Black Adolescents’ Critical Reflection Development: Parents’ Racial Socialization and Attributions About Race Achievement Gaps

This research explored the development of Black adolescents’ (N = 454) critical reflection, conceived as individual (i.e., blaming Black people) and structural (i.e., blaming systemic racism) attributions for race achievement gaps. In this longitudinal study, adolescents and their parents reported their individual and structural attributions for race achievement gaps and parents’ racial socialization. Adolescents’ structural attributions increased from Grade 10 to Grade 12. Average levels of individual attributions did not change. Adolescents’ reports of parental racial socialization and parents’ structural attributions when youth were in Grade 10 predicted increases in adolescents’ structural attributions. Findings are applied to future research and efforts to increase adolescent critical reflection.     

Exploring the Youth and Parent Perspective on Practitioner Behaviors That Promote Treatment Engagement

Treatment engagement is critically important to child and family social work practitioners, given its documented relationship with youth and family outcomes. Despite this, little is known regarding the practice behaviors youth and parents perceive as important for promoting their engagement in treatment. The purpose of this study was to explore the perspective of youth and parents regarding practitioner behaviors important for fostering treatment engagement. Three semistructured focus groups were conducted with 30 youth and parents. Using a constant comparative analysis procedure, two domains of practice behaviors emerged: developing the therapeutic alliance and collaborative service delivery. Specific alliance-building behaviors included building rapport and demonstrating care, acknowledging and listening to the youth and family perspective, asking questions, not judging youth and parents, allowing youth and family input to direct care, and supporting motivation to change. Collaborative practice behaviors included providing culturally competent services, sharing treatment information, demonstrating awareness of other services/supports, and engaging other meaningful adults. Youth and parents both discussed the importance of these practice behaviors. Youth, however, seemed to emphasize the therapeutic alliance more than parents in the sample. Clinical implications for family social work practitioners regarding these key practice behaviors are discussed.     

Acoustic Packaging of Action Sequences by Infants

This study investigated whether acoustic input, in the form of infant‐directed speech, influenced infants' segmenting of action sequences. Thirty‐two 7.5‐ to 11.5‐month‐old infants were familiarized with video sequences made up of short action clips. Narration coincided with portions of the action stream to package certain pairs of clips together. At test, packaged and nonpackaged pairs of actions were presented side by side in silence. Narration heard during familiarization influenced how infants viewed the action units, such that at test, infants older than 9.5 months (but not younger) looked longer at the nonpackaged than the packaged action sequences. The role of infant‐directed speech as well as other types of acoustic input in assisting infants' processing of action is discussed.     

Demographic,personality, cognitive and behavioral correlates of off-course betting involvement

A large (n=381) exploratory survey of off-course bettors was conducted as a step towards rectifying deficits in current gambling literature. Information collected by interviews and questionnaires from off-course betting agency customers showed the level of betting involvement to be largely unrelated to demographic and cognitive variables and sensation seeking, but related to a variety of betting behaviors. A factor analysis produced three independent factors accounting for 30% of the variance. Loadings on these suggested an independence of items involved in the process of betting and those related to the control of betting behaviors, implying that non-pathological gambling involvement may be a reasonable goal for treatment programs.     

career story: The importance of being ERNIE

ERNIE is the Electronic Random Number Indicator Equipment that caused huge interest in 1957 when it began selecting prize-winners for the new Premium Bonds, the first government-sponsored gamble in Britain in modern times. Stephanie Shirley was a young statistician working on ERNIE. Today, as Steve Shirley or Dame Stephanie , she is one of the wealthiest women in Britain—not through winning on Premium Bonds herself, but through the pioneering software company she formed which, for the first time, gave female-friendly employment to women programmers (and statisticians) who had children and dependants at home to care for. She is now a major philanthropist and a driving force for research into the social effects of the Internet and into autism. She has given more than £50 million to charities in those fields. Julian Champkin interviews her.     

Art work or money: Conflicts in the construction of a creative identity

The identity projects of novice creative practitioners must take account of the economy of art work. It has been suggested ( McRobbie, 2002a ) that in the contemporary cultural industries in the UK, a new understanding of the connection between creative work and money has replaced past ‘anti‐commercial’ notions. This claim is investigated through a narrative‐discursive analysis of interviews from a longitudinal study with current and recent Art and Design postgraduates. Their ongoing identity projects are shaped by established understandings of creative work and the prospects it offers for earning and employment, and also by more local discursive resources given by personal life contexts. An analysis of two interviews with a single speaker shows how these resources are taken up within her ongoing and distinctive identity project. Both old and new repertoires of art and money are in play in her talk. She must negotiate dilemmas and potentially troubled positionings in order to reconcile a creative identity with relationships and responsibilities towards others. Coherence is only achieved momentarily and is disrupted by new life circumstances. By investigating an identity project at the level of talk, the analysis shows the complexity of the speaker's work to construct and claim a creative identity.     

Paternal Work Characteristics and Father‐Infant Interactions in Low‐Income,Rural Families

To examine the implications of paternal occupational conditions for the quality of father‐infant interactions, home visits, including interviews and videotaped observations of father‐infant interactions, were conducted with 446 fathers living in six low‐income, nonmetropolitan counties in North Carolina and Pennsylvania. When a variety of individual and demographic characteristics were controlled for, a less supportive work environment was associated with lower levels of fathers’ engaged and sensitive parenting. Significant interactions pointed to the importance of understanding combinations of risk factors. Experiencing high levels of workplace stressors, including low levels of self‐direction and high levels of care work, in the presence of other individual or demographic risk factors was associated with lower levels of father parenting quality.     

Absurdly Ambitious? Teenagers’ Expectations for the Future and the Realities of Social Structure

Expectations for achievement in the US border on the unrealistic. High school students expect to obtain better jobs and more education than current cohorts have achieved. Many youth also seem unaware of how to realize their ambitions. These findings lead to several questions about the causes and consequences of ambition. First, how do American youths’ ambitions compare with those of past cohorts and what consequences stem from rising ambitions? Second, how likely is it that youth will achieve their ambitions? What structural forces hinder or assist the goal attainment process? Finally, what cultural and institutional forces shape ambition in the United States? We review available evidence for these questions. Experts agree that the youth are overly ambitious, but debate the consequences of over‐ambition. Furthermore, youth privileged by their race, class, and gender status are more likely to achieve their ambitions than less privileged youth, confirming the key sociological premise that broader social structures play an important role in whether individuals realize their dreams.