Agency practices in successful adoption of developmentally disabled children

The authors discuss the variables associated with success in placing developmentally disabled children for adoption by public and private agencies. They also describe the results of their national study of 199 agencies.     

Family Cohesion And Control: A Multitrait-Multimethod Study*

This study assessed the convergent and discriminant validity of widely used various measures of family cohension and control using a multitrait, multi-method approach. Forty-two families, who had at least one adolescent and who were currently receiving family therapy, completed self-report measures of cohesion and control and engaged in Reiss' Card Sort Procedure. Ratings of the families' cohesiveness were also obtained from the families and their therapists. We were only partially successful in demonstrating convergent validity and discriminant validity for the family trait of cohesiveness across measures and methods, and even less so for family control. There was a general lack of relationship between self-report measures and either the therapist rating of family cohesion or the family's performance on the Card Sort Procedure. Our results cast doubt on the construct validity of some of the best measures of family functioning currently available. Implications of this are discussed.     

Shifting Loyalties: Support for a Global State and Nationalism

It has been suggested that the increasing power and prominence of global organizations may be undermining the nation state as an organizational form. In an attempt to understand how these dynamics may play out at the individual level a sample of US social movement actors were surveyed to measure support for nationalism and support for the creation of a global state. Support for a global state is hypothesized to be negatively associated with support for national governments. Multivariate binary and ordinal logistic regressions show a number of demographic and attitudinal variables are positively associated with nationalism and, generally, are negatively associated with support for a global state.

Se ha sugerido que el creciente poder y la importancia de las organizaciones globales pueden estar debilitando la nación estado como una forma organizacional. En un intento para entender la manera como estas dinámicas pueden interpretarse a un nivel individual, se realizó una encuesta a una muestra de actores del movimiento social estadounidense para medir el respaldo al nacionalismo y el apoyo a la creación de un estado global. El respaldo a un estado global de estar asociado negativamente con el apoyo a los gobiernos nacionales, es una hipótesis. Las regresiones logísticas ordinales, binares y multivariantes, que muestran un número de variables demográficas y de actitud, están asociadas positivamente con el nacionalismo y generalmente asociadas negativamente con el respaldo a un estado global.

有观点认为,全球性组织日益增长的权力和声望可能正在动摇作为一种组织形式的民族国家的地位。为求了解这种动势如何在个人层面上演变,本文选取了美国社会运动参与者作为样本进行调查,测量其对国家主义的支持程度和对建立全球性国家的支持程度。本文的假设是,对全球性国家的支持与对各国政府的支持负相关。多元二进制逻辑回归分析和有序逻辑回归分析结果显示,若干人口和态度变量与支持国家主义正相关,与支持全球性国家负相关。

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Developmentally disabled children can be adopted

People have often thought that developmentally disabled children were hard to place and poor risks in adoption. However, this research shows that a large number of children of all ages and disabilities were placed for adoption with few disruptions. In light of these findings, agencies may well put more effort into identifying developmentally disabled children as suitable candidates for adoption services.     

Parent–child joint media engagement in infancy

Early conversations are an important source in shaping children's cognitive and emotional development, and it is vital to understand how parents use media as a platform to engage in conversations with their young children and what might predict the quality of these interactions. Thus, in the current study we explored the nature of parent–child discourse while engaging in media (i.e., joint media engagement) with infants, and how parent (empathic concern and responsiveness) and child (negative emotionality and regulatory capacity) variables might be associated with the quality of engagement. The current study consisted of 269 infants (50% female, M_age = 17.09 months, SD = 3.93; 59% White) and their primary caregiver (98% mothers) who engaged in a variety of in‐home tasks and parental questionnaires. Results established three meaningful codes for both parent and child that assessed positive and negative joint media engagement. Further, results suggested that parental empathic concern was associated with positive parent and child media engagement, while child negative emotionality was associated with lower levels of distraction. Discussion focuses on the importance of studying parent–child discourse in the context of joint media engagement and recommends limiting media exposure before 18 months of age.     

The impact of parent and child media use on early parent–infant attachment

With the rise in affordability of digital media and mobile devices, children under age 2 on average spend significantly more time with digital media than is recommended. Although concerns have been expressed about how parent and child media use might negatively impact parent–child attachment, there continues to be a scarcity of research on the topic. The current study assessed both the amount and the way in which children (11–26 months) and their parents engage with digital media and the impact on early attachment after controlling for temperament, parent income, parent age, marital status, and access to support. The study utilizes data from a diverse sample: 248 parents of infants completed an attachment q-sort and surveys assessing the amount of media use, parental absorption in media, types of parental mediation, temperament, and demographics. Results showed that for both parent and child, time using digital media and co-viewing was not predictive of attachment insecurity. Parental absorption in media was found to significantly predict attachment insecurity. Greater child TV media use was associated with poorer attachment security when there was limited to no parental active mediation. Active mediation served as a protective factor for attachment while parental absorption in media serves as a risk factor for attachment.     

Research with Children and Young People: The Issue of Parental (Proxy) Consent

This study examines the potential problems with the parental consent requirement, substantiated with examples mainly from healthcare and social research studies. This will illustrate how the parental consent requirement, instead of promoting high ethical standards, may result in some instances of children’s rights and ethical considerations being ignored or receiving cursory attention. The ‘blanket’ requirement of parental consent for all research involving children under the age of 18 years needs to be challenged as it fails to recognise children’s capacities and accord children due respect as persons in their own right. Flexible ethical guidelines should be developed that take cognisance of children’s competence in contemporary society and at the same time protects children from inappropriate research and procedures.     

A representative measure of psychological aggression and its severity

Surveys of psychological aggression have been plagued by a variety of conceptual and measurement problems. A new measure was devised to more systematically cover a full range of psychologically aggressive actions; to include items for each dimension/category at a milder, moderate, and severe level; to be applicable to dating as well as marital relationships; and to utilize items that were broader in nature to capture all instances of particular types of psychological aggression. Three hundred and eighty-three college students rated the 51 items as to their degree of "psychological abusiveness." The 17 categories were rated as mostly distinct from each other; almost every category had statistically distinct mild, moderate and severe items; the overall scale yielded basically normal psychometric properties; and the total score, as well as the scores for the mild, moderate, and severe items, all had very high internal consistency. Ratings of these items appear to be distinct from social desirability as well as from a number of attitudinal response sets, and only sex of the participant was significantly, although weakly, correlated with overall ratings of the psychological aggression items. This measure may provide for more systematic investigation into the concept of psychological aggression.     

Instagrowth: A Longitudinal Growth Mixture Model of Social Media Time Use Across Adolescence

This study examined differential patterns of time spent using social media in a sample of 457 adolescents over a 6‐year period. The majority of adolescents (83%), termed moderate users, reported steady social media use over time. A second group (increasers: 12%) reported low social media use that increased gradually and ended high at the end of the study. A third group, called peak users (6%), reported low social media that increased quickly after a few years and then returned to baseline levels. Low self‐regulation predicted being an increaser or peak user. Being a moderate user tended to be related to lower levels of depression, aggression, delinquency, social media problems, and cyberbullying across time, as compared with the other groups.