Giving Victims of Bullying a Voice: A Qualitative Study of Post Bullying Reactions and Coping Strategies

Current research on how adolescents cope with bullying is primarily quantitative, examines youth in Grades 1 through 6, and neglects to specifically assess how victims of bullying cope with being bullied. The current qualitative study explored the coping strategies of 22 rural middle- and high-school youth victimized by bullying. Results indicated that youth report using an array of emotion focused coping strategies (an internal coping strategy that focuses on emotion regulation) and problem focused coping strategies (active behaviors that are aimed to decrease or eradicate the stressor). These coping strategies included help seeking, physical and verbal aggression, standing up for themselves, and prosocial bystander behavior. While the majority of coping strategies were similar between middle- and high-school participants, these groups reported utilizing verbal and physical aggression in different ways. Further, certain coping strategies, such as help seeking and lashing out with physical and verbal aggression, were utilized as both emotion- and problem-focused coping strategies. Implications are discussed.     

Parents of Children with Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder: A Meta-Synthesis,Part II

In 2011 6.4 million children in the United States ages four to 17 years had a diagnosis of ADHD. Quantitative studies have indicated that parenting stress for parents of children diagnosed with ADHD is high. The purpose of the current meta-synthesis was to conduct a comprehensive review of both the published and unpublished qualitative studies involving the experience of parents raising children diagnosed with ADHD. Searches in online scholarly databases yielded an initial 1217 hits, which were narrowed down to eighty studies that met the criteria. A “meta-ethnography” framework was used for the synthesis. Results of the first part of the analysis were reported in Corcoran et al. (2016) and had to do with the personal impact on parents. The themes in Part II have to do with the processes parents go through in accepting the diagnosis of ADHD and in deciding whether their children should take medication. Parents struggled to make sense of their child’s problems and came to terms with the diagnosis in a series of stages. Regarding medication use, parental attitudes varied greatly, with both costs and benefits noted. Though there was considerable ambivalence towards medication use, some parents reported relief after their child began using medication. Implications from this study are that providers should recognize the processes involved in making decisions about an ADHD diagnosis and the use of medication. Social workers should allow sensitive exploration of parents’ attributions and understanding of their children’s behavior and level of acceptance of the diagnosis. Keeping an ethical and critical stance toward the use of medication, social workers should also have full exploration with parents around the potential benefits and risks associated with the treatment of their children’s ADHD, taking into account parents’ preferences.     

Establishing Derived Equivalence Relations of Basic Geography Skills in Children with Autism

The Analysis of Verbal Behavior - The present study evaluated the efficacy of a stimulus-equivalence training procedure in teaching basic geography skills to two children with autism. The...     

The Othering of Muslims: Discourses of Radicalization in the New York Times, 1969–2014

In this article, I engage with Edward Said's Orientalism and various perspectives within the othering paradigm to analyze the emergence and transformation of radicalization discourses in the news media. Employing discourse analysis of 607 New York Times articles from 1969 to 2014, this article demonstrates that radicalization discourses are not new but are the result of complex sociolinguistic and historical developments that cannot be reduced to dominant contemporary understandings of the concept or to singular events or crises. The news articles were then compared to 850 government documents, speeches, and other official communications. The analysis of the data indicates that media conceptualizations of radicalization, which once denoted political and economic differences, have now shifted to overwhelmingly focus on Islam. As such, radicalization discourse now evokes the construct radicalization as symbolic marker of conflict between the West and the East. I also advanced the established notion that the news media employ strategic discursive strategies that contribute to conceptual distinctions that are used to construct Muslims as an “alien other” to the West.     

