African American Mothers’ Disciplinary Responses: Associations with Family Background Characteristics, Maternal Childrearing Attitudes, and Child Manageability

Eighty-nine African American mothers of preschoolers reported on their levels of family stress, attitudes about and use of specific disciplinary responses, and their expected outcomes for their children as a result of each type. Independently, teachers reported on the children’s manageability in the preschool classroom. Results indicated that mothers reported more negotiation than coercion. However, when mothers used coercion, they reportedly did so because they believed that it was the only way that they could get their children to behave, negotiation was negatively associated with maternal endorsement of traditional childrearing attitudes. On the other hand, mothers who experienced high levels of family stress tended to use privilege withdrawal as their disciplinary method of choice. Although family income was generally unrelated to the study variables, lower income and less educated mothers were less likely than other mothers to believe that spanking is associated with negative outcomes for children. Overall, these results support the idea that African American parents’ conceptions of discipline are influenced by individual family characteristics, such as stress, endorsement of traditional versus modern ideas of parenting, and expectations about their children’s responses to specific disciplinary techniques.     

Partially pooled covariance matrix estimation in discriminant analysis

The Linear Discriminant Rule (LD) is theoretically justified for use in classification when the population within-groups covariance matrices are equal, something rarely known in practice. As an alternative, the Quadratic Discriminant Rule (QD) avoids assuming equal covariance matrices, but requires the estimation of a large number of parameters. Hence, the performance of QD may be poor if the training set sizes are small or moderate. In fact, simulation studies have shown that in the two-groups case LD often outperforms QD for small training sets even when the within -groups covariance matrices differ substantially. The present article shows this to be true when there are more than two groups, as well. Thus, it would seem reasonable and useful to develop a data-based method of classification that, in effect, represents a compromise between QD and LD. In this article we develop such a method based on an empirical Bayes formulation in which the within-groups covariance matrices are assumed to be outcomes of a common prior distribution whose parameters are estimated from the data. Two classification rules are developed under this framework and, through the use of extensive simulations, are compared to existing methods when the number of groups is moderate.     

Bullying in Schools: A Plea for Measure of Human Rights

Bullying is the most pervasive form of aggression in schools and as such has attracted much international attention. Although the Olweus Bullying Prevention Program has been shown to be moderately effective in reducing bullying behaviors, several obstacles and challenges have been identified. These include securing the full commitment of all key stakeholders in the school to address the problem of bullying, establishing and sustaining a leadership group to maintain bullying prevention efforts in light of changing priorities and mandates, and attending to the different forms of bullying and underlying motivational bases. A human rights framework, consistent with a peace psychology perspective, targets behaviors, or practices that cause harm (mental distress, maltreatment, and exploitation) in children. Infusing a human rights framework into bullying prevention efforts can remedy much of the commonly encountered practical and theoretical obstacles to the effective implementation of such efforts .     

Communication of results and utilization in participatory program evaluation

This paper explores the linkages between utilization and stakeholder participation in the evaluation process, specifically in the communication of results phase of evaluation. It is argued that key elements of a participatory evaluation process can be linked to meaningful and multiple forms of results utilization through cognitive and political uses of the evaluation process. Data from two small-scale participatory evaluations are used to support this argument.     

Going Against the Historical Grain: Perspectives on Gendered Occupational Identity and Resistance to the Breakdown of Occupational Segregation in Two Manufacturing Firms

This article discusses a process of restructuring of working practices within two manufacturing firms with respect to its implications for gendered occupational segregation. A contextualized, historically situated analysis is presented, which is cast within debates on the nature of gendered occupational identity, equality initiatives and arenas of power and influence for women and men, within what were traditionally male‐dominated organizational contexts. Such an analysis serves to highlight the significance of the new restructuring in sweeping away 150 years of practice and embedded ‘ways of doing things’ and offers explanations for the actions of contemporary men and women in opposing what were seen by management and the trade union as emancipatory changes.     

Liberty,slavery, and the transformation of British identity in the eighteenth‐century West Indies

This article challenges the notion that black militias were of little consequence in the antebellum United States. The establishment, personnel and equipment of these militia units, and their importance for local black organization, has largely escaped scholarly attention. The significance of armed companies of young black men at a time when they were not officially sanctioned by federal and state authorities has also not been explored.

The article makes three arguments. First, there was a trajectory towards militarization from vigilance committees to independent companies to enrolment in union armies. Second, links between self-defence and rights of citizenship were already being struggled over at local and state levels before the more famous national expression in black union soldiers fighting for the union. Third, national narratives concerning the origins of the American civil war, African American slavery, and British Canadian history, obscure the multiple roles played by people of African descent during this period. It is only through transnational approaches towards fugitives, military formation and antislavery mobilization that we realise the role of blacks in challenging American slavery in the Atlantic world.

The organization of the article is as follows. It begins with fugitives and the organization of vigilance committees of self-defense in North America. It continues with states rights of self-defence, the exclusion of black men from these rights, and the resulting organization of independent companies. The public parade of these black militias on West India Day, the most important commemoration by Americans of African descent between the early 1830’s and 1860’s, is the next section. It concludes with the continental destruction of American slavery and its consequences for the post-emancipation era.

This article has several objectives. It examines important black institutions hitherto unexamined. It aims to broaden the conventional temporal and spatial dimensions of the civil war era. The third task is to reveal the limitations of nationalist narratives by seeking out connections among people of African descent as well as in the ways in which individuals and organizations provide alternative means for comparison. Finally, this article is part of a broader project examining political mobilization against slavery in the Atlantic world.     

Anthropometric and Behavioral Measures Related to Mindfulness in College Students

Abstract

Objective: To determine whether mindfulness is associated with physical and behavioral measures in first semester college students. Participants: Male and female first year college students (n = 75) from the University of Rhode Island. Methods: Height, weight, waist circumference (WC), and blood pressure were assessed and online questionnaires were completed. Independent t tests and Pearson correlations were utilized for analysis. Results: The less mindful group had a higher WC than the more mindful group. Correlations were seen between mindfulness and weight-related behaviors. Conclusions: Mindfulness can impact health status of first year college students, particularly with behavioral measures that have been found to effect weight status. However, additional research is needed focusing on mindfulness as a potential weight gain prevention technique for first year college students in order to decrease chronic disease prevalence.