The relationship between childhood sexual abuse, complex post-traumatic stress disorder and alexithymia in two outpatient samples: examination of women treated in community and institutional clinics

Relationships between trauma variables, complex post-traumatic stress disorder (complex PTSD), affect dysregulation, dissociation, somatization, and alexithymia were studied in 70 women with early-onset sexual abuse treated in community-based private (n = 25) or clinic outpatient settings (n = 45). Measures were the Toronto Alexithymia Scale-20 and the Psychological Trauma Assessment Program. Compared with the community sample, the clinic sample (1) met diagnostic criteria for both lifetime and current complex PTSD; (2) showed correlations between current affect dysregulation, dissociation, and somatization with alexithymia; and (3) higher levels of alexithymia. Results suggest the clinic sample continued to experience current forms of suffering, risk, and vulnerability associated with early-onset sexual trauma. The findings may have implications regarding types of treatment available in community versus clinic settings.     

Mistrusting companies, mistrusting the tobacco industry: clarifying the context of tobacco prevention efforts that focus on the tobacco industry

Campaigns to prevent adolescent smoking increasingly depict the tobacco industry as deceitful and exploitative. This study was undertaken to determine how adolescents' expectations about the trustworthiness of companies, in general, influence the pathway through which anti-tobacco industry campaigns prevent smoking. Structural equation modeling was used with survey data from 6,670 adolescents, ages 12 to 17. In the first model, statistically significant coefficients were associated with paths from mistrust of companies to mistrust of the tobacco industry, from mistrust of the tobacco industry to anti-tobacco industry attitudes, and from anti-tobacco industry attitudes to smoking. In models stratified by mistrust of companies, paths from mistrust of the tobacco industry to anti-tobacco industry attitudes and from anti-tobacco industry attitudes to smoking appeared comparable among youth with both high and low mistrust of companies. These results suggest that anti-tobacco industry campaigns resonate with youth because of youths' trust-related values and expectations.     

Household Income and Trajectories of Marital Satisfaction in Early Marriage

Are the marriages of lower income couples less satisfying than the marriages of more affluent couples? To address this question, we compared trajectories of marital satisfaction among couples with a wide range of household incomes. The marital satisfaction of 862 Black, White, and Latino newlywed spouses (N = 431 couples) was assessed five times, each 9 months apart, during the first 4 years of marriage. Lower income couples did not have less satisfying marriages on average, nor did their satisfaction decline more steeply on average. They did, however, experience (a) significantly greater fluctuations in marital satisfaction across assessments and (b) significantly more variability between husbands and wives. If efforts to support the marriages of low‐income couples are to address the unique characteristics of their marital development, these findings suggest that efforts to stabilize their marriages may be more effective than efforts to improve their satisfaction alone.     

ENHANCING DISCOURSE ON NEW TECHNOLOGY WITHIN HIGHER EDUCATION

Universities face challenges in creating and nurturing reflective discourse about ICTs within higher education. Constraints to this discourse include time-space compression caused by ICTs, and changing perceptions of the university's role in an information society. In answering these challenges, a call is made for elevating the role of higher education in public knowledge formation. Such a move reduces the constraints of time pressures by valuing discussion and debate and the time required for these activities, and questions authority and credibility gained solely due to practical and discursive technological competency. Thus, the question is not just to explore how communications technologies are shaping our experience of time and space, but to debate how we wish to use technologies and other means to shape and create the time and space in which meaningful human social and political life is possible. Institutions of higher education should both serve as sites for public knowledge formation, and as contributors to such initiatives in civic society.     

The Effect of Social Information on Giving from Lapsed Donors: Evidence from a Field Experiment

Using data from an experiment carried out by a large nonprofit organization, this paper finds that lapsed donors who received a solicitation letter referencing a relatively high donation made by another donor (high social information) were more generous in giving, but overall less likely to make a donation, relative to the baseline (low social information) group. After using the propensity score matching to correct for pretreatment differences in the two experimental groups, the estimated effect of high social information on the average donation amount is an increase of $14.95 (45 %). However, high social information is also found to reduce the probability a lapsed donor will give by 4.1 %. Thus, high social information can have potentially offsetting effects when applied to lapsed donors. Nonprofits should consider this trade-off when employing social information fundraising techniques to solicit donations from lapsed donors.     

Black Immigrants and the Rhetoric of Social Distancing

This article focuses on the empirical evidence of social distancing in the interdisciplinary literature on black immigrants. I argue that the conventions that have guided popular and scholarly representations of relations between foreign-born and native-born blacks have been shaped by seminal writings in sociology. Treating interviews with black immigrants as sites of various kinds of discursive practices, my aim is to illustrate a shift in the expression of social distance that maps onto contemporary ways of talking about race in the US. I argue that social distance rhetoric is an expression of what black immigrants learn about race and ethnicity in American society. This reading challenges the widely held interpretation that social distancing accurately reflects individual subjectivity and collective identity.     

Urban sacred natural sites – a call for research

Urban sacred natural sites are not well documented or understood as potential repositories of biological diversity or as critical components of local and indigenous tradition and cultural patrimony in urban areas. Virtually all research and activity on sacred natural sites thus far has focused on sites in non-urban areas, and most interest in sacred sites in urban areas has been on human-built heritage and structures. Minimal attention has been given to sacred natural sites that are in urban areas. These urban sacred natural sites may be connected to mainstream religions, or may exist where cities have developed on indigenous land and associated sacred sites. Given the lack of systematic study of urban sacred natural sites, we recommend further research, including: undertaking inventories; assessing biological features and their possible contributions to conservation; assessing the possible contribution of these sites to wider strategies; examining possible management and protection options; and promoting linkages to relevant global initiatives.     

Gambling among young Thai people in Melbourne,Australia: an exploratory study

The purpose of the study reported in this paper was to explore the gambling behaviours of young Thai people resident in Melbourne, Australia; the meaning that gambling had for this group; whether the attitudes of these young Thai people towards gambling changed as a result of their location in a society with more relaxed attitudes towards gambling than in Thailand; whether any such changes of attitude were reflected in gambling participation; and whether such participation had demonstrably negative impacts. It was also hoped to gain some insight into whether pre-existing beliefs and attitudes provided a protective factor in relation to the respondent's gambling. Fifty young people aged 18 to 25, forming five natural friendship networks, were observed on over 180 occasions in relation to their gambling and leisure behaviours. A number of major themes were identified from the observational data including money, fortune and luck, consumerism, entertainment, spirituality and superstition, gambling and family values. It was found that despite high levels of gambling participation there was little, if any, evidence of problematic play or its consequences. Strong adherence to values espoused in families of origin and to complex beliefs about luck in the context of beliefs about spirituality and the location of gambling within the context of a range of leisure pursuits served as protective factors for these young people.