The process of coping with domestic violence in adult survivors of childhood sexual abuse

Research suggests that the use of disengaged or avoidant strategies to cope with interpersonal violence contributes to the development of depressive symptoms and other psychological difficulties. Survivors of childhood sexual abuse (CSA) who are exposed to subsequent episodes of abuse may be more likely to rely on disengaged coping strategies, placing them at elevated risk of psychological symptomatology. In this study, we explored the interrelationships between coping, depression, and self-esteem in an ethnically diverse sample of domestic violence survivors (N = 219) with and without a history of CSA. As predicted, CSA survivors (n = 86) reported significantly greater use of disengaged coping strategies (wishful thinking, self-criticism, and social withdrawal) than non-CSA survivors (n = 133). As hypothesized, both a CSA history and the use of disengaged coping significantly predicted higher levels of depression and lower self- esteem. Clinical implications of the findings are discussed.     

Why People Do What They Do to Protect Against Earthquake Risk: Perceptions of Hazard Adjustment Attributes

This study examined respondents' self-reported adoption of 16 hazard adjustments (preimpact actions to reduce danger to persons and property), their perceptions of those adjustments' attributes, and the correlations of those perceived attributes with respondents' demographic characteristics. The sample comprised 561 randomly selected residents from three cities in Southern California prone to high seismic risk and three cities from Western Washington prone to moderate seismic risks. The results show that the hazard adjustment perceptions were defined by hazard-related attributes and resource-related attributes. More significantly, the respondents had a significant degree of consensus in their ratings of those attributes and used them to differentiate among the hazard adjustments, as indicated by statistically significant differences among the hazard adjustment profiles. Finally, there were many significant correlations between respondents' demographic characteristics and the perceived characteristics of hazard adjustments, but there were few consistent patterns among these correlations.     

Maternal and Paternal Mental‐state Talk and Executive Function in Preschool Children

The present study examined the relationship between parents’ mental‐state talk and preschoolers’ executive function. Seventy‐two children participated in the present study, as well as their mothers and fathers. When children were enrolled in the second preschool year, mothers’ and fathers’ use of mental‐state references were assessed during a shared picture‐book reading task with the child. Later, four months before admission to the first grade, preschoolers’ executive function was measured. Hierarchical regression analysis revealed that maternal, but not paternal, mental‐state talk was a significant predictor of children's executive function composite, even after accounting for child gender, age, verbal ability, and parental education. When looking at each of the EF components, maternal mental‐state talk proved to be a predictor of set‐shifting whereas no significant relations emerged with inhibitory control or working memory. These findings add to prior research on parenting quality and executive function in preschoolers.     

Leafy spanning k-forests

Journal of Combinatorial Optimization - We denote by Leafy  Spanning $$k$$ -Forest the problem of, given a positive integer k and a graph G with at most k components,...     

DOMESTIC WORK, FAMILY CHARACTERISTICS, AND EARNINGS:

Using the 1996 Indiana Quality of Employment Survey, we reexamine gender and class differences in the effects of domestic work and family characteristics on earnings. We expand upon Coverman's (1983) original model by including several new measures. We find that the gender gap in domestic work has narrowed considerably, not because men are doing more but because women are doing less than they were twenty years ago. Women's earnings suffer more than men's from time spent on domestic work and generally benefit more from partners' domestic help. Women's earnings are more advantaged than men's by having preschool children, and men's earnings are more advantaged when their partner works. We find significant class differences in the effects of domestic work between working-class and non-working class women and in the effects of family characteristics between working-class and non-working class men. Non-working class women's earnings suffer more from time they put into domestic work, but their earnings generally benefit more from partners' or outside domestic help. Working-class men's earnings are more advantaged by having school-age children and more disadvantaged by having progressive gender ideologies. Non-working class men's earnings benefit more when their partners hold a job but suffer more as their partners work more hours.     

