Towards Balancing Power in Domestic Violence Relationships Rejoinder

Based on four years of extensive work on domestic violence issues with both survivors and perpetrators within their Family Safety Program, the authors argue that Wileman and Wileman's suggestion that women could learn skills to “effect positive change” in their relationships is both inappropriate and potentially dangerous. We further argue that to label such “skills” as “empowering” merely endorses a stance that is “more of the same” for the woman. That is, the woman may only learn more about taking responsibility for change, which is a position in which she is already well entrenched, often to her ultimate disadvantage.     

The Family Safety Model: A Comprehensive Strategy For Working With Domestic Violence

There has been continuous debate about the viability, efficacy and appropriateness of providing services to perpetrators and couples where domestic violence is the presenting problem in therapy. This paper argues that within a comprehensive and integrated model of service provision that encompasses all family members, it can be appropriate and effective to incorporate these service options if screening, monitoring and service models are carefully selected and provided in a context of agency safety and support.     

Training for collaboration: collaborative practice skills for mental health professionals

The purpose of the study was to identify skills that mental health practitioners need for successful collaborative practice in medical settings. Known experts in the field of collaborative health care completed a survey designed to elicit their suggestions about what is needed for successful collaborative care practice. Through qualitative analysis, a set of 56 skills was developed. These skills are organized into three general categories of competency: (a) skills for working in a medical setting; (b) skills for working with patients; and (c) skills for collaborating with healthcare providers.     

Asymptotic expansion of the risk of maximum likelihood estimator with respect to α-divergence

For a given parametric probability model, we consider the risk of the maximum likelihood estimator with respect to α-divergence, which includes the special cases of Kullback–Leibler divergence, the Hellinger distance, and essentially χ²-divergence. The asymptotic expansion of the risk is given with respect to sample sizes up to order n^{? 2}. Each term in the expansion is expressed with the geometrical properties of the Riemannian manifold formed by the parametric probability model.     

Atheistic, agnostic, and religious older adults on well-being and coping behaviors

Previous research reports relationships between religion and both well-being and positive coping, especially among the older adult age group. However, researchers have failed to consider the non-religious when comparing groups categorized by religious belief, ignoring possible differences between those with a belief and the non-religious, atheists, and agnostics. To explore possible differences, we gathered data from a sample of 134 religious and non-religious older adults (55 years old plus) who completed an online questionnaire assessing relationships between religiosity and well-being, social support, locus of control, and meaning in life. Belief groups, including atheists, agnostics, and those high and low on religious beliefs, were compared on coping behaviors. The religious groups did not significantly differ from atheists and agnostics on well-being, satisfaction with social support, or locus of control; however, the high religiosity group did endorse higher levels of presence of meaning in life than the atheists and a greater number of social supports compared to the non-religious groups. The groups significantly differed on their use of religious coping (p < .05), and differences approached significance on the groups utilization of humor and substances as coping mechanisms (p = .07). The religious groups endorsed religious-oriented coping at significantly greater rates, whereas the atheists endorsed a greater use of substances to cope than the other three groups. Additionally, atheists endorsed humor for coping more so than their low religiosity counterparts.     

Elder abuse and neglect in African American families: informing practice based on ecological and cultural frameworks

Despite the rapid growth of the elderly African American population in the U.S., elder abuse and neglect in African American families continue to be underdeveloped areas of study. This article presents an ecological and culturally informed framework for the study of elder abuse in African American populations. The model was developed based on Bronfenbrenner's Human Ecological Theory. The model identifies risk factors associated with different systems that have an influence on the lives of African American families. Cultural protective factors also are identified in the model. The model is intended to provide an understanding of elder abuse and neglect in African American families by considering the influence of contextual factors such as the legacy of slavery, social exclusion, and structural segregation and racism. Specific suggestions for practice are proposed according to cultural strengths of African American communities as well as the ecological premises of the model.     

Perceiving freedom givers: Effects of granting decision latitude on personality and leadership perceptions

A perennial question facing managers is how much decision latitude to give their employees at work. The current research investigates how decision latitude affects employees' perceptions of managers' personalities and, in turn, their leadership effectiveness. Results from three studies using different methods (two experiments and a survey) indicate an inverted-U shaped relationship between degree of decision latitude and leadership effectiveness perceptions. The increase in leadership effectiveness perception between low and moderate decision latitude was explained by an increase in perceived agreeableness; the decrease in leadership effectiveness perception between moderate and high decision latitude was explained by a decrease in perceived conscientiousness. Theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed.     

Leveraging risk assessment for foodborne outbreak investigations: The Quantitative Risk Assessment-Epidemic Curve Prediction Model

Root cause analysis can be used in foodborne illness outbreak investigations to determine the underlying causes of an outbreak and to help identify actions that could be taken to prevent future outbreaks. We developed a new tool, the Quantitative Risk Assessment-Epidemic Curve Prediction Model (QRA-EC), to assist with these goals and applied it to a case study to investigate and illustrate the utility of leveraging quantitative risk assessment to provide unique insights for foodborne illness outbreak root cause analysis. We used a 2019 Salmonella outbreak linked to melons as a case study to demonstrate the utility of this model (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [CDC], 2019). The model was used to evaluate the impact of various root cause hypotheses (representing different contamination sources and food safety system failures in the melon supply chain) on the predicted number and timeline of illnesses. The predicted number of illnesses varied by contamination source and was strongly impacted by the prevalence and level of Salmonella contamination on the surface/inside of whole melons and inside contamination niches on equipment surfaces. The timeline of illnesses was most strongly impacted by equipment sanitation efficacy for contamination niches. Evaluations of a wide range of scenarios representing various potential root causes enabled us to identify which hypotheses, were likely to result in an outbreak of similar size and illness timeline to the 2019 Salmonella melon outbreak. The QRA-EC framework can be adapted to accommodate any food–pathogen pairs to provide insights for foodborne outbreak investigations.