School Bullying and Moral Reasoning Competence

To examine whether high moral reasoning competence of adolescents is associated with low levels of bullying, and to understand whether moral disengagement mediates or moderates this relationship, 925 German children ranging from 11 to 17 years of age (M = 14.18, SD = 1.21) completed questionnaires on moral reasoning competence and moral disengagement in surveys at three different schools. The children were classified according to their bullying role, based on a peer‐nomination procedure. Multinomial logistic regression analyses showed that moral reasoning competence negatively predicted whether a student took an aggressive role. Moral disengagement partially mediated this relationship. Corresponding effects for defenders and outsiders were not found. These results extend previous findings about the effect of moral reasoning on bullying in primary school. The implications for the prevention of bullying are discussed.     

Psychological Abuse in Young Couples: Risk Factors

ABSTRACT

In a study conducted at a major university in Spain, 648 university students between the ages of 17 and 23 years were assessed to identify the manifestations of psychological abuse prior to the consolidation of marital status (e.g., matrimony, start of cohabitation). To evaluate psychological abuse in the students’ intimate relationships, the authors created a Questionnaire on Psychological Abuse. Results show coercive patterns of interaction in the students’ dating relationships. Significant differences were found between men and women, with behavioral factors such as hostility, blaming, and abusive insistence. Future research is suggested that would permit changes in attitude and behavior to be introduced into dating relations.     

La escala «directiveness» de Ray y el autoritarismo

Resumen

La escala «directiveness» de Ray (1976) es uno de los instrumentos diseñados para la medición del autoritarismo. En este trabajo se estudia la relación de esta medida con el dogmatismo, orientación política, edad y sexo, variables de interés en el campo de las actitudes socio-políticas, los resultados obtenidos nos permiten concluir que la escala «directiveness» no es ütil para el fin pretendido. También se subraya la necesidad de proceder a un debate teórico más riguroso en torno al autoritarismo político.     

Influential Observations in the Functional Measurement Error Model

In this work we propose Bayesian measures to quantify the influence of observations on the structural parameters of the simple measurement error model (MEM). Different influence measures, like those based on q-divergence between posterior distributions and Bayes risk, are studied to evaluate the influence. A strategy based on the perturbation function and MCMC samples is used to compute these measures. The samples from the posterior distributions are obtained by using the Metropolis-Hastings algorithm and assuming specific proper prior distributions. The results are illustrated with an application to a real example modeled with MEM in the literature.     

Recruitment and retention of ethnically diverse long-term family caregivers for research

The inclusion of ethnically diverse long-term care family caregivers is significant in research, particularly in social work research because of the importance placed on diverse populations. However, the inclusion of diverse populations poses a set of unique recruitment and retention challenges for researchers. This process can be particularly complicated when multiple long-term care recruitment partners are utilized and when the project involves a multi-phase data collection plan with different minority recruitment needs for each phase. In our work we learned that: (a) research teams should plan for gender and ethnic differences in the ways that family caregivers think about and approach research involvement, (b) socioeconomic disadvantages and ethnic differences have both independent and interactive effects on research participation, (c) physical and emotional "costs," as well as financial costs, of caregiver participation should be given more attention in informed consent procedures, and (d) agency collaboration for minority recruitment and retention requires continuous nurturing and sustained effort by all members of the research team.     

An integrated relapse prevention and relationship safety intervention for women on methadone: testing short-term effects on intimate partner violence and substance use

This study tests the feasibility, safety, and short-term preliminary effects of a relapse prevention and relationship safety (RPRS) intervention in reducing drug use and the experience of intimate partner violence (IPV) among women on methadone. For this randomized controlled trial, 34 women who met IPV and drug use criteria were randomly assigned to either the RPRS condition (n = 16) or a one-session informational control (IC) condition (n = 18). RPRS participants were more likely than IC participants to report a decrease in minor physical or sexual IPV (OR = 7.1, p = .05), minor psychological IPV (OR = 5.3, p = .03) and severe psychological IPV (OR = 6.07, p = .03) at the 3-month follow-up. Data suggest that RPRS participants were also more likely than IC participants to report a decrease in any drug use at 3 months (OR = 3.3, p = .08). This study provides preliminary evidence that the RPRS intervention is effective in reducing IPV and drug use among women on methadone.     

Spanish version of the Cultural Intelligence Scale (CQS) / Versión española de la Escala de Inteligencia Cultural (EIC)

Abstract

In recent years, the concept of cultural intelligence has received increasing attention by researchers and professionals because of its theoretical and practical importance. To understand why some individuals adapt more effectively than others to culturally different social contexts has become a goal with implications for education, recruitment and the prevention of social conflict. The goal of this study was to adapt the Cultural Intelligence Scale (CQS) to Spanish. To do so, two studies were carried out. In the first, the psychometric properties generated by the CQS on a Spanish sample (N = 413) were analysed. In the second study, a confirmatory replication of the factor structure and reliability of the CQS was performed with a different Spanish sample (N = 526) from the first study. The results indicated that the Spanish version of the Cultural Intelligence Scale can be considered a useful and appropriate tool to be used with psychometric guarantees in the Spanish-speaking population.     

Staying Close to the Core: Lessons from Studying the Costs of Unrelated Alliances in Spanish Banking

This article analyses whether alliances create shareholders value, and if this value differs depending on the similarity of the partners' businesses, or on the similarity of the partners' businesses with that of the alliance. Using data from 467 equity and non-equity based strategic alliances from 1996-1999 involving at least one listed Spanish bank, we find that, overall, alliances create shareholder value, but that the returns to shareholders are significantly higher when alliance activity is closer to the core business of the banks, than when alliances involve unrelated activities. Although there is no evidence that unrelated strategic alliances destroy value on average, the results obtained show that banks need to assess the benefits and costs of diversification strategies carefully, as their likelihood of success is initially smaller.