Stepchildren’s Communicative and Emotional Journey from Divorce to Remarriage: Predictors of Stepfamily Satisfaction

This study explores the emotional and communicative profiles of young adults who have experienced a parental divorce and the emergence of a stepfamily to better understand influences on stepfamily satisfaction. Results of regression analyses indicate that strong negative emotions experienced at the time of the divorce are a negative predictor of current stepfamily satisfaction, even after controlling for age at the time of the divorce. In addition, level of open self-disclosure to a stepparent, although not parents, is a positive predictor of current stepfamily satisfaction. Finally, the extent to which the father has now fully explained the circumstances of the divorce is a positive predictor of current stepfamily satisfaction, whereas the extent to which mother has now fully explained the circumstances of the divorce is a negative predictor of current stepfamily satisfaction. These findings are discussed and future directions for research on stepfamily interaction and satisfaction are offered.     

Personality profiles of factitious disorder imposed by mothers: A comparative analysis

Factitious Disorder Imposed by Another (FDIA) can be difficult to expeditiously identify. Understanding personality characteristics of FDIA perpetrators via psychological assessment may decrease the time between initial abuse and identification of FDIA. Personality characteristics of FDIA mother-perpetrators were examined through a comparative analysis of MMPI-2 profiles. It was predicted that mother-perpetrators would have significantly higher overall profile elevations on the MMPI-2 and elevations on specific clinical scales than a comparative control group. Results indicated that mother-perpetrators displayed significantly higher, elevations on the Psychasthenia (Pt) and Schizophrenia (Sc) scales and a trend toward significantly higher elevation on the Psychopathic Deviate (Pd) scale than the control group. These findings, along with the demographic information obtained, establish a preliminary foundation for understanding an overall profile of mother-perpetrators.     

Parenting perceptions among college students: A qualitative examination

This study assessed the knowledge and attitudes of young adults without children in regard to discipline and parenting practices. A qualitative design was utilized (n?=?26) with semistructured focus groups. Results indicated participants believed discipline is important, with spanking and loss of privileges being the most effective strategy for behavior change. The majority of participants reported plans to discipline future children the way in which they were disciplined, suggesting a high percentage intend to utilize spanking. Findings suggest that personal experiences shape parenting beliefs, attitudes, and knowledge. Results inform efforts at educating future parents on appropriate parenting practices and indicate the need for protocols for young adults to educate about practices that may diverge from their personal experiences.     

Structural and Contextual Factors Regarding the Accessibility of Elective Office for Women of Color at the Local Level

Different from the majority of past research on gender gaps in political officeholding, we adopt an intersectionality framework and move beyond traditional individual factors to explore what implications certain elements in the political opportunity structure may have for women and men of color elected officials serving in county, municipal, and local school board offices. We argue that structural and contextual factors, such as type of institutions, election systems, and jurisdictional racial makeup, may influence the calculations women of color make concerning the accessibility of elective office. Using data from the Gender and Multiracial Leadership (GMCL) project, we find county offices to be the least, and seats on school boards the most, accessible to women of color. Of the types of electoral arrangements, we find multimember districts (MMD) to be the most significant variable predicting the likelihood of women of color in office. Although both Black and Latina women benefit from having a significant share of coethnics or nonwhites in jurisdictions, the two groups of women have an opposite relationship to their racial constituent makeup than that held by their male counterparts.     

A new family of multivariate slash distributions

In this article, a new form of multivariate slash distribution is introduced and some statistical properties are derived. In order to illustrate the advantage of this distribution over the existing generalized multivariate slash distribution in the literature, it is applied to a real data set.     

On fiducial generators

Fiducial inference has been gaining presence recently and it is the intention of the present article to look at the notion of fiducial generators; meaning procedures to simulate parameter values that in some sense correspond to simulations from some implicit fiducial distribution. It is well known that when the distribution has group structure, stemming from the natural pivotal associated, a fiducial may be obtained. It is in the non group distributions that there appears to be still room for finding a fiducial distribution. Recently some general procedures have been proposed for dealing with generalized fiducials, but these depend on certain choices for a structural equation or a fiducial equation, as in Hannig (2009 Hannig, J. (2009). On generalized fiducial inference. Stat. Sin. 19:491–544.[Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) or Taraldsen and Lindqvist (2013 Taraldsen, G., Lindqvist, B.H. (2013). Fiducial theory and optimal inference. Ann. Stat. 41(1):323–341.[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]), respectively. A brief presentation is made of an earlier approach to fiducial inference for multivariate parameters, as in Brillinger (1962 Brillinger, D.R. (1962). Examples bearing on the definition of fiducial probability with a bibliography. Ann. Math. Stat. 33(4):1349–1355.[Crossref] , [Google Scholar]), and the implied fiducial generator introduced in Engen and Lillegård (1997 Engen, S., Lillegård, M. (1997). Stochastic simulation conditioned on sufficient statistics. Biometrika 84(1):235–240.[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]), trying to connect them. Three interesting non group distributions are seen; two of them, the truncated exponential and the two-parameter gamma, already reported in literature. A third non group distribution is analyzed; the inverse Gaussian, connecting the fiducial that results following Brillinger (1962 Brillinger, D.R. (1962). Examples bearing on the definition of fiducial probability with a bibliography. Ann. Math. Stat. 33(4):1349–1355.[Crossref] , [Google Scholar]), with a result pertaining confidence limits for the shape parameter in Hsieh (1990 Hsieh, H.K. (1990). Inferences on the coefficient of variation of an inverse-Gaussian distribution. Commun. Stat. - Theory Methods 19(5):1589–1605.[Taylor &; Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). In the three cases, comparisons are made with the Bayesian posteriors that have been known to be close numerically. Some discussion is made on the issue of singularities of the fiducial density and its connection with densities that do not integrate to unity. As to the case of discrete observables, some comments are made for the Bernoulli distribution, only.     

Feminine or feminist? Women’s media leadership

This paper presents a small-scale qualitative case study of five women’s experiences of leadership roles in Irish media industries. Relational Leadership Theory is used to examine whether there is a gendered dimension to women’s leadership and to explore why women’s participation in leadership has not resulted in significant feminist gains or changes to media organisations. The article finds that: the women saw their leadership as relational and simultaneously as socially constructed in a gendered manner. Moreover, the women led organisational change towards greater gender equality in the norms of media work. However, while the women’s leadership was relational and feminine, it was not necessarily feminist; it did not aim to generate systemic changes within the gendering of the media as an institution. The changes that the women wrought incorporated women into a system of production that remained nonetheless masculinist.     

MANAGING ACADEMIC INTERDISCIPLINARY RESEARCH PROJECTS*

This field study provides variables that can be used by practitioners as action levers and by future researchers as the basis for theoretical development. Conclusions from relevant literature and findings from interviews with interdisciplinary research management identified forty variables that were viewed as important to interdisciplinary research project success. After adjusting the data for reliability attenuation, these variables were further analyzed to identify the best prediction equation. The findings suggested that project age or the longevity of the project and open discussion of disagreements were the best predictors of performance.     

The queer periphery: sexual deviancy and the cultural understanding of space

The association of normative sexuality with the geographical center and sexual deviancy with the geographical periphery represents a pattern of thinking that has stayed with us in different guises throughout history. The article traces this pattern and some of its complex ramifications from the ancient Greeks to the present.