Couple‐Level Economic and Career Concerns and Intimate Partner Violence in Young Adulthood

Family scholars have demonstrated that economic conditions influence marital quality and relationship instability. Similarly, researchers have identified low income and poverty as important risk factors for intimate partner violence (IPV). Yet limited work has examined how economic factors influence the use of violence in the romantic context, particularly during young adulthood. Using the Toledo Adolescent Relationships Study (n = 928), the authors examined the influence of economic and career concerns as specific sources of conflict on IPV among a sample of young adults. Findings suggest that these areas of disagreement within romantic relationships are associated with IPV risk, net of traditional predictors. The implications of our findings for intervention and prevention efforts are discussed.     

The Undeserving Rich: “Moral Values” and the White Working Class1

White working‐class citizens who vote for the Republican Party have been fodder for much political discussion and speculation recently, and a debate has arisen about the role that “moral values” played in the political decision making of this segment of voters. In this article, we defend a version of the moral values claim. We show that although the Republicans’ policies are unpopular, they are bundled with an overarching moral framework that is extremely resonant to this set of voters, and we use in‐depth interviews to uncover this framework. A key feature of this framework, on which in the 2004 presidential election George W. Bush scored high and John Kerry scored low, is the appropriate attitude to wealth, which serves as an indicator for a candidate’s general moral philosophy and as a heuristic about whether the candidate will govern with working‐class voters’ interests in mind. National Election Studies data support the argument that this was a key influence on the voting decision in 2004, even controlling for voters’ partisan identification.     

"There Must Be a Reason": Osama, Saddam, and Inferred Justification

One of the most curious aspects of the 2004 presidential election was the strength and resilience of the belief among many Americans that Saddam Hussein was linked to the terrorist attacks of September 11. Scholars have suggested that this belief was the result of a campaign of false information and innuendo from the Bush administration. We call this the information environment explanation. Using a technique of "challenge interviews" on a sample of voters who reported believing in a link between Saddam and 9/11, we propose instead a social psychological explanation for the belief in this link. We identify a number of social psychological mechanisms voters use to maintain false beliefs in the face of disconfirming information, and we show that for a subset of voters the main reason to believe in the link was that it made sense of the administration's decision to go to war against Iraq. We call this inferred justification : for these voters, the fact of the war led to a search for a justification for it, which led them to infer the existence of ties between Iraq and 9/11.     

Food Waste and Quality of Life in Elderly Populations Living in Retirement Living Communities

Food waste is an increasingly important issue in all food-service establishments, including retirement living communities. With residents of these communities having faced food insecurity as children and young adults, they have unique and very strong feelings regarding this issue. We interviewed 16 Canadian residents and used manifest content analysis to gain an understanding of how their experiences, behaviors, and feelings toward food waste may impact their quality of life. The results of this study may have implications for how retirement living communities approach their food-service operations.     

Gender Gaps in Educational Attainment in Less Developed Countries

Conventional wisdom holds that gender gaps in schooling favoring males in developing countries generally are large, though probably declining. In this article we re‐examine recent gender gaps in schooling in the developing world and come to a more nuanced characterization of their nature, which suggests that the developing countries are becoming more like the developed countries, with gender gaps that increasingly favor, rather than discriminate against, females. Using data from 38 countries with multiple Demographic and Health Surveys, we examine how the gender gaps in current school enrollment and grade completion emerge across the educational life course from age 6 to 18. We also examine how these age‐specific measures have changed over time, comparing the periods 1990–99 and 2000–06. Our analyses indicate that among children who have ever attended school, girls younger than 16 years of age have equal or greater schooling progress than boys of the same age in all regions of the developing world.     

Role of Marital Quality in Explaining Depressive Symptoms After Marital Termination Among Older Adults

This study assesses whether prior marital quality moderates the impact of divorce or widowhood on subsequent depression. Poor marital quality may buffer depression associated with divorce/widowhood; conversely, the effect of divorce/widowhood on depression could be exacerbated by previous marital quality. Three waves from the National Survey of Families and Households based on respondents, ages 50 and older, (N?=?2,570) included eight marital quality measures. We find limited evidence suggesting higher marital quality elevates, while lower marital quality decreases, depression after divorce. No moderating effects were found for widowhood. Additionally, health condition is more important than current marital status for elders’ well-being after divorce or widowhood. Heterogeneity in the context of the marriage before divorce should be considered when examining marital termination effects on elders’ depression.     

Conceptualizing and understanding the Gülen movement

The Gülen movement (GM) is a controversial international Islamic movement originating in Turkey. Interestingly, the movement seems to be “in between” the standard conceptual categories used by social movement scholars: The GMs' focus on individual transformation and religious practices suggests that it is a religious movement; its extensive outreach into various institutions (i.e., education, health care, and media) suggests a social movement seeking legitimacy and broad social change; its purported infiltration of key government and military offices suggests a political movement. In this article, I demonstrate the utility of conceptualizing the GM as an everyday‐life‐based movement and of using a multi‐institutional politics model to examine this type of movement. By doing so, it becomes clear that sometimes, movements focusing on individual change may also be seeking to transform social, economic, and political institutions.     

Who runs away from home and why? How families,schools, and bullying influence youth runaways

While prior research establishes that youth who experience family problems are more likely to leave home before reaching adulthood, we know less regarding how peer victimization in the form of bullying may influence youths' likelihood of becoming runaways. Youth often run away from home to escape family conflict or abusive home environments. Mental illness, behavioral problems, and delinquent peers are also powerful forces predicting the likelihood of running away from home. Additionally, recent literature suggests that negative experiences at school may increase youths' decisions to leave home prematurely. In this article, I review literature that addresses who runs away from home, including variations by age, race/ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender, family structure, mental health, problem behaviors, and peer networks. I also suggest directions for future research, including an approach that considers how families and schools individually and collectively affect youths' likelihood of running away from home. Finally, I recommend a focus on bully victimization to better understand how victimization outside of the family affects the likelihood that youth will become runaways.     

Using technology to engage and educate youth

Given that information age technologies are as natural to the Net generation as breathing, it is time to provide learning experiences that maximize their use in schools. The authors argue that integrating technology into learning is central to creating the meaningful learning opportunities needed to engage and motivate youth today. To achieve this potential, however, technology must support a new paradigm of teaching and learning. This chapter discusses common elements and challenges to implementing pioneering high school reform models that promote one-to-one student-computer ratios, collaborative learning environments, problem- and project-based instruction, and interdisciplinary teaching.     

Quantitative alternatives to narrative reviews for understanding existing research literature

This article is the second in a series that examine the role of literature reviews in rehabilitation research. Methods of generating new knowledge from existing literature are categorized into three approaches: synthetic literature reviews which interpret previous findings in narrative fashion, quantitative literature reviews which summarize findings from primary research studies using a variety "counting" approaches, and meta-analyses which aggregate effect sizes from primary research studies and allow for a more complex analysis of trends in the empirical research literature. This articles examines the role that quantitative literature reviews can play in better understanding the status of knowledge in rehabilitation research, thereby shaping field practices as well as future scientific investigations. Examples of quantitative reviews from contemporary rehabilitation and related health sciences literature are provided throughout the article.