Using the Constructs Multifinality,Work Hope,and Possible Selves With Urban Minority Youth

This article describes and highlights the potential contributions that the constructs multifinality, work hope, and possible selves make for designing career counseling interventions and for better understanding possible career‐related factors associated with academic engagement and achievement among urban minority youth. Multifinality may serve as a superordinate orientation because it conceptualizes development as discontinuous and relatively plastic, allowing for youth deemed at risk to follow more hopeful pathways. Work hope and possible selves emphasize the utility of providing urban minority youth with space to answer questions related to what they might achieve and do in the future and who they might become. Together, multifinality, work hope, and possible selves provide a hopeful conceptual framework for career researchers and practitioners.     

The effect of joint control training on the acquisition and durability of a sequencing task

Gutierrez (2006) experimentally demonstrated the effects of joint control and particularly the role of response mediation in the sequencing behavior of adults using an unfamiliar language. The purpose of the current study was to replicate and extend the procedures used by Gutierrez by comparing the effects of joint control training with the effects of a prompt-and-fade procedure on the acquisition of a sequencing task. The effects of each procedure on delayed sequencing behavior were also tested. Ten undergraduate students participated in 2 experiments. The results indicated that all participants acquired the sequencing response in fewer trials and maintained accurate delayed responding when the component responses necessary for joint control were directly taught. Finally, when the self-echoic mediation component was blocked, accurate responding deteriorated in 8 of 10 participants.     

Associations Between Observed Mother–Adolescent Interactions and Adolescent Information Management

Associations between observed mother–adolescent interactions during a conflict task and adolescents’ information management strategies were examined in 108 primarily middle class, European‐American adolescents (M = 13.80 years, SD = 1.52) and their mothers. Teens who communicated more clearly disclosed more about personal and multifaceted activities, lied less about personal activities, and engaged in less avoidance regarding multifaceted and prudential activities. Mothers’ clear communication was associated with less adolescent disclosure and more avoidance about personal and multifaceted activities. Teens with more receptive mothers omitted less prudential information but avoided discussing prudential issues more. Maternal warmth was not associated with information management. The results highlight the need to distinguish between parent and teen behaviors and between affective quality and specific communicative behaviors.     

Bidirectional Relations Between Authoritative Parenting and Adolescents’ Prosocial Behaviors

This study examined the bidirectional relations between authoritative parenting and adolescents’ prosocial behavior over a 1‐year time period. Data were taken from Time 2 and 3 of the Flourishing Families Project, and included reports from 319 two‐parent families with an adolescent child (M age of child at Time 2 = 12.34, SD = 1.06, 52% girls). Cross‐lag analyses supported bidirectional relations between parenting and prosocial behavior with particular emphasis on the role of the adolescents’ prosocial behavior on subsequent parenting. Results also varied as a function of the reporter. Discussion focuses on the implications for understanding the multifaceted nature of prosocial development in adolescence.     

Narratives from the neighbourhood: The discursive construction of integration problems in talkback radio1

This paper examines how speakers deploy narrative devices in talking about Sudanese refugees. Particularly, we show how narrative constructions form an important basis for the advancement of accounts about integration problems into the local polity. We analyse talkback ‘phone‐in’ calls to a local Adelaide radio station that provide callers an opportunity to give accounts of events and social phenomena that concern them in their local settings. Analysis shows that speakers regularly deployed narrative constructions, first‐hand ‘witnessing’ devices that functioned to legitimate accounts as veridical versions of events, and contrast devices to explicate the moral and behavioural aberrance of Sudanese refugees. The analysis illustrates how these discursive devices function rhetorically in interaction, in ways that differentiate Sudanese refugees as problematic. Through this analysis, we contend that narrative devices precipitate and bolster socio‐political policies that have serious, negative consequences for Sudanese refugees.     

Disability beliefs and help-seeking behavior of depressed Chinese-American patients in a primary care setting

In this study the authors assessed the effects of disability beliefs, conceptualization and labeling of emotional disabilities, and perceived barriers on help-seeking behaviors among depressed Chinese Americans in a primary care setting. Forty-two Chinese Americans participated in semistructured interviews using established psychological measures and open-ended questions adapted from the Explanatory Model Interview Catalogue. The authors found that care utilization appears to be complicated by somatization of emotional problems, variations in causal attribution to depression, barriers to receiving mental health care, and the burden of comorbid physical conditions. Their findings highlight the importance of addressing these issues and educating patients about body-mind dialectic common to depression.     

