Children's Perceptions of Family Relationships as Assessed in a Doll Story Completion Task: Links to Parenting, Social Competence, and Externalizing Behavior

This study was designed to examine the links between parenting, children's perceptions of family relationships, and children's social behavior. Seventy‐four children (M age=6.01 years; 39 boys; 35 girls) and their parents took part in the study. Children completed relationship‐oriented doll stories that were coded for coherence, prosocial themes, and aggressive themes. Parents completed a report of their child's social behavior, a parenting scale, and a number of demographic items. Teachers also completed measures of children's social competence and externalizing behavior. Warm parenting predicted both a child's representation of prosocial themes in the doll stories and social competence, whereas harsh parenting predicted both a child's use of aggressive themes in the doll stories and a child's externalizing behavior. These findings support the idea that children are constructing models of relationships out of the early interactions with caregivers, and that they use these representations to guide their social behavior.     

Acculturation status and sexuality among female Cuban American college students

The authors examined relations among different measures of acculturation, and between acculturation and sexual behavior, in a sample of female Cuban American college students (n=61, M age = 18.4 years) who completed self-report surveys. In the first set of analyses, weak to moderate associations emerged among 4 measures of acculturation (birthplace, childhood language use, current language use, and ethnic identity), suggesting that inconsistent findings from prior research may have resulted from measurement limitations. In multivariate analyses, the authors examined predictors of sexual behavior and found that 1 aspect of acculturation (higher levels of ethnic identity) and background characteristics (being older and less religious) were associated with voluntary sexual intercourse. Moreover, higher levels on a sexual risk composite were associated with being born in the United States, more ethnically identified, older, and less religious. These analyses highlight the need for specificity in assessing acculturation in a college student population and support the need to examine cultural factors directly in sexuality research.     

Semiparametric estimator for a secondary analysis with correlated outcomes

ABSTRACT

Researchers are often required to reuse data that have been collected and analyzed for other purposes. Issues may arise if the outcome of this secondary study is related to the outcome of the first study and traditional methods may fail to deliver a consistent estimate. Here we propose a semiparametric approach that takes this correlation into account and produces asymptotically consistent and normally distributed estimates. We discuss its performance through simulations and apply the proposed method to a real dataset.     

On quantile residuals in beta regression

Beta regression is often used to model the relationship between a dependent variable that assumes values on the open interval (0, 1) and a set of predictor variables. An important challenge in beta regression is to find residuals whose distribution is well approximated by the standard normal distribution. Two previous works compared residuals in beta regression, but the authors did not include the quantile residual. Using Monte Carlo simulation techniques, this article studies the behavior of certain residuals in beta regression in several scenarios. Overall, the results suggest that the distribution of the quantile residual is better approximated by the standard normal distribution than that of the other residuals in most scenarios. Three applications illustrate the effectiveness of the quantile residual.     

Parenting and children’s negative emotionality,self‐regulation,and academic skills: The moderating role of fathers’ residency

We examined whether fathers’ residency modified the associations among mothers’ supportiveness, father involvement, children’s negative emotionality during toddlerhood and children’s academic skills in pre‐kindergarten via children’s self‐regulation. Participants were 2,291 mothers (M_age = 23.24 years) and children (M_age = 14.99 months at Wave 1; 50.7% girls) in the Early Head Start Research and Evaluation Project. Results revealed distinctive associations by fathers’ residency: self‐regulation mediated the association between mothers’ supportiveness and academic skills only in resident‐father‐families. Self‐regulation mediated the association between negative emotionality and academic skills only in nonresident‐father‐families. The findings highlight the family processes of mothers, fathers, and children in low‐income family contexts that contribute to children’s academic skills, and how those family processes may vary by fathers’ residency status.     

In search of optimal management of the purchasing–marketing interface for new product development

Abstract

Growing dependence on suppliers for production and innovation, together with increasing consumer demands, has prompted recent discussions of the importance of purchasing–marketing functional integration. However, empirical studies are needed to understand how to manage this interface within a new product development (NPD) context. This study, grounded in information processing theory, proposes a new model to classify integrating mechanisms as either information-sharing forums or optimizers. This model further postulates the greater capacity of optimizer mechanisms for improving NPD commercial and financial performance, as well as speed. The empirical results, obtained from a sample of 141 firms, show that forums only improve NPD speed, whereas optimizer mechanisms evoke better commercial and financial performance. This study therefore highlights the potential of different integrating mechanisms and contributes to the on-going debate about the very concept of functional integration itself.     

Relations of School Children's Comforting Behavior to Empathy-Related Reactions and Shyness

The purpose of this study was to examine empathy-related and personal correlates of children's comforting reactions. Quantity and quality of third to sixth graders' comforting of a crying infant were assessed and their relations with situational and dispositional empathy-related responding, shyness, and vagal tone were examined. Quantity and quality of boys' comforting were related to reports of sympathetic/empathic responding to an empathy-inducing film, whereas quantity of girls' comforting was associated with low facial and heart rate markers of vicarious distress in another context. Quality of comforting was associated with markers of girls' vicarious distress. Comforting was negatively related to younger children's shyness and marginally, positive correlated with girls' vagal tone. Suppression of vagal tone was associated with quantity of comforting.     

Alternative paths of transformation

ABSTRACT

I suggest in this essay that Latin American societies in movement are currently transcending the democratic framework to engage in autonomous paths to construct their new home, a world in which many worlds can be embraced, as the Zapatistas proposed years ago.     

Social Relationships and Internet Use among Adolescents in Israel

Objective . This study examined the relationship between youth leisure activities, peer relations, and prosocial attitudes and the frequency of Internet use among adolescents in Israel. Methods . Hypotheses were tested using data from a face-to-face survey of a representative sample of the Israeli youth population ( n = 927) conducted in February 1998. Results . It was found that the lower an individual's level of attachment to close friends and the less prosocial attitudes he/she expressed, the higher was the likelihood of his/her being a frequent Internet user. However, Internet users were more likely than nonusers to participate in social activities such as parties, singers' performances, and sports activities. Conclusions . Contrary to public perceptions it appears that among the adolescent population of Israel, Internet use is not displacing other social activities. However, adolescents who are more socially isolated are more likely to be frequent Internet users. Future research should explore whether for this group, the Internet is being used to overcome individuals' barriers to the formation of social relationships.     

Discusion

Resumen

En esta investigación se estudia la validez de una versión castellana de la escala «Environmental Concern Scale» (ECS) llevada a cabo con 716 estudiantes. Las puntuaciones obtenidas por los sujetos proambientalistas y no proambientalistas resultan significativamente diferentes. Asímismo, se estudian las relaciones entre las actitudes hacia la preocupación por el medio ambiente, la energía nuclear y la ideología política, mostrándose una relación entre ellas de diferente intensidad. Mientras la energía nuclear está fuertemente vinculada a la ideología política, no sucede en tal medida entre ésta y las actitudes conservacionistas, ya que tanto los de derechas como los de izquierdas participan de la preocupación por el medio ambiente, aunque no en la misma medida.