Examining the Quality of Adolescent–Parent Relationships Among Chilean Families

The purpose of this study was to examine if adolescents’ reports of warm and harsh parenting practices by their mothers and fathers varied as a function of demographic, youth and their mothers or mother figures’ individual and family characteristics. Data are from 707 community-dwelling adolescents (mean age = 14, SD = 1.4) and their mothers or mother figures in Santiago, Chile. Having a warmer relationship with both parents was inversely associated with the adolescents’ age and positively associated with adolescents’ family involvement and parental monitoring. Both mothers’ and fathers’ harsh parenting were positively associated with adolescent externalizing behaviors and being male and inversely associated with youth autonomy and family involvement. These findings suggest that net of adolescent developmental emancipation and adolescent behavioral problems, positive relationships with parents, especially fathers, may be nurtured through parental monitoring and creation of an interactive family environment, and can help to foster positive developmental outcomes.     

The effects of a pedometer-based intervention on first-year university students: A randomized control trial

ABSTRACT

Objectives: To assess the effects of a 12-week pedometer-based intervention on the physical activity behavior, health-related quality of life (HRQOL), and psychological well-being of first-year university students. Participants: First-year university students (N = 184) were recruited during September 2012 and randomly assigned to an intervention or a control group. Methods: Intervention participants were provided with a pedometer, monthly tracking logs, and follow-up e-mails. Control participants received no intervention. Physical activity, HRQOL, and psychological well-being were measured at baseline and post intervention. Data were analyzed using multivariate/univariate analysis of variance (MANOVA/ANOVA). Results: All participants experienced an increase in mild physical activity (p < .01) from baseline to follow-up. The intervention failed to produce significant differences between groups for physical activity (p = .28), HRQOL (p = .80), or psychological well-being (p = .72). Psychological well-being (p < .001), vigorous physical activity (p = .04), and mental health status (p < .001) decreased across the duration of the study. Conclusions: More intensive interventions may be required to elicit physical activity behavior change.     

Exploring parent–child communication in the context of threat: immigrant families facing detention and deportation in post-9/11 USA

This paper explores whether and how documented and undocumented migrant parents communicate with their children about the threats posed by the intensified enforcement of 1996 and 2001 US immigration reforms; whether parents facing potential detention and deportation plan for the care of their children; and whether their children learn from other sources about detention and deportation. The focus of this paper emerged in the context of a multiyear participatory and action research (PAR) process as one effort to understand the multiple meanings and divergent perspectives on parental–child communication that arose among and between participants and coresearchers. The aim is to better understand, in parents' own voices, their embrace of and resistance to direct communication with their children about the threat of deportation. Data are triangulated from in-depth interviews with 18 Central American immigrant coresearchers (Study 1), responses of 132 Latino/a immigrant parents to a survey with open-ended questions (Study 2), and conversations in a series of community meetings and workshops. Findings confirm the importance for advocates, service providers, and researchers to understand migrant parents' decisions about communication within the context of family and community values; gender expectations; lived and psychological experiences of being criminalized; and strategies to manage daily challenges of living without documents while parenting US-citizen children.     

The Latina/o Racial and Citizenship Divide on Perceptions of the Influence of Immigrant Mobilizations*

In spring 2006, the United States witnessed immigrant marches throughout the nation. Although Latina/os are often depicted as the “face” of the immigrant marches, we know little about how racial and citizenship statuses shaped Latina/os’ perceptions of how the marches influenced public perceptions of undocumented immigrants. Using logistic regression on data from the 2006 National Survey of Latinos, we find that Latina/os identifying as white are less likely to be supportive of the immigrant marches than those who defied standard racial classifications, and instead identified as “Latina/o.” Moreover, Latina/os who are born in the United States are not as supportive of the immigrant marches in comparison with naturalized citizens and non‐citizen Latina/os, accounting for demographic and human capital factors. This study suggests there is a “racial‐ and citizenship divide” among Latina/os that fragments perceptions on the immigrant mobilizations in the United States.     

