Using implicit encouragement to increase narrative productivity in children: Preliminary evidence and legal implications

Abstract

Statements made by children in a range of legal settings can irrevocably impact their family structure, relationships, and living environment. Because these statements can fundamentally alter children’s futures, efforts have been made to identify methods to enhance children’s reports by increasing comprehensiveness, completeness, and accuracy. Interviewer support has broadly been considered a method of interest, but variations in what constitutes “support” have highlighted the need for greater specificity in documenting how different facets of supportive behaviors relate to children’s reporting tendencies. In this review, we describe work focused on the effects of interviewer support, on children’s memory completeness and accuracy. We then describe to a subset of interviewer behaviors that encourage elaboration in dyadic interactions: back-channeling and vocatives. We present preliminary evidence suggesting that these utterances, referred to as implicit encouragement, can increase the amount of detail provided without compromising accuracy. Implications for custody evaluations are discussed.     

Have you really come a long way? women’s access to power in the United States

Although vast social and political changes over the past decades have opened many opportunities for women, many activists and academics maintain that women continue to face significant barriers to entry into positions of power and influence. The vast majority of American leaders are white and male, but the representation of women in the professions has begun to rise as more and more women enter the leadership ranks of various professions. This article provides a profile of women who currently hold positions of power in the United States—who they are, what sectors they represent, and how their opinions on social and political issues compare and contrast with one another. Analyzing data from the Study of Leadership Characteristics, a recently completed national survey of American elites, this article examines the structure and gender composition of elites in the United States, revealing patterns of both conflict and consensus among women elites.     

生态女性主义与观世音

生态女性主义一词由法国学者迪邦娜（Franqoised’Eaubonne）在1974年所创,它结合了女性主义与生态运动的反思。生态女性主义虽然在西方已流行了30年,但是在华文世界中仍缺乏专著和较深入的讨论。电子女性主义（cyberfeminism）者哈乐葳（DonnaHaraway）提出以有机机械人（cyborg）作为未来女性主义的象征,女性主义者若需要启发的话,应该向前看,从科技和有机机械人的形象寻找启示,而非回到古老的属灵生态女性主义（SpiritualEcofeminism）。虽然两种女性主义看似大相径庭,但电子女性主义可以帮助生态女性主义走出自然／文化、人类／动物,甚至是男性／女性的二元思想。较哈乐葳的有机机械人和西方神话的女神,中国化的观世音更加适合作为生态女性主义的象征。从观世音出发可以发现,法国哲学家德勒兹（Gilles Deleuze）的转化生成与生态伦理具有密切关系。     

Feasibility study for collecting alcohol and other drug use data among secondary school students: a web-based survey approach

This study examined the feasibility of using a Web-based survey to collect alcohol and other drug use data from secondary school students in an urban school district in the Midwest. A Web-based survey was self-administered by a random sample of 6th through 11th grade students in the spring of 2002. The final sample consisted of 1,536 secondary school students (781 women and 755 men). The sample was 57% White, 40% African American, and 3% from other racial and ethnic groups. Several indicators of data quality were examined including response rate, absenteeism, refusals, substantive data, and data processing time. The study achieved a response rate of 89.1%. The results of the present study provide evidence that a Web-based survey can be successfully implemented in an economically and racially diverse urban sample of secondary students. While researchers conducting survey research within secondary schools should consider using Web-based survey approaches, additional research is needed to compare Web-based surveys to more traditional approaches to collecting data.     

Sexual assault prevention with college-aged women: a bibliotherapy approach

The present research evaluated the efficacy of a skills-based bibliotherapy approach to sexual assault prevention for college-aged women. One hundred and ten participants were followed prospectively for 16 weeks. A self-help book, written by the authors, was compared to a wait-list control on several self-report measures. Results revealed significant differences between groups, with bibliotherapy participants reporting decreased participation in risky dating behaviors and improvement in sexual communication strategies across a variety of dating situations. However, results suggested that the self-help book was no more effective than the wait-list control in reducing rates of sexual victimization. Limitations of the study and directions for future sexual assault prevention research with women are discussed.     

The engagement game

Engagement is a costly social institution for which virtually no economic analysis exists. We explore the information gathering function of engagement in a game with a proposer who offers a long or short engagement, and a respondent, who may reject the proposal at various stages. Whether the proposer is a suitable match is uncertain, but a long engagement yields information with which the respondent can update prior probabilities. We consider pooling, separating and mixed strategy equilibria and relate our findings to the evolving institution of engagement and institutional circumstances that will improve its efficiency in generating successful matches.All correspondence to Amy Farmer. Responsible editor: Alessandro Cigno.     

Domestic violence among male and female patients seeking emergency medical services

Gender differences among a cohort of injured patients seeking emergency medical services were examined with respect to their experiences as perpetrators and/or victims of domestic violence. Contextual issues, including violence initiation, emotional and behavioral responses to partner-initiated violence, and injury frequency and severity were analyzed. Women reported male partner-initiated violence more frequently than men reported female partner-initiated violence. Behavioral responses to partner initiated violence varied. Women were more likely to report using force back and to involve law enforcement. Women were more likely to be injured in a domestic assault over their lifetime, within the last year, and at the time of recruitment. Comparison of injury severity revealed that women reported higher rates of injuries than men in all possible severity categories. Women also reported experiencing more fear than men during partner-initiated violence, as well as being subjected to larger numbers of dominating and controlling behaviors, and greater intimidation secondary to their partner's size. Understanding contextual differences in partner violence for women and men has significant implications for policy development, identification, treatment, and referral of patients identified as living in violent relationships.