Evaluation of an Innovative Tool for Child Sexual Abuse Education

Child sexual abuse poses a serious threat to public health and is often unreported, unrecognized, and untreated. Prevention, early recognition, and treatment are critically important to reduce long-term effects. Little data are available on effective methods of preventing child sexual abuse. The current research demonstrates a unique approach to promoting awareness and stimulating discussion about child sexual abuse. Qualitative methods have rarely been used to study child sexual abuse prevention. Qualitative inductive analyses of interviews from 20 key informants identified both positive and negative assessments with six emergent themes. The themes revealed inherent tensions in using narrative accounts to represent the complex cultural context within which child sexual abuse occurs. More research is needed, but the program shows potential as a methodology to raise awareness of child sexual abuse.     

Baseline Characteristics of Dependent Youth Who Have Been Commercially Sexually Exploited: Findings From a Specialized Treatment Program

ABSTRACT

Commercial sexual exploitation of children has emerged as a critical issue within child welfare, but little is currently known about this population or effective treatment approaches to address their unique needs. Children in foster care and runaways are reported to be vulnerable to exploitation because they frequently have unmet needs for family relationships, and they have had inadequate supervision and histories of trauma of which traffickers take advantage. The current article presents data on the demographic characteristics, trauma history, mental and behavioral health needs, physical health needs, and strengths collected on a sample of 87 commercially sexually exploited youth. These youth were served in a specialized treatment program in Miami-Dade County, Florida, for exploited youth involved with the child welfare system. Findings revealed that the youth in this study have high rates of previous sexual abuse (86% of the youth) and other traumatic experiences prior to their exploitation. Youth also exhibited considerable mental and behavioral health needs. Given that few programs emphasize the unique needs of children who have been sexually exploited, recommendations are offered for providing a continuum of specialized housing and treatment services to meet the needs of sexually exploited youth, based on the authors’ experiences working with this population.     

Teacher Outcomes from the Second Step Child Protection Unit: Moderating Roles of Prior Preparedness,and Treatment Acceptability

ABSTRACT

Teachers play a critical role in child sexual abuse (CSA) prevention and intervention efforts. We examined the impact of the Second Step Child Protection Unit (CPU) on improving teacher awareness, attitudes, and teacher–student relations for 161 teachers. Teacher baseline scores and treatment acceptability were examined as moderators. Structural equation modeling (SEM) revealed a significant effect of the CPU on teachers’ awareness, attitudes, and teacher–student relations, particularly for teachers with lower prior knowledge, attitudes, and student relationships. Teachers’ acceptability of the CPU also moderated outcomes, where a higher level of acceptability of CSA interventions was associated with an increase in outcomes.     

Contextual and Audience Moderators of Channel Selection and Message Reception of Public Health Information in Routine and Crisis Situations

A richer understanding of audience channel selection and message reception during routine and crisis situations through receiver-oriented research offers great promise to extend situational theory's predictive utility. Key variables of situational theory, including involvement, constraint, and problem recognition in information seeking and processing may be moderated by broader demographic and contextual factors in consumption of health information. Thus, situational theory frames this analysis of channels most important for public use in routine and crisis contexts in health information seeking, differences in preferences between contexts, and the criteria publics apply when evaluating the quality of health information. Results of a national random telephone survey (n = 400) indicate a need for more receiver-based studies in public relations, as involvement and demographics played key moderating roles in channel preferences. Use of several channels including radio, magazine, and television differed between crisis and routine contexts for health information consumers. In both crisis and routine contexts, those with high health involvement were more likely to use active media channels such as newspapers and magazines. Perceived accuracy is also revealed as a key criterion in evaluating the quality of health information consumers receive.     

Orchestras as “Ensembles of Possibility”: Understanding the Experience of Orchestral Musicians Through the Lens of Communities of Practice

This article examines the professional culture of a UK symphony orchestra and the ways the musicians perceive themselves as a Community of Practice (CoP). The study draws on data from semi-structured interviews. Findings illuminated aspects of a CoP among the musicians, including having a shared purpose, valuing their collective endeavor, and experiencing tension between individual and collective development. These elements provide insights for our understanding of CoP, and highlight critical aspects of musical and interpersonal interactions that emerging professional musicians and advanced students need to develop and skillfully balance if they are to operate effectively within an orchestral CoP.     

Understanding Responses to Foster Care: Theoretical Approaches

Foster children making the transition from birth to foster homes or from foster homes to foster homes often present problematic behaviors. Limitations of attachment theory and reactive attachment disorder are presented, and three alternative approaches for understanding behaviors exhibited in foster settings are presented: conservation of resources, child alienation model, and developmental trauma disorder.     

Heterogeneity in Gender/Sex Sexualities: An Exploration of Gendered Physical and Psychological Traits in Attractions to Women and Men

Sexuality research has generally privileged attractions based on partners’ sexed physical bodies over attractions based on other features, including gender expression and personality traits. Gender may actually be quite central to sexual attractions. However, its role has received little empirical attention. To explore how gendered and sexed features, among others, are related to sexual attractions, the current study assessed how sexually diverse individuals described their attractions to feminine, masculine, and gender-nonspecific features of women and men. A sample of 280 individuals responded to the open-ended questions: “What do you find attractive in a man?” and “What do you find attractive in a woman?” We coded responses as pertaining to physical and/or psychological features, and as being gendered masculine, feminine, or gender-nonspecific. Our analyses showed that participants named gender-nonspecific features most frequently in responses to both questions, feminine features more than masculine features in attractions to women, and masculine features more than feminine features in attractions to men. Additionally, participants named feminine physical features more than masculine physical features, and masculine psychological features more than feminine psychological features, both in their attractions to women and overall. These results highlight the importance of considering attractions based on gender, rather than sex alone.     

An Exploratory Study of the Meaning of Marriage for African Americans

Using specific tenets from symbolic interactionism as a frame, we asked 31 African Americans (18 women and 13 men) including students as well as nonstudents, across a variety of types of relationships and ages, what marriage meant to them. Two major themes, commitment and love, emerged from qualitative content analysis of the meaning of marriage. Other themes, including partnership/friendship, trust, family, and covenant, also emerged as themes, although less frequently. The overwhelming meanings of marriage were positive, with only a few negative instances (i.e., marriage as unnecessary and not fulfilling). Supportive qualitative data are presented for each theme. We discuss implications for the meaning of marriage for African Americans.     

“Something More”: The Meanings of Marriage for Religious Couples in America

This study focused on how couples’ beliefs about marriage and religion shape the meanings they find in their marriage. Interviews about connections between religion and marriage were conducted with 57 Christian, Jewish, and Muslim couples in New England and northern California. Qualitative analyses found the major theme, common across faith traditions, was that marriage is a sacred union that is “something more": more than the self, more than the couple, and more than the family unit. To these couples marriage is divine and institutional and a vital support for their relationship. Our findings raise an interesting counterpoint to the current scholarly discourse about the deinstitutionalization and individualization of contemporary marriage. Institutionalized features of marriage may retain their strength in contemporary society as many religious couples, and perhaps many other couples as well, believe marriage is something more than the deinstitutionalized, private relationship that many scholars now see.