Differences between sexually victimized and nonsexually victimized male adolescent sexual abusers: developmental antecedents and behavioral comparisons

This study compares sexually victimized and nonsexually victimized male adolescent sexual abusers on a number of variables. Self-report measures were administered to 325 male sexually abusive youth (average age 16) in six residential facilities in the Midwest, 55% of whom reported sexual victimization. The results indicate that the sexually victimized sexual abusers have more severe developmental antecedents (trauma, family characteristics, early exposure to pornography and personality) and recent behavioral difficulties (characteristics of sexual aggression, sexual arousal, use of pornography, and nonsexual criminal behavior) than the nonsexually victimized group. Results are contrasted with recent typological research, which found no relationship between sexual victimization and subtype membership. Treatment, research, and theoretical implications are discussed.     

Turning the Car Inside Out: Transport, Equity and Environment

"Turning the car inside out" describes how the environmental damage and social exclusion inflicted by the car can only be seen from outside the car. It explains how car use has reshaped land, time use, social relations and economic patterns. It creates ever more pressures for increased car use, yet inevitably leaves the people temporarily or permanently excluded from cars having to negotiate car distances and times. The worst scenario of car saturation is rejected as untenable both because of the permanent social and environmental impact, but also the self-defeating nature of the quest for mobility.     

“I wish someone would explain why I am in care”: The impact of children and young people's lack of understanding of why they are in out‐of‐home care on their well‐being and felt security

Having a good understanding of one's origins and history is known to be significant in identity development. Drawing on a large‐scale online survey of looked after children's subjective well‐being, this paper demonstrates that a significant number of children and young people (age 4–18 years) did not fully understand the reasons for their entry to care. The paper explores the effect of this lack of knowledge on children's well‐being and on their feelings of being settled in their current placement. The study reiterates the need for professionals to be honest and open with children in out‐of‐home care and the need to specifically address, perhaps repeatedly, why a child is not living with their birth family.     

A test among models of nonverbal immediacy reactions: Arousal-labeling,discrepancy-arousal,and social cognition

Individuals may respond to an increase in nonverbal immediacy by either increasing or decreasing the immediacy of their own behavior. To account for this, a number of models have been proposed, including arousal-labeling (Patterson, 1976), discrepancy-arousal (Cappella & Greene, 1982), and social cognition (e.g., Ellsworth, 1978). An experiment was designed to test the social cognition approach and, when combined with findings of previous studies, to serve as a test among three models. Individual male subjects discussed a moral dilemma with a male confederate at a seating distance of either 1.1 m (control group) or 0.3 m in two experimental groups (confederate intentional-close and confederate forced-close). Subjects in both experimental conditions showed less immediate nonverbal behavior, but only subjects in the intentional-close condition evaluated the confederate more negatively than subjects in the control group. These results, when combined with past research findings, suggest that social cognition alone may determine whether nonverbal compensation or reciprocation will occur, and that arousal-based explanations may be unnecessary. Other self-report findings of the study, however, create difficulties for all three models of nonverbal exchange.We thank Paul Baker, Larry Coutts, David Gartrell, Leslie Hayduk, Ron Hoppe, Eric Knowles, G. Alexander Milton, and an anonymous reviewer for their comments on earlier drafts.     

'But she didn't say no': an exploration of sibling sexual abuse

Sibling sexual abuse often causes polarities of view in professional and client groups alike. These views range from seeing it as benign to damaging. For professionals new to the field this paper gives an overview of the discussion that sibling sexual abuse is as traumatic as parental sexual abuse, and has lasting impact on its victims. Recognising the particular dynamics of sibling sexual abuse and effect on victims raises the challenge of case management in families where it occurs. This paper will explore this challenge within the New South Wales context.     

Implementing a case management initiative in high-need schools

States continue to experiment with ways of improving health and human service use by people with complex needs. Such efforts have often sought to increase individual and family control over services as well as to enhance coordination among providers. Paths to achieving these goals are not well understood. This study draws on two previously distinct conceptual frameworks to examine how 71 public schools implemented a team approach to increasing family and agency engagement for children at risk. Results from the longitudinal data fit the core components expected to affect implementation and also indicated sustainability, but in ways distinctive to the initiative's public school settings. Accountability to the state appeared to be a major catalyst, yet in some respects also constrained local agencies from participating as intended. School inertia may have both undermined the program through some evaluation practices and gaps in administrative support, and supported integration into organizational routines and successful experimentation over time in increasing caregiver involvement. Family hesitation about sharing information with multiple agencies may also help explain why the goal of seamless coordination remains elusive.     

Nonparametric Bayesian analysis for multi-site hidden Markov model

The hidden Markov model (HMM) provides an attractive framework for modeling long-term persistence in a variety of applications including pattern recognition. Unlike typical mixture models, hidden Markov states can represent the heterogeneity in data and it can be extended to a multivariate case using a hierarchical Bayesian approach. This article provides a nonparametric Bayesian modeling approach to the multi-site HMM by considering stick-breaking priors for each row of an infinite state transition matrix. This extension has many advantages over a parametric HMM. For example, it can provide more flexible information for identifying the structure of the HMM than parametric HMM analysis, such as the number of states in HMM. We exploit a simulation example and a real dataset to evaluate the proposed approach.