A process evaluation of individual and organizational occupational stress and health interventions

There is reason to believe that many health and stress interventions fail due to inattention to the effects of intervention implementation processes, but evaluations of these processes are found only rarely in the literature. The objective of the present study was to explore the issue of obstacles to implementation that may occur when stress and health interventions are introduced in work organizations. The study was conducted as a process evaluation of seven different individual and organizational interventions. Interviews were conducted in 22 post offices, 12 organizational units (such as care homes and local administrative units) of a Norwegian municipality, and in 10 shops in a shopping mall. The interviews took place before and after the interventions. The following key process factors were identified: (1) the ability to learn from failure and to motivate participants; (2) multi-level participation and negotiation, and differences in organizational perception; (3) insight into tacit and informal organizational behaviour; (4) clarification of roles and responsibilities, especially the role of middle management; and (5) competing projects and reorganization. For improved studies of interventions in the future we recommend that qualitative and quantitative methods be combined, that researchers build more on natural interventions that occur naturally within the organization, and that a pilot study be undertaken in order to investigate the cultural maturity of the organization.     

Understanding the discipline gap through a cultural lens: implications for the education of African American students

African American students are disciplined at rates that are disproportionately higher than Black students’ statistical representation in public schools. Coined as the discipline gap, racial and ethnic disparities are present in virtually every major school system across the United States. Because African American students seldom share the cultural frameworks of their teachers, the overrepresentation of Black students on measures of school discipline may, in part, be a function of cultural mismatches in the classroom. This article contains a synopsis of what is currently known about the discipline gap, and sets forth suggestions to address the issue. Recommendations focus on the roles of culturally responsive discipline, teacher recruitment and cultural immersion experiences. Irvine’s construct of cultural synchronization serves as the article’s interpretive basis.     

Establishing Independence in Low‐Income Urban Areas: The Relationship to Adolescent Aggressive Behavior

Although adolescents in poor urban areas often assume independent, adult‐like roles, relatively little is known about the relationship between these roles and other adolescent behaviors. This research examines the association between independent roles occurring within different contexts (e.g. family, peer, work) and aggressive behavior among 516 low‐income, urban middle school students. Overall, adolescent employment is related to increases in aggressive behavior. However, associations that familial and peer independent roles have with aggression differ by the extent of youth involvement in paid work. Greater engagement in familial independent roles is associated with decreased aggression among employed adolescents, but with increased aggression among unemployed youth. Also, peer independent roles are related to significantly greater increases in aggression among unemployed, compared with employed, adolescents.     

Subjective Indicators in the Health Sector and Their Usefulness in Policy Making

A considerable literature produced in the field of social sciences focused in the last 20 years on the importance of subjective indicators of wellbeing as an element of great significance in the analysis of public policies and quality of services, in addition to objective indicators. The health sector is characterized by a particular propensity and special consideration of the role of patients and other persons involved in the care process (family, doctors, nurses, etc.), and therefore of subjective elements. Since the end of the 1980s several studies considered the incongruences between health demand and health service supply and introduced in the debate the need to produce better evaluation methodologies, based on the interaction between objective an subjective data. The consequence was that subjective assessment by users and operators is now an integral part of any health service evaluation activity. The paper shows the evolution of scientific approaches to health services assessment, and the nature of subjective indicators mostly utilized in recent Italian experiences. Special attention is dedicated to an interesting attempt to enlarge the evaluation approach, aim of which is to contribute to the assessment of the social impact of administrative actions and public services stimulating the contribution of social parties and independent experts and involving public authorities and policy-makers.     

Past Present: Discordant Gay Male Couples,HIV Infection History,and Relationship Dynamics

Discordant couples are unique because partners do not share the same serostatus. Yet research overlooks how they became discordant, mistakenly assuming that they have always been that way and, by extension, that being discordant impacts the relationship in a similar manner. This study examines HIV infection history and its impact on relationship dynamics using qualitative data from 35 discordant gay male couples. Most couples were discordant when they met (69%); however, many were not (31%). Those couples that met discordant felt being discordant had a lesser impact on their sexual and relational satisfaction, while those that did not meet discordant felt it had a greater impact, reporting sexual frustration and anxiety over seroconverting. This suggests that relationship dynamics may differ for discordant couples depending on HIV infection history. HIV prevention and counseling services for discordant couples can be better tailored and more effective when differences in HIV infection history are recognized.