The Slut-Shaming Instrument: Preliminary validation,correlates, and links with psychological distress among adolescent girls

Despite social awareness of the problem of slut-shaming for adolescent girls, no existing measure captures this construct. Using data from a sample of 202 girls from Québec, Canada (ages 14–17; 68% White), preliminary validation is provided for the Slut-Shaming Instrument, a seven-item measure of negative peer experiences related to being perceived as too sexually active, sexualized, or flirtatious. The measure showed strong psychometric properties including good reliability and factor structure, expected associations with daily experiences of slut-related victimization and sexual harassment, and links with number of sexual partners and other forms of peer victimization. Slut-shaming was associated with distress accounting for these other forms of victimization (including sexual harassment), suggesting the pertinence of addressing this type of gender-based victimization.     

Parent Involvement Practices in Child Protection: A Matter of Know-How and Attitude

Modern view of child protection services implies that to help young people, simply intervening on their behalf is not sufficient. It suggests that involving parents in the assistance process is essential in order to ensure that they are most likely to play their role as parents to their children in the fullest possible way. Although several articles have dealt with the issue of parent involvement, very few have attempted to document the practices used by practitioners to encourage such involvement. This article presents the findings of a study on child protection practices for involving parents in a child protection context. It is exploratory in nature, and uses a qualitative methodology. The study population is made up of 38 child protection service workers. An analysis of the practitioners’ discourse reveals that the behaviour and attitudes used by them to encourage parent involvement are very diverse. There also appear to be key moments in securing their involvement, that is, making contact, setting objectives and means of action, and applying the case plan. In addition to corroborating earlier studies on the issue of parent involvement, our findings indicate that the majority of the caseworkers interviewed practice an approach that aims to empower clients.Funding of this project was provided by le Fonds Richelieu de recherche sur l’enfance.Marie-Christine Saint-Jacques, Geneviève Lessard, and André Beaudoin are affiliated with School of Social Work, Laval University, Quebec, Canada. Sylvie Drapeau is affiliated with Department of Foundations and Practices in Education, Laval University, Quebec, Canada.     

Willingness to Forgive Among Young Adolescents: A Comparison Between Two Groups of Different Cultural Origins Living in France

Willingness to forgive depending on circumstances was assessed in a sample of 203 15- and 16-year-old adolescents from two different cultures: Western Europe and Maghreb. The material consisted of 48 cards depicting a fight between adolescents. Each story contained five items of information: (a) the origin of the offender (Christian surname versus Muslim surname), (b) the origin of the victim (Christian surname versus Muslim surname), (c) the degree of intent in the act (clear intent versus no intent), (d) apologies / contrition for the act (apologies versus no apologies), and (e) the degree of cancellation of consequences. The overall level of willingness to forgive was clearly different from zero, but was not very high: among adolescents, forgiveness is far from being unconditional. The apology factor appeared to be extremely important: when remorse and apologies are present,it is much easier to forgive. Willingness to forgive extends to the members of the other group. All these results hold true, irrespective of the respondent's origin.