Marital Conflict and Children's Adjustment: The Mediating and Moderating Role of Children's Coping Strategies

This prospective, longitudinal study examined the role of children's coping strategies in the link between interparental conflict and children's psychological adjustment. Using a sample of 100 parents and children aged 11–14 years, this study investigated children's venting of negative emotion, social support seeking, and problem solving strategies as mediators and moderators of the relationship between marital conflict and child adjustment. Venting negative emotion mediated the long‐term effects of marital conflict on children's psychological adjustment. This coping response also moderated the relationship between marital conflict and children's anxiety‐depression. The role of non‐constructive coping strategies as a mechanism through which marital conflict affects children's psychological well‐being is discussed, together with the need for research to identify intervention strategies aimed at improving children's coping efficacy in the context of interparental conflict.     

Mental Maps: Social Networks and the Language of Critical Reviews

This study uses network analysis to examine the correspondence, based on Bourdieu's theory of cultural production, between artists'positions in a structure of social relations and the critics'conceptions of their work. Shared gallery memberships among fine art photographers yield person-by-person matrices that are partitioned into structurally equivalent blocks. Three types of actors emerge: "stars" who have large loose-knit networks of bridge ties, "invisible collegians" who inhabit small dense cliques, and "stragglers" who have difficulty maintaining any sort of foothold in the network. Critical reviews of the photographers in the population are then analyzed for stylistic references, and the photographers are matched to stylistic categories. A match emerges between the types of networks and the stylistic perceptions of the critics. "Stars" are categorized with a wide variety of stylistic terms, often contradictory in nature. "Invisible collegians" and "stragglers" are routinely fit into one stylistic camp or another. Multiplying the person by style matrix by its transpose yields a person-by-person matrix of perceived shared stylistic affinity. "Stars" in this matrix have higher scores of both degree and "betweenness" centrality.     

Mobile Home Park on the Prairie: A New Rural Community Form*

Abstract Mobile home parks are an increasingly common form of residence for the rural poor. A rural central Illinois mobile home park and its residents seemingly possess features—a distinct territory, a homogeneous population, and a collectively held rural ideology—that foster formation of a sense of community. Other factors, however, some unique to this relatively new rural residential form, present physical and social barriers that challenge park residents' construction of a sense of community. We use ethnographic data to describe daily life in a rural mobile home park and to determine who among its working‐poor residents are most able to construct a sense of community, and thus to gain access to the potentially beneficial community social resources that are crucial to making a difference in the quality of their lives.     

Back to basics: Re-examination of Demand-Control Theory of occupational stress

The Demand-Control model of occupational stress posits an interaction between job demands and job control predicting psychological strain, but previous research has found such an interaction only rarely or inconsistently. Such research, however, has often failed to measure either demands or strain faithfully to the model's constructs, or has simply failed to test for a statistical interaction. The present study corrected these shortcomings by going back to basics. Using a sample of 115 employees in a manufacturing company, it operationalized the variables more consistently with their original conceptualizations. However, when the hypothesized Demand-Control interaction was then tested, it still failed. Outcomes other than psychological strain (e.g. job dissatisfaction) were related negatively rather than positively to demands. This highlights the difference between psychological strain and dissatisfaction and casts doubt on models positing dissatisfaction as an intervening variable between stressors and strains.     

Probability perceptions and preventive health care

We study the effect of perceptions in comparison with more objective measures of risk on individuals’ decisions to decline or accept risk reducing interventions such as flu shots, mammograms, and aspirin for the prevention of heart disease. In particular, we elicit individuals’ subjective probabilities of risk, with and without the interventions, and compare these perceptions to individually predicted risk based on epidemiological models. Respondents, especially women, appear to be aware of some of the qualitative relationships between risk factors and probabilities. However, on average they have very poor perceptions of the absolute probability levels as reported in the epidemiological literature. Perceptions of the level of risk are less accurate if a respondent is female and has poor numeracy skills. We find that perceived probabilities significantly affect the subsequent take-up rate of flu shots, mammograms, and aspirin, even after controlling for individually predicted risk using epidemiological models.     

Birds of a feather: Leader-member demographic similarity and organizational attachment in Mexico

Although a number of studies have investigated the consequences of leader-member similarity in the United States, there has been a dearth of research on its effects in other countries. Using a sample of 135 Mexican workers and their managers, this study assessed the effects of leader-member demographic similarity on members' organizational attachment (absence and organizational commitment) in a North Mexican manufacturing facility. Results showed that leader-member gender similarity was negatively associated with absence, and this effect was stronger for dyads with female leaders than for dyads with male leaders. Age similarity had mixed effects on attachment. While it had a negative association with absence (an indicator of lack of attachment), it also had a negative association with organizational commitment (an indicator of attachment). These findings are interpreted in the context of social psychological phenomena and elements of Mexican culture.     

Moving mountains together: strategic community leadership and systems change

Traditional leadership practice frameworks to guide systems change often fall short in today's practice environment. Reclaiming Futures is a national initiative to create an integrated, comprehensive, seamless system of care for teens with substance abuse problems involved in juvenile justice. It uses leadership and systems reform strategies to improve public health institutions. The premise is that interruption of the destructive cycle of drugs and delinquency can only be attained through the cultivation of shared strategic leadership. This article presents the limitations of traditional practice frameworks of leadership, describes the theory of this new approach to leadership development, and clarifies collaborative leadership and system change. The article includes an example of the framework in action, a discussion of lessons learned, and recommendations for community leadership development initiatives.