Psychometrics of a Child Report Measure of Maternal Support following Disclosure of Sexual Abuse

ABSTRACT

The study examined a new child report measure of maternal support following child sexual abuse. One hundred and forty-six mother–child dyads presenting for a forensic evaluation completed assessments including standardized measures of adjustment. Child participants also responded to 32 items considered for inclusion in a new measure, the Maternal Support Questionnaire–Child Report (MSQ-CR). Exploratory factor analysis of the Maternal Support Questionnaire–Child Report resulted in a three factor, 20-item solution: Emotional Support (9 items), Skeptical Preoccupation (5 items), and Protection/Retaliation (6 items). Each factor demonstrated adequate internal consistency. Construct and concurrent validity of the new measure were supported in comparison to other trauma-specific measures. The Maternal Support Questionnaire–Child Report demonstrated sound psychometric properties. Future research is needed to determine whether the Maternal Support Questionnaire–Child Report provides a more sensitive approximation of maternal support following disclosure of sexual abuse, relative to measures of global parent–child relations and to contextualize discrepancies between mother and child ratings of maternal support.     

Born to lead? A twin design and genetic association study of leadership role occupancy

We address leadership emergence and the possibility that there is a partially innate predisposition to occupy a leadership role. Employing twin design methods on data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, we estimate the heritability of leadership role occupancy at 24%. Twin studies do not point to specific genes or neurological processes that might be involved. We therefore also conduct association analysis on the available genetic markers. The results show that leadership role occupancy is associated with rs4950, a single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) residing on a neuronal acetylcholine receptor gene (CHRNB3). We replicate this family-based genetic association result on an independent sample in the Framingham Heart Study. This is the first study to identify a specific genotype associated with the tendency to occupy a leadership position. The results suggest that what determines whether an individual occupies a leadership position is the complex product of genetic and environmental influences, with a particular role for rs4950.     

Disease risk and fertility: evidence from the HIV/AIDS pandemic

A fundamental question about human behavior is whether fertility responds to disease risk. The standard economic theory of household fertility decision-making generates ambiguous predictions, and the response has large implications for human welfare. We examine the fertility response to the HIV/AIDS pandemic using national household survey data from 14 sub-Saharan African countries. Instrumental variable (IV) estimates using distance to the origin of the pandemic suggest that HIV/AIDS has increased the total fertility rate (TFR) and the number of surviving children. These results rekindle the debate about the fertility response to disease risk, particularly the HIV/AIDS pandemic, and highlight the question of whether the HIV/AIDS pandemic has reduced GDP per capita.     

Why privacy keeps dying: the trouble with talk about the end of privacy

It is a curious fact how much talk about privacy is about the end of privacy. We term this ‘privacy endism,’ locating the phenomenon within a broader category of endist thought. We then analyze 101 newspaper articles between 1990 and 2012 that declare the end of privacy. Three findings follow. First, claims about the end of privacy point to an unusually broad range of technological and institutional causes. Privacy has been pronounced defunct for decades, but there has never been a near consensus about its causes. Second, unlike other endist talk (the end of art or history, etc.), privacy endism appears ongoing and not period specific. Finally, our explanation of the persistence and idiosyncrasy of claims to the end of privacy focuses on Warren and Brandeis’s 1890 negative conception of privacy as ‘the right to be let alone’: namely, modern privacy talk has always been endist because the right to privacy was born out of the conditions for its violation, not its realization. The conclusion comments on implications of that basic proposition.     

Theoretical Considerations and Empirical Evidence on Brain Drain Grounding the Review of Albania’s and Bulgaria’s Experience1

The objectives of this paper are: first, to briefly review the different theoretical aspects of brain drain and its potential positive or negative, direct or indirect effects on the economy of the home country; second, to highlight the limited empirical research on some of these issues; and third, to discuss on this grounding the empirical evidence on the nature and size of brain drain, as well as its impact on the economies of Albania and Bulgaria. As it appears, the evidence for these two countries and its evaluation as to whether brain drain has been or can be a threat to their development is contradictory and confusing, as it comes out from different casual observations without a convincing analysis. The relevant discussion has not escaped the stereotype way of thinking that the economy and society of these two countries would have been better had emigration of educated persons not taken place, or had those who migrated just returned. The conclusion on policy for brain drain and brain return is that merely hindering the emigration of educated people or trying to motivate their return cannot by itself elevate education and research to higher quality levels and promote development and growth. Without simultaneously developing a friendly and comprehensive institutional and pragmatic framework, such measures are often ineffective or even counterproductive.     

Stimulated Recall Interviews in Ethnography

This article describes the use of stimulated recall interviews as a technique for investigating how people approach interactions in a number of different situations. In general, the technique I describe involves interviewing individuals by playing them audio or audiovisual recordings of their own behavior in social situations and discussing different aspects of those recorded interactions. Doing so can help us to understand what signals interactants understand as important, what signals they try to convey to others, and how they choose from various options to act upon the information they receive in interactions. Using the example of jazz jam sessions, I ask why it is that interactions can sometimes go smoothly and uneventfully, or sometimes break down completely. The stimulated recall interviews provide a valuable tool in helping the ethnographer to answer these kinds of questions.     

Book reviews

In case-control studies it is important that controls selected are representative of the population from which the cases came, to give an unbiased estimate of population exposure. This is difficult to achieve, but one method to select controls has been to use the patient lists of the general practitioners with whom the cases are registered. Using data from a case-control study of heart attacks in young women; this article explores whether this method of selecting controls resulted in an unrepresentative distribution of deprivation levels in controls. The controls did not reflect the high levels of deprivation seen in the cases, although they came from the same neighbourhoods (general practice catchment areas). Such controls are often referred to as neighbourhood controls, but this is misleading. General practice controls are more likely to represent the general distribution of the population than the relative affluence or otherwise of the cases.