Relationships Between Parenting Environment and Children's Mental Health Among African American and European American Mothers and Children

This study examined the relationship between aspects of the parenting environment and children's conduct problems and anxious symptoms among socioeconomically comparable samples of African American and European American mothers and their kindergarten children. Ethnic differences in parenting may lead to differences in the relationship between parenting and child outcomes. Thus, the moderating role of ethnicity for the relationships between parenting and children's mental health was tested. African American and European American parents were similar in their parenting practices. European American children reported a higher number of anxious symptoms, however. Parenting and family interaction patterns were associated with children's anxious symptoms and conduct problems. Although many relationships were similar across ethnic groups, there were ethnic differences in the relationships between maternal parenting efficacy and anxiety and between hostile control and conduct problems. These similarities and differences are discussed in light of theory and familial, cultural, and environmental niches.     

Multiple Views of the Family and Adolescent Social Competencies

This research examined the linkages between congruence in perceptions of family functioning and adolescent competencies with a sample of 223 first‐year college students, their mothers, and their fathers. The primary goal was to explore further the nature and importance of perceptual congruence as related to adolescent social competencies with a more informative analytic strategy than has been used in most past research (one that controls for individual perceptions of family members and takes into account direction of differences among family members), and with more comprehensive, multimethod assessments of adolescent competencies. Our congruence analyses portrayed a more complex picture of congruence and divergence than has emerged from previous studies, and highlight the importance of examining interaction patterns in future research. It is noteworthy, however, that individual perceptions of family members were more important than was congruence in relation to adolescent social competencies. The possibility that congruence effects may be more apparent when the focus is on more specific rather than global measures and on developmental as well as family interaction processes is suggested.     

Racial and ethnic diversity in senior centers: comparing participant characteristics in more and less multicultural settings

The 2008 Health Indicators Project surveyed a probability sample (N = 1,870) of New York City senior center participants. Attendees of racially and ethnically diverse and nondiverse senior centers were compared across 5 domains: demographics; health and quality of life; social support networks; neighborhood perceptions and engagement; health service access/utilization. Although homogeneous and diverse center participants demonstrate similar health and quality-of-life outcomes, those from diverse centers demonstrate greater risk of social isolation, receive less family support, and more likely seek medical care from hospitals or community clinics. Implications and future directions for research, practice and policy are discussed.     

The Coingate effect: The impact of scandal on attitudes toward,state and federal political actors

What happens when a major, well publicized state-level scandal occurs? Do opinions of federal politicians improve because of relative comparisons to state politicians caught in the scandal? Do attitudes toward all politicians suffer? Little work has been done to investigate about how scandals related to one level of government affect attitudes about political actors at other levels. We investigate what happens when a major and well publicized state-level scandal occurs. Using individual-level public opinion data collected during the summer of 2006, we analyze the impact that a state-level scandal had on citizen approval of state and federal political actors, considering the mediating impact of exposure to media coverage of the scandal. Overall consumption of news coverage of state governors boosts approval of the governor relative to the president. At the same time, however, citizens exposed to negative scandalous news coverage of their governor show a decline in relative gubernatorial approval.     

Child outcome measures in the study of child care quality

This article assesses whether there are methodological problems with child outcome measures that may contribute to the small associations between child care quality and child outcomes found in the literature. Outcome measures used in 65 studies of child care quality published between 1979 and December 2005 were examined, taking the previous review by Vandell and Wolfe (2000) as the starting point. Serious methodological problems were not pervasive for child outcome measures. However, methodological concerns were most prevalent among measures of socioemotional development. Furthermore, psychometric information on outcome measures was often missing from published reports, and health outcomes and approaches to learning were infrequently studied. Future research should address alignment issues between aspects of quality and the specific child outcomes chosen for study.     

I don't know who I am: severely mental ill Latina WSW navigating differentness

We examine interviews from a qualitative study designed to examine HIV perceptions, risk, and risk management among Puerto Rican women who have sex with women (WSW) and who also have been diagnosed with major depression, bipolar disorder, or schizophrenia. These women's stories challenge both the lesbian and the Latino communities to reexamine how and why they claim individuals as their own and they similarly challenge professional communities, including HIV educators, health researchers, and medical care providers, to develop effective HIV prevention programs and counseling approaches that facilitate patient/client self-disclosure and consider cultural and contextual barriers to both self-disclosure and the provision of services.     

Factors that predict how women label their own childhood sexual abuse

Despite the psychological impact of child sexual abuse, many victims do not acknowledge that their experiences were "abuse". This study sought to identify factors that predict how women label their own experiences of childhood sexual abuse. This cross-sectional study was conducted in a family medicine clinic with adult female patients. Subjects completed structured interviews about their childhood environment and their sexual abuse history. Logistic regression analysis showed that labeling of abuse was dependent upon intercourse (beta = 7.43, p = .006), the frequency of abuse by the first perpetrator (beta = 5.08, p = .024), and paternal overprotection (beta = 6.69, p = .010). Findings suggest that the severity of abusive acts is most important and an over-protective father may enhance the victim's acknowledgment that sexual touching is abusive.     

Shrinkage estimation of varying covariate effects based on quantile regression

Varying covariate effects often manifest meaningful heterogeneity in covariate-response associations. In this paper, we adopt a quantile regression model that assumes linearity at a continuous range of quantile levels as a tool to explore such data dynamics. The consideration of potential non-constancy of covariate effects necessitates a new perspective for variable selection, which, under the assumed quantile regression model, is to retain variables that have effects on all quantiles of interest as well as those that influence only part of quantiles considered. Current work on l ₁-penalized quantile regression either does not concern varying covariate effects or may not produce consistent variable selection in the presence of covariates with partial effects, a practical scenario of interest. In this work, we propose a shrinkage approach by adopting a novel uniform adaptive LASSO penalty. The new approach enjoys easy implementation without requiring smoothing. Moreover, it can consistently identify the true model (uniformly across quantiles) and achieve the oracle estimation efficiency. We further extend the proposed shrinkage method to the case where responses are subject to random right censoring. Numerical studies confirm the theoretical results and support the utility of our proposals.     

Non-native plants in the understory of riparian forests across a land use gradient in the Southeast

As urbanization expands into rural areas, an increase in the number of non-native plant species at the urban-rural interface is expected due in large part to the increased availability of propagules from ornamental plantings. A study investigating the distribution of non-native plants in the understories of riparian forests across an urban-to-rural gradient north of Columbus, GA was initiated in 2003. A significantly greater number of non-native plant species occurred at the urban sites and at one site at the urban-rural interface, where 20 to 33% of the species encountered were non-native. In contrast, at the more rural sites non-native species comprised 4–14% of the total number of species. However, the importance values of non-native species as a whole did not change significantly across the land use gradient due to the high frequency and abundance of three non-native species (Ligustrum sinense, Lonicera japonica, and Microstegium vimineum) in the majority of the watersheds. Reductions in species richness and overstory reproduction associated with these non-natives could impact long-term forest structure and ecosystem function.