Emotional Intelligence as a Protective Factor Against Psychological Maltreatment in Dating Couples According to Age

Abstract

Psychological violence during dating is a current phenomenon of universal proportions. Initiatives are urgently required to deal with this reality, initiatives focused on anticipating the potentially violent dynamics. Various works of research have confirmed that emotional intelligence can be a protecting factor against violence in relationships. This paper analyses the relation between the capacity to exercise behavior patterns of psychological maltreatment within dating couples and the subjects’ emotional competences, as well as its relation to the subjects’ age. 1080 students of the University of Extremadura (Spain) participated in the study, aged between 17 and 23?years or more. The results show the presence of all the behavior patterns of psychological maltreatment analyzed, especially among the students aged 17–18?years. Similarly, the existence of significant correlations between all the manifestations of psychological violence and the emotional competences studied are confirmed, with a great variability in the results depending on the subjects’ age. Future studies are suggested focusing on training in emotional self-management skills as a protective agent against psychological violence in dating couples and as a healthy marital mechanism with no age limit.     

Good Intercultural Practices in Social Services Projects

ABSTRACT

This article reflects part of the results obtained from a wider research project aimed at the elaboration of a “Map of Good Intercultural Practices” in several areas of social intervention in Andalusia, Spain. It also reports the results obtained from the analysis portion related to the participating projects within the social services. Intercultural assessment was conducted at the level of institutional intervention through a 32-item questionnaire that was sent to 139 intercultural project-leading institutions measuring intercultural sensitivity. A definition of the fundamental concepts of “interculturality” and “good practice” is given to support the foundations of “good intercultural practice” (GIP). Such definitions help in the design and validation of a GIP Scale that was used in the analysis of 60 social services projects with an intercultural component. The results obtained underline the relevance of aspects such as intercultural empathy and show significant differences between the social services and other intervention sectors. Future research is proposed that studies GIP scale in other intervention sectors such as the private and public sector. Also, the transferability of the instruments and methodology used makes it possible that the research presented in this article is conducted in other geographical areas.     

Perceptions of Gangs and Crews by Justice-Involved Youth and Implications for Best Practice Work

ABSTRACT

Gangs and crews are at center stage when discussing youth violence. According to client-centered best practices in the social service arena, distinguishing between gangs and crews is not important for developing a trusting relationship; yet these terms are a master status for those agencies aimed at enforcement and suppression. Social service providers must navigate these different landscapes, particularly in light of their increasing involvement in multistakeholder violence-reduction partnerships. However, the voices of youth themselves have been left out of the mix. Perceptions of youth identified as gang affiliated or at risk for gang membership are used to empirically investigate how these best practices tensions should be navigated by service providers. Semistructured interviews with 41 youth involved in an employment program show that crews are perceived as less violent and less dangerous than gangs, and youth actively resisted the gang label, even though there were no differences in criminal records between self-identified gang and crew members. Implications for the important role of service providers in providing client-centered services and bringing forward youth voices into collaborative partnerships are discussed, as are future research needs relating to linking youth voices to best practice work.     

When Knowledge Is Not Enough: Elements to Strengthen Intercultural Sensitivity Among Professionals of Social Services in Andalusia (Spain)

ABSTRACT.

This study examines social services delivery in Andalusia, Spain, to determine the degree of cultural adaptation of its workers, given the important migratory flows taking place in the region during recent years. This study investigates the main characteristics of those workers with a high level of intercultural sensitivity (IS) and their cultural competences. The survey included 298 professionals with a validated IS scale along with questions related to the degree of intercultural contact and competence. A series of scales for the IS levels was created, and correlation analyses were carried out depending on the variables used. Results revealed high levels of self-attributed cultural competence and training as well as low levels of awareness and motivation for intercultural encounters. Theoretical knowledge appeared to be the only aspect in correlation with all dimensions of IS. Important deficits have been also observed when examining the type and intensity of contact among professionals and people of foreign origin. This highlights the need to transform knowledge in culturally adapted responses. Future research is necessary to deepen knowledge on how these aspects affect professional interventions.     

Weighted amplifiers and inapproximability results for Travelling Salesman problem

Journal of Combinatorial Optimization - The expander graph constructions and their variants are the main tool used in gap preserving reductions to prove approximation lower bounds of combinatorial...     

Devolution in the U.S. Welfare Reform: Divergence and Degradation in State Benefits

The Journal of Economic Inequality - The passage of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) in 1996 devolved responsibility for the design of welfare programs...     

The maximum dispersion problem

In the maximum dispersion problem, a given set of objects has to be partitioned into a number of groups. Each object has a non-negative weight and each group has a target weight, which may be different for each group. In addition to meeting the target weight of each group, all objects assigned to the same group should be as dispersed as possible with respect to some distance measure between pairs of objects. Potential applications for this problem come from such diverse fields as the problem of creating study groups or the design of waste collection systems. We develop and compare two different (mixed-) integer linear programming formulations for the problem. We also study a specific relaxation that enables us to derive tight bounds that improve the effectiveness of the formulations. Thereby, we obtain an upper bound by finding in an auxiliary graph subsets of given size with minimal diameter. A lower bound is derived based on the relation of the optimal solution of the relaxation to the chromatic number of a series of auxiliary graphs. Finally, we propose an exact solution scheme for the maximum dispersion problem and present extensive computational experiments to assess its efficiency.     

Organizational structure and success of international joint ventures in emerging economies: the case of Spanish–Moroccan SMEs

One of the most common ways in which SMEs internationalize their business is through the creation of joint ventures; nevertheless, many of these fail. To avoid this risk, it is important to identify the factors that favour the continuity of such enterprises. The aim of this paper is to analyse the factors related to organizational structure that determine the success of international joint ventures between SMEs in emerging economies, taking as the particular area of study the question of joint ventures between Spanish and Moroccan firms, located in Morocco. The research hypotheses were tested using a linear regression model applied to a sample of 210 international joint ventures. The results obtained from a structured survey show that, with respect to the success of the partnership, significant factors include the existence of majority ownership by the foreign partner, management by a local CEO and the effort made by each party to adapt to the management style of the other. This research contributes to the knowledge of the main factors related to the organizational structure of joint ventures that influence the level of success achieved. The value provided by this research lies in the breadth of the sample examined, in its focus on a very common type of partnership between SMEs, on which very little has been previously studied, and in the fact that the results obtained are extensible to other realities, such as partnerships between European companies and those from countries with similar characteristics (located in Africa or in countries where an Arab culture prevails).     

Paralinguistic Features Communicated through Voice can Affect Appraisals of Confidence and Evaluative Judgments

Journal of Nonverbal Behavior - This article unpacks the basic mechanisms by which paralinguistic features communicated through the voice can affect evaluative judgments and persuasion. Special...     

Coverage with k-transmitters in the presence of obstacles

For a fixed integer k≥0, a k-transmitter is an omnidirectional wireless transmitter with an infinite broadcast range that is able to penetrate up to k “walls”, represented as line segments in the plane. We develop lower and upper bounds for the number of k-transmitters that are necessary and sufficient to cover a given collection of line segments, polygonal chains and polygons.