Gender-related Effect of Cultural Participation in Psychological Well-being: Indications from the Well-being Project in the Municipality of Milan

Gender differences have been observed in the way males and females process cognitive stimuli coming from exposure to works of art and participation in leisure activities. For this reason, we designed a project to assess this issue, with a cross-sectional study in Milan, on a sample of the population consisting in 1,000 inhabitants. Our objective was to assess how cultural participation affects subjective well-being, measured with the Psychological General Well-being Scale, which gives a global index of psychological well-being ranging from 0 (lowest level of well-being) to 110 (highest level of well-being). The survey was conducted with the assistance of Doxa, an Italian pollster company, through telephone interviews, according to the Computer Aided Telephone Interview system. A significant statistical difference in variable distribution between the two genders was found for civil status (more males resulted as being single and more women widowed), income (higher income in males), cultural participation (higher in males) and psychological well-being (higher in males). As expected, state of health has the maximum impact on the level of psychological well-being. The increase in the number of concomitant diseases is in fact linearly associated with a progressive increase in psychological distress with average scores of around 60 (very low level of well-being), in the presence of 5 or more concomitant diseases, in both males and females. The impact profile of nine major determinants on subjective well-being resulted to be clearly different in the two genders. Health status dominates in both, but its impact is higher in females than in males. The obtained results remained substantially unchanged also when the two gender groups were matched according to civil status and income level distribution. Leisure activities play an important role in females (second place after health status), while in males they result as being less important (fourth place after health status, civil status and occupation). Education is quite important for females (third place), while it is given the least importance in males. This different profile probably reflects different social and environmental influences on the two genders. The social and psychological implications of these findings are discussed.     

Specifying links between infants' theory of mind,associative learning,and selective trust

The psychological mechanisms underlying infants' selective social learning are currently a subject of controversy. The main goal of the present study was to contribute data to this debate by investigating whether domain-specific or domain-general abilities guide infants' selectivity. Eighteen-month-olds observed a reliable and an unreliable speaker, and then completed a forced-choice word learning paradigm, two theory of mind tasks, and an associative learning task. Results revealed that infants showed sensitivity to the verbal competence of the speaker. Additionally, infants with superior knowledge inference abilities were less likely to learn from the unreliable speaker. No link was observed between selective social learning and associative learning skills. These results replicate and extend previous findings demonstrating that socio-cognitive abilities are linked to infants' selective social learning.     

Determining socio-demographic predictors of treatment dropout: results in a therapeutic community

This article presents a study of a number of socio-demographic factors that predict treatment dropout from a residential substance use disorder programme in Spain ( Proyecto Hombre Therapeutic Community). A sample of 430 patients (173 who completed treatment and 257 who dropped out of treatment) was assessed at entry to the therapeutic community programme in order to collect information on socio-demographic characteristics of the participants. According to the results obtained, factors that predicted treatment dropout included younger age, male gender and previous treatment history in the Proyecto Hombre therapeutic community. Patients with these characteristics were at significantly greater risk of dropping out of treatment. The implications of these results for further research and clinical practice are commented upon.     

An Attitude Model of Environmental Action: Evidence from Developing and Developed Countries

Social Indicators Research - This paper analyzes the determinants of stated individual support towards environmental action. The analysis is realized by means of an original Partial Least Squares...     

WHY ZERO TOLERANCE OF MISCONDUCT IS UNDESIRABLE IN CONTESTS

Competition can foster misconduct in any circumstance where the organizer of a contest cannot perfectly monitor contestants' actions or when doing so is prohibitively costly. Although misconduct comprises all actions that are contrary to the interest of the organizer, it is not necessarily the case that it is optimal to prohibit all such behavior. In this paper, we determine the equilibrium level of misconduct chosen by players in a symmetric rank‐order tournament between two competitors in which the organizer tolerates some level of misconduct. In addition to showing that zero tolerance may not minimize the level of misconduct in equilibrium, we show that there exists a range of tolerated misconduct where a symmetric mixed strategy equilibrium exists with players cheating (i.e., misconduct above the tolerated level) with some probability. When the gain from misconduct is uncertain and unknown the contest organizer faces a tradeoff: tolerating more misconduct will reduce such behavior when the state of temptation is high, but increase it when temptation is low. (JEL J33, K42)