Foster Parents’ Nutritional Strategies and Children’s Well-Being

Among their many responsibilities, foster parents are tasked with providing healthy food and proper nutrition to children with a variety of physical, psychological, and emotional needs. Using the lens of symbolic interactionism, this exploratory mixed methods study examined how foster parents attend to the nutritional needs of abused and neglected children. Methods used included both quantitative surveys and qualitative follow-up interviews. Surveys were completed by 23 foster parents in a large, Midwest metropolitan area. Parents reported they provided their children balanced meals, although one-third of households reported instances of food insecurity. During qualitative interviews, foster parents (N = 9) described how children arrived at their home with a variety of unhealthy eating habits, some severe in nature. Parents discussed strategies used to modify and improve eating patterns, including offering healthy food choices, having children plan meals, and gathering as a family for daily dinners. In general, parents understood the link between unhealthy eating and past childhood trauma, but also reported being unprepared for more serious eating problems like hoarding. Findings indicate that foster parents need food assistance to increase food security as well as training in assessing and responding a variety of unhealthy child eating behaviors.     

Evaluation of <Emphasis Type="Italic">Safer,Smarter Kids:</Emphasis> Child Sexual Abuse Prevention Curriculum for Kindergartners

This study assessed the effectiveness of the Safer, Smarter Kids kindergarten sexual abuse prevention curriculum in meeting its educational objectives of increasing children’s knowledge of safety risks and self-protection strategies. The study utilized a two-phase non-probability convenience sample of public school kindergarten students. The sample consisted of 1169 students in four school districts in Florida. Using an alpha level of .05, a paired-samples t test was calculated to compare the mean pretest scores to the mean posttest scores of the youth participants. The mean difference was significantly greater than zero (p-value ≤.001). The measurement instrument used to assess student gains functioned well in terms of reliability (α = .82). The effect size was large with a Cohen’s d effect size of 1.09. The results indicated that completion of the Safer, Smarter Kids curriculum was followed by a significant increase in students’ knowledge of key prevention concepts with a 77 % increase in scores post intervention.     

Community Informant Explanations for Unusual Neighborhood Rates of Child Maltreatment Reports

This study explored perceptions of community informants on socioenvironmental factors that explain why rates of child maltreatment reporting are different in neighborhoods with similar population characteristics. This study used data from the SoCal Neighborhoods and Child Welfare study, a multiphase, mixed-methods study of neighborhoods in Los Angeles and San Diego counties. Semistructured qualitative interviews with key informants (N = 28) in 22 census tracts explored factors that account for differences in maltreatment rates among sociodemographically similar neighborhoods. Thematic content analysis revealed three themes regarding neighborhood contributors to maltreatment behaviors and reporting: (a) community norms and values, (b) community resources and providers, and (c) housing dynamics and built environment. Findings indicate complexity in forces that affect maltreatment behavior and reporting. Adding to research on neighborhood social dynamics and child maltreatment, findings suggest that composite indicators of maltreatment within neighborhoods are affected by maltreatment behaviors and the definition, recognition, and reporting of maltreatment.     

Online Civic Engagement and the Anti-domestic Violence Movement in China: Shifting Norms and Influencing Law

In the context of China’s new law against domestic violence, proposed by the State Council in November 2014 and passed in July 2015, this article examines online engagement by Chinese citizens leading up to the legislative revision, and examines the Sina Weibo microblog activities of one influential organisation, nǚquán zhī shēng (Feminist Voice). I ask how a Chinese Civil Society Organisation (CSO) uses online media to open public discourse on, and in some cases challenge, formal and informal institutions around a normatively marginalised issue, the case of domestic violence. Drawing on and synthesising literature on domestic violence, civil society and online communications in China, this study provides a timely contribution given the relative limitedness of up-to-date data, after the huge wave of publications following the 1995 Beijing conference. Findings are based on content analysis of the Feminist Voice microblog during 2012. While Chinese CSOs are often dismissed as non-confrontational and therefore ineffective change agents, Feminist Voice does challenge status quo marginalisation of domestic violence in the public sphere and facilitate discussion around formal and informal institutional reform, thereby influencing social attitudes and potentially also policy and law making.