Parental Discussion of Child Sexual Abuse: Is It Associated with the Parenting Practices of Involvement,Monitoring, and General Communication?

We investigated whether parents who reported more positive parenting practices (i.e., monitoring, involvement, and communication) reported more discussion of child sexual abuse (CSA) with their children. Parents from Australia and the UK (N = 248), with children aged 6 to 11 years, completed an online survey. About half of parents reported directly discussing CSA, whereas 35% reported telling their children that CSA perpetrators may be family members. Rates of discussion were higher for other CSA-related topics such as body integrity and abduction. Correlational analyses showed that parents who reported speaking to their children about CSA also reported more positive parenting practices, more discussion of other sensitive topics, and assessed CSA risk for children (in general) to be higher. Discussion of CSA risk was not associated with parents' CSA knowledge, confidence or appraisal of own-child risk. Parents higher in positive parenting believed their children to be at less CSA risk. Parents who appraised higher own-child risk reported less positive parenting practices and were less confident about their parenting and their ability to protect their children from CSA. The findings are the first to report on the associations of parenting practices with parents' CSA discussion with their children.     

Narratives of fathering young children in Britain: linking quantitative and qualitative analyses

The paper examines how in Britain the time fathers and couples spend in employment shifts in the first years of children’s lives, the conditions under which this happens and how fathers feel about and experience time with their families and time in paid work. In order to achieve these aims new longitudinal analysis of the UK Millennium Cohort Study (MCS) is carried out together with secondary analysis of narrative case studies drawn from a qualitative study of Fatherhood across the Generations. By linking these datasets the paper examines the potential for corroboration and complementarity between different types of data. Further, it seeks to show how qualitative cases corroborate, elaborate and expand on the main employment trajectories in the MCS population of fathers and how these extend understandings of fathers’ experience of time within families.     

Mother’s Relative Educational Status and Early Childhood Height-for-Age z Scores: A Decomposition of Change Over Time

Population Research and Policy Review - This paper explores the association between changes in mother’s relative educational status and changes in early childhood nutrition focusing on the...     

Teachers' delivery skills and substance use prevention program outcomes: the moderating role of students' need for cognition and impulse decision making

The purpose of this study was to extend the literature in both substance use implementation and persuasive health communication by examining the extent to which students' need for cognition and impulsive decision-making moderated the relationship between teachers' classroom communication behavior and program outcomes in an evidence-based middle school substance use prevention curriculum. Participants included 48 teachers and their respective 7th grade students who participated in a randomized trial testing the effectiveness of personal coaching as a means to improve the quality with which teachers implemented the All Stars curriculum. Need for cognition and impulse decision-making were both associated with positive changes in lifestyle incongruence and commitments to not use substances for students whose teachers displayed greater interactive teaching. Further, need for cognition was associated with lower alcohol use rates while impulse decision making related to lower rates of marijuana use in classes with interactive teaching.     

Quo vadis, Hausgemeinschaft? Zum Wandel nachbarschaftlicher Beziehungen in den östlichen Bundesländern

Before the reunification of Germany, the contact to neighbours is now often said with romantically transformed undertones, to have enjoyed a high level of stability, solidarity, human warmth, and community-mindedness. The structure of neighbourly relations in a socialistic housing block community collective is discussed in this paper, in retrospect. Furthermore, the meaning of these informal contacts is dealt with in terms of being a socialistic collective personal niche or important resource compensating the East-German economy of deficiency. A qualitative empirical study deals with the changing processes within neighbour contacts after the fall of the ?Wall“ between East and West and subsequent end of the GDR. The results indicate a number of relationships changing in housing blocks and between neigbours in the community. However, assumptions cannot be confirmed which state neighbourly relationships or contacts have been broken off with only negative results. Reasons for a change in East German neighbourhoods do not seem to be alone a result of the political turn-around. The reason for that is the particular neighbourhood structure of the so-called really existing socialism (real existierender Sozialismus) in the past times of the GDR.     

