THE PRESIDENT'S COLUMN

by Lew Hendrix

Recently concerns have been expressed about the financial health of the SCCR. While the Society is solvent, one current concern is that the Society must purchase more copies of our journal from Sage Publishers than we send out to members. Several suggestions were made for closing this gap at the 1996 business meeting in Pittsburgh. While we plan to renegotiate this part of the contract with Sage, we are also trying to gain about forty or fifty new members for the SCCR. Blanket advertising is generally expensive and ineffective for a specialized group like the SCCR. In its place we have devised a three-pronged approach for advertising that is either less expensive or more directed than are blanket mailings.

First, Bill Divale has prepared a new brochure on the SCCR. We plan for members to urge colleagues who are interested in comparative research to join the Society and to send them copies of the brochure. If you want your copies right away, just e-mail me (lhendrix@siu.edu) or call (618-453-7625). Be sure to indicate how many copies you want and the slow-mail address where you will receive them. Otherwise, you can pick up your copies next February at our meeting in San Antonio. These brochures also will be available for members of other social science organizations at their meetings.

A second prong is our new SCCR homepage on the internet, which Bill Gabrenya has up and running well, which may add to our visibility. Tell your friends and students about it. If you have not visited the website, have a look at it. The URL is: http://www.fit.edu/CampusLife/clubs-org/sccr

The third prong is free advertising in our own journal, Cross-Cultural Research. Mel Ember will be placing an ad with a membership form in each issue. Like the internet page, this advertising is free, except for the labor going into it. While we do not anticipate massive responses from any of these sources, a few journal or internet browsers may want to join the SCCR.

Another recurrent issue for the SCCR--one that may relate to membership--is the question of joint meetings with sister organizations oriented toward cross-cultural psychology and social networks. If SCCR were a lively and constructive presence at joint meetings, we might get a few new members. I do not know the pros and cons of joint meetings, or the extent of enthusiasm within SCCR. The council will discuss this possibility for the 1999 meeting. If you have ideas or opinions on this matter, please communicate them to me.

THIS AND THAT

Roy Malpass

XCUL, the Cross-Cultural Psychology discussion list, is back on-line after an extended illness. Its address is: XCUL@UTEPA.BITNET or XCUL@utepvm.utep.edu. To subscribe you may send a message to listserv@utepvm.utep.edu that says:

sub xcul your real name

The listserver will take your address from the message header. If you want to change addresses, you may leave the list by sending to LISTSERV@UTEPVM.UTEP.EDU the following message

signoff xcul

and then re-subscribing as described above. If you have difficulties with the list, let me know at rmalpass@utep.edu.

International Association for Cross-Cultural Psychology

Marshall Segall, President, IACCP

At the recent IACCP meetings in Montreal, there was discussion in the executive committee of dues structure, membership recruitment, and newsletter dissemination. No action was taken in respect of these issues regarding pooling efforts with SCCR. IACCP looks forward to continued cooperation with SCCR (viz.- a-vis, participation in each other's meetings), but will go it alone in recruitment, maintaining a separate dues structure, and disseminating its newsletter. IACCP will continue to use regular mail for its newsletter (rather than e-mail) but it should be recalled that IACCP does have a Web page, where much of its news is available electronically.

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