Reciprocal Peer Dislike and Psychosocial Adjustment in Childhood

Reciprocal peer dislike was examined as a predictor of school adjustment and social relationship quality. One hundred and fifty‐one [69 male and 74 female, mean (M)_age = 9.53, standard deviation (SD)_age = .63 years] children completed measures of school liking, loneliness, and friendship quality twice over three months. From ratings of the amount of time participants liked to spend with individual classmates, social network analyses were used to determine reciprocal peer dislike. Curvilinear regression analyses revealed that reciprocal peer dislike at Time 1 predicted changes in the children's loneliness and friendship quality assessed as help, security, and closeness over three months. The findings support the conclusion that reciprocal peer dislike predicts aspects of school adjustment and social relationship qualities.     

Methods for Measuring Mechanisms of Contention

A substantial intellectual movement has been growing in the social sciences around the adoption of mechanism- and process-based explanations as complements to variable-based explanations, or even as substitutes for them. But once we have recognized the validity and dignity of studying mechanisms and processes, what is the next step? Recently, both political scientists’ and sociologists’ discussions have begun to turn away from correlation to mechanism-based approaches to causation. But there is still a widespread assumption that mechanisms are unobservable. We maintain that ways can be developed to observe the presence or absence of mechanisms either directly or indirectly. In this paper, by way of example, we put forward four methods—two direct and two indirect—for measuring mechanisms of contention.     

Science versus Human Welfare? Understanding Attitudes toward Animal Use

Scientists have been portrayed as having an uncaring attitude toward the use of animals and being inclined to reject the possibility of animal mind ( Baldwin, 1993 ; Blumberg & Wasserman, 1995 ), yet there is little empirical research to support these claims. We examined why disparate attitudes toward animal use are held. Scientists, animal welfarists, and laypersons (N = 372) were compared on questionnaire responses that measured attitudes toward four types of animal use, and factors that might underlie these views (including belief in animal mind). As expected, scientists and animal welfarists held polarized views on all measures, whereas laypersons fell between the two. Animal welfarists were consistently opposed to all types of animal use, whereas scientists expressed support for the use of animals for medical research, but not for dissection, personal decoration, and entertainment. Animal welfarists showed high levels of belief in animal mind for 13 animal types, and scientists believed some of the 13 animals to have at least a moderate capacity for cognition and most to have at least a moderate capacity for sentience. Hence, the negative image of the science community that is often portrayed was not supported by our data. Findings were discussed in relation to external (group membership) and internal (belief systems) factors, and it is concluded that some people hold fixed attitudes toward animal use, whereas others are more influenced by context.     

Between Slavery and Freedom on the Atlantic Coast of Honduras

African slaves exhibited considerable geographic and social mobility in late colonial Spanish Honduras. In the contested terrain of the Atlantic coast especially, people of African descent occupied a broad range of social roles. While English-owned slaves who escaped to Spanish territory were freed and then utilised as settlers and workers along the coast, the esclavos del Rey (‘Crown slaves’) originally employed in the construction of the fortress of San Fernando de Omoa found other avenues to enhance their status and even obtain varying degrees of freedom.     

Proceedings of the Fifty-Eighth Annual Meeting of the American College Health Association San Diego,California, 1980

Abstract

Objective: The objective of this study was to assess dietary intakes and eating habits of female college athletes and compared them with the minimum sports nutrition standards. Participants: Data were obtained from 52 female college athletes from a National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division I university between January 2009 and May 2010. Methods: Participants completed anthropometric measurements and dietary assessment using a 3-day food record, a 24-hour recall, and a nutrition questionnaire. Results: t tests indicated the energy and carbohydrate intakes were below the minimum recommended amount (p < .001), with only 9% of the participants meeting their energy needs. Seventy-five percent of the participants failed to consume the minimum amount of carbohydrates that is required to support training. The majority of the participants reported no regular breakfast, 36% consumed < 5 meals/day, and only 16% monitored their hydration status. Conclusions: Effective nutrition interventions are needed to improve dietary intakes and eating habits of female college athletes.     

Book reviews

The US campaign for ‘pure food’ from the 1880s through 1906 featured a diverse coalition of groups with quite different ways of defining the problem, identifying the relevant actors, and balancing political and consumerist tactics. This paper examines how these differences in framing, rather than undermining cooperation or impeding success, helped to broaden the coalition for pure food and to win passage of the 1906 Food and Drug Act. It pays particular attention to the ways in which women's groups acted as frame brokers, translating pure food issues into a maternalist language and, in so doing, contributing both new support and new tactics to the campaign. The case study is used to address more general issues in the relationship between framing and (1) coalition-building and (2) tactical repertoires.     

In Touch With People,not Paper: An Interview With Doug Sotheren

Doug Sotheren has been conducting well‐regarded training courses in relationship counseling for over 25 years, outside a university setting. In conversation with his former trainee Cathy Zervos, he presents his personal philosophy of counsellor training, emphasising the need for trainees to be ‘in touch with people’ rather than with theory. His whole course is experiential and based on the concept that training (including the way the co‐trainers handle their own relationship in front of the group) should model the counselling process itself. He talks about his way of selecting students, and his views on counselling students out of the course where necessary. A long‐serving member of the AAMFC and former editor of their newsletter, Sotheren praises the AAMFC for requiring demonstrated competence in its members.     

The promotion of participatory methods for group events in Zambia: a process evaluation report for unicef 1994–1997

Beginning in early 1994, UNICEF Zambia made a commitment to emphasize the use of participatory methods in conducting its business. Specifically, this has meant adopting and experimenting with a participatory methodology named VIPP (Visualization in Participatory Programmes) which had been used in a wide variety of group events, ranging from planning and review meetings to training and team building. Three years later, a process evaluation was commissioned to examine the question: How has this initiative been accepted and what effect is it having on UNICEF-supported programmes in Zambia?Employing a widely-utilized framework for evaluating training effectiveness, the evaluation team traced the history of VIPP implementation in Zambia through document reviews and interviews. In addition, the evaluators collected data from three different programme sites in Zambia where VIPP had been used. Several participatory evaluation techniques were used to conduct this evaluation, the first exercise of its kind for assessing VIPP application in Africa.Through this evaluation exercise, the evaluation team has gained knowledge about the strategic benefits and application of VIPP that will help with future planning for VIPP in Zambia and that will also inform other UNICEF offices and organizations about the experience of implementing a participatory methodology for programme and organisational purposes. © 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.