrary to predictions, differences between biologic and non-biologic parents' acceptance of ordinary corporal punishment and the use of explaining/reasoning are not statistically significant. In addition, biologic parents are found to use ordinary corporal punishment significantly more often than non-biologic parents. Conclusions: The sociobiological theoretical perspective likely underestimates the influence of culture and social structure on parent-child interactions.

The impact of social influence from others on choices made by subjects and how this influence accumulates was studied by secondary analysis of reported experimental data. To explain this impact a link is proposed between social influence network theory (SINT) and status characteristics theory (SCT). The link formula transforms stay probabilities for different status relationships of subject with one disagreeing other agent into horizontal axis coordinate values while stay probabilities of subject given two disagreeing others are transformed into vertical-axis coordinate values corresponding to the horizontal axis values for further analyses. The results support the utility of the proposed link between the two theories.

The problem examined is community solidarity in a well-established prison town. The primary question addressed in this study is "what is the reported impact of a correctional facility's presence on community solidarity?" This study is concerned with the community's perception about the problems, as well as the benefits involved in the housing of a prison and in particular the solidarity of the community. The relevant literature dates from 1929 to 2004 and examines a wide range of concepts associated with community studies and prison studies. Based on themes found in the review of prison literature; work issues, safety, concern about children, stress, community image, benefits, community identity, and community cohesion, seven research questions were constructed. A semi-structured interview was conducted of 81 residents of Walker County in Huntsville, Texas. Huntsville houses 9 prisons. The prison system is the primary employer in the county. A qualitative data analysis using Altius/tr as a tool for content analysis was used. Throughout the data, community residents consistently indicated solidarity. Emerging from the data were seven themes associated with community solidarity:(a) unqualified community pride, (b) normalization, (c) defensiveness against the media, (d) qualified community pride, (e) denial, (f) community and myths, (g) economics.