Class and Disability: influences on learning expectations

This paper describes some findings from in-depth interviews with 10 adults with disabilities, most of whom had strong working class connections. It places the findings in the context of feminist post-structuralist theory. Whilst the research is not directly to do with gender relationships, the theoretical framework highlights notions of difference, cultural value and meaning which play a significant role in the power relationships between dominant and subordinated groups. The interviews invited participants to tell their life story with regard to educational experiences. Analysis of these stories indicated that expectations, rather than ambitions, had influenced most people's educational activities as adults. The combination of poor childhood experiences, class and disability attitudes, had a powerful influence on personal goals, which appeared to misrepresent real potential or real interest, once stimulated. The extract here is part of a larger research project which is looking at differentials amongst three different learner group cultures. The research is concerned with the mismatch of expectations among university continuing education providers and those of under-represented groups.     

Estimating demographic characteristics using the ratio-correlation method

Studies of the relative accuracy of methods of estimating the population at the substate level have generally found that the greatest degree of accuracy is provided by the ratio-correlation, or regression, method. This paper reports on research aimed at evaluating the effectiveness of this method in estimating the age and race composition of populations at the substate level. In addition to the basic multiple regression equation, variants such as stratification and the averaging of estimates from simple regression equations are also tested. Surprisingly, for Virginia localities the most satisfactory results are generated by the nonstratified multiple regression equation.     

Welfare expenditure and policy orientation in Canada in comparative perspective

J'examine dans cet article les politiques sociales canadiennes pour la période 1960–1983, à lumière des expériences d'autres pays. Les politiques considérées se lisent sur quatre dimensions: dé-marchandisation, solidarité, redistribution et plein emploi. Au regard des dépenses d'autres pays membres de l***'OCDE, les dépenses gouvernementales de consommation civile au Canada sont relativement élevées; elles sont, cependant, principalement cantonnées dans les secteurs de la santé et de l'éducation. Ainsi, les dépenses générates et orientées vers la prévention sont faibles, indiquant la petite taille des budgets consacrés au logement et à la création d'emplois. En ce qui concerne le plein emploi, le Canada est l'un des membres de l'OCDE qui connaissent le moins de succès. Malgré des niveaux de chômage qui demeurent élevés, les dépenses de redistribution sont basses; elles contribuent malgré tout à réduire les inégalités de revenu primaire et elles demeurent plus importantes à ce chapitre que le régime fiscal. Une quantité considérable de données indique que l'Etat-providence canadien est en voie d'être restructuré de façon à redistribuer les bénéfices selon des critères de classe, plutôt que des critères de citoyenneté. This paper examines welfare effort in Canada in the 1960-83 period in the context of cross-national patterns. Welfare effort is considered on four dimensions: decommodification, solidarity, redistribution and full employment. Canada has relatively high government civil consumption expenditure by OECD standards but this consists mostly of health and educational expenditure. General and preventively oriented expenditure is low, reflecting the low expenditure on housing and employment creation. In terms of the full employment dimension Canada is one of the least successful of the OECD welfare states. Despite consistently high unemployment, social transfer expenditure is low but does contribute to the reduction of inequality of primary income and is consistently more important in this regard than the tax system. There is considerable evidence to indicate that the Canadian welfare state is being restructured towards a distribution of benefits based on class rather than citizenship.     

The road to functional flexibility: white collar work and employment relations in a privatised public utility

This paper is concerned with the changing nature of office work in one region of a privatised public utility, which will be referred to as National Utility (NU). It describes how clerical work at NU, traditionally characterised by a detailed division of labour and functional specialism, is being transformed by the introduction of on-line processing and multi-functional team-working. At the same time, NU management is seeking to change the nature and pattern of clerical employment. The intention is to increase the ratio of part time to full time staff, to increase the ‘personal accountability’ of staff, and to move towards a performance-based, rather than a seniority-based, pay and promotion structure. These changes are of some broader theoretical significance. As Batstone et al. (1987) note, much industrial sociology literature has focused on job content as the primary determinant of a number of features of work and employment, including worker autonomy, supervisory styles, and management control strategies. Indeed, much recent industrial sociology, management and institutional economics literature has tended to link employment patterns and conditions, as a whole, with job content, in a direct and unproblematic fashion. In particular, it is often assumed that in order to secure multiple skills, high quality work and the innovative capacities of labour, employers will have to offer not only better pay, but also a better package of conditions, job security, fringe benefits and training and promotion opportunities. Developments at National Utility suggest that the link between job content and employment relations may be weaker than has sometimes been implied, and cast doubt on the theoretical basis for ‘post-Fordist’ confidence in the emergence of a new deal for labour as a result of flexible methods of work organisation.