The effect of hours of work on social interaction

Increases in hours of work per capita over past 30?years have created an intuitively plausible notion that there now is less time for social interaction. The purpose of this paper is to empirically investigate the effect of hours of work on social interaction. The empirical work is complicated by the argument that unobserved factors could increase both hours of work and social interaction. The empirical work in this paper employs an exogenous decline in hours of work in France due to a new employment law to bypass this endogeneity problem. The data employed are derived from the 1999?C2003 Continuous Survey of Household Living Conditions which is a random sample of French households. Gender specific results from a difference-in-difference model show that the employment laws reduced hours of work but there is no evidence that the extra hours went to increased social interactions. Contrary to the intuitive argument, the paper concludes that in the range of approximately 94 extra hours of leisure per year, hours of work have no effect on social interaction.     

Demography,Education, and Democracy: Global Trends and the Case of Iran

Reconstructions and projections of populations by age, sex, and educational attainment for 120 countries since 1970 are used to assess the global relationship between improvements in human capital and democracy. Democracy is measured by the Freedom House indicator of political rights. Similar to an earlier study on the effects of improving educational attainment on economic growth, the greater age detail of this new dataset resolves earlier ambiguities about the effect of improving education as assessed using a global set of national time series. The results show consistently strong effects of improving overall levels of educational attainment, of a narrowing gender gap in education, and of fertility declines and the subsequent changes in age structure on improvements in the democracy indicator. This global relationship is then applied to the Islamic Republic of Iran. Over the past two decades Iran has experienced the world's most rapid fertility decline associated with massive increases in female education. The results show that based on the experience of 120 countries since 1970, Iran has a high chance of significant movement toward more democracy over the following two decades.     

Predictors of Treatment Outcome Among Asian Pathological Gamblers (PGs): Clinical,Behavioural, Demographic,and Treatment Process Factors

Research on predictors of treatment outcome among pathological gamblers (PGs) is inconclusive and dominated by studies from Western countries. Using a prospective longitudinal design, the current study examined demographic, clinical, behavioural and treatment programme predictors of gambling frequency at 3, 6 and 12-months, among PGs treated at an addiction clinic in Singapore. Measures included the Hospital anxiety and depression scale, gambling symptom assessment scale (GSAS), personal well-being index (PWI), treatment perception questionnaire and gambling readiness to change scale. Treatment response in relation to changes in symptom severity, personal wellbeing and abstinence were also assessed. Abstinence rates were 38.6, 46.0 and 44.4 % at 3, 6 and 12-months respectively. Significant reductions in gambling frequency, GSAS, and improvement in PWI were reported between baseline and subsequent outcome assessments, with the greatest change occurring in the initial three months. No demographic, clinical, behavioural or treatment programme variable consistently predicted outcome at all three assessments, though treatment satisfaction was the most frequent significant predictor. However, being unemployed, having larger than average debts, poor treatment satisfaction and attending fewer sessions at the later stages of treatment were associated with significantly poorer outcomes, up to 1-year after initiating treatment. These findings show promise for the effectiveness of a CBT-based treatment approach for the treatment of predominantly Chinese PGs. Clinical implications and suggestions for future research are discussed. Taken together, the findings suggest early treatment satisfaction is paramount in improving short-term outcomes, with baseline gambling behaviour and treatment intensity playing a more significant role in the longer term.     

Relationship Churning and Parenting Stress Among Mothers and Fathers

Researchers have documented the consequences of relationship instability for parenting stress but have given little attention to within‐partner relationship instability. In this study, the authors used data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study (N = 3,544) to estimate the association between within‐partner relationship instability (known as churning or on‐again/off‐again relationships) and parenting stress. First, they found that by the focal child's 5th birthday about 16% of biological parents experience churning. Second, compared to being stably together with or stably separated from the child's other parent, churning is associated with greater parenting stress for both mothers and fathers. Because parenting stress is the same or higher among churners compared to their counterparts who stably separate, this suggests that, more than a change in partner, relationship instability—whether within or across relationships—is tied to parenting stress.