Thoughts and acts of self-harm,and suicidal ideation,in online gamblers

Gambling problems have been linked to suicidal ideation and enhanced risk of suicide attempts. However, we know very little about the factors associated with either thoughts or acts of self-harm amongst people who gamble. A web-based study of 4125 online gamblers (79% males; mean age 35.5 years), analysed using hierarchical multiple regression, revealed that self-reported non-gambling-related self-harm was negatively related to age and marital status, and positively related to problematic alcohol use. Self-reported acts of self-harm both related and unrelated to gambling were associated with drug misuse. Thoughts and acts of gambling-related self-harm were associated with problem gambling, gambling involvement and parental problem gambling. All types of self-harm were associated with mood disorder symptoms, unemployment and certain gambling motivations. When tailoring assessment and interventions for individuals at risk for gambling-related deliberate self-harm, it is important to recognize that contributory factors may include some that differ from those for deliberate self-harm in general, and that there is potential value in evaluating gambling involvement and motivations, and history of parental gambling.     

Father-daughter incest: data from an anonymous computerized survey

Retrospective data were entered anonymously by 1,521 adult women using computer-assisted self-interview. Nineteen were classified as victims of father-daughter incest, and 241 were classified as victims of sexual abuse by an adult other than their father before reaching 18 years of age. The remaining 1,261 served as controls. Incest victims were more likely than controls to endorse feeling damaged, psychologically injured, estranged from one or both parents, and shamed by others when they tried to open up about their experience. They had been eroticized early on by the incest experience, and it interfered with their adult sexuality. Incest victims experienced coitus earlier than controls and after reaching age 18 had more sex partners and were more likely to have casual sex outside their primary relationship and engage in sex for money than controls. They also had worse scores on scales measuring depression, sexual satisfaction, and communication about sex than controls.     

Outpatient Dialectical Behavior Therapy for Adolescents Engaged in Deliberate Self-Harm: Conceptual and Methodological Considerations

The current review examines conceptual and methodological issues related to the use of dialectical behavior therapy for adolescents (DBT-A) in treating youth who engage in deliberate self-harm. A comprehensive review of the literature identified six studies appropriate for the review. Results indicated several inconsistencies and limitations across studies including the mixing of various forms of self-harm; variations in diagnostic inclusion/exclusion criteria, insufficient use of standardized self-harm outcome measures, variable lengths and intensity of provided treatment, and inadequate attention paid to DBT adherence. Each of these areas is reviewed along with a discussion of ways to improve the quality of future research.     

The Globality of Whiteness in Post-Racial Visual Culture

This essay examines the spatial contours of post-racial visual culture. It argues that the ‘post-racial’ names the conditions under which racism operates flexibly within and beyond the logics of the colour line, while routinely disavowing its properly racial character through the symbolic deployment of multicultural humanitarianism. Even as it works through the figure of the ‘post-racial’ to bracket an engagement with the racialized rationale for the ‘nongeneralizability of human value’, the current US racial order has renovated the social structures that shore up whiteness as the privileged form humanity takes. The essay's point of departure is the iconic HOPE poster, produced by Shepard Fairey in 2008. It locates the poster's public display within a visual field subjected to neoliberal processes central to the constitution of a post-racial whiteness. It identifies two key moments in these processes. The first moment abstracts historical practices of materialist antiracism, such that racism becomes visualized as a manifestly individual subjective affair. In the second moment, post-racial visual culture repackages the visual logic of racial reference by displacing anti-black racism into morally benevolent categories suitable for humanitarian intervention, whose additional dematerialization is propped up by its migration to a digital terrain. To make this argument, the essay first offers a genealogy of the HOPE poster as it emerges from street art practices of commodity activism that obscure the structures of racial capitalism. It then treats the poster's central role in the ‘KONY 2012’ campaign, which redeployed this abstraction to recode the power of sight as a privileged form of US humanitarian violence. It concludes by considering the refusals by activists in the Occupy Wall Street movement to countenance a revised HOPE poster, even as the post-racial figure of ‘the protestor’ was lauded in corporate media.     

Validity,facts, and values sans closure: Reply to Messick,Reckase, Moss,and Zimmerman

Social Indicators Research -     

Development of a Performance Assessment Capability in the Waste Management Programs of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission

The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) staff has developed a performance assessment capability to address three programmatic areas in nuclear waste management: high-level waste, low-level waste, and decommissioning of licensed facilities (license termination). The NRC capability consists of: (1) methodologies for performance assessment; (2) models and computer codes for estimating system performance; (3) regulatory guidance in various forms, such as regulations, Branch Technical Positions, and Standard Review Plans; and (4) a technical staff experienced in executing and evaluating performance assessments for a variety of waste systems. Although the tools and techniques are refined for each programmatic area, general approaches and similar issues are encountered in all areas.     

Family Cohesion in the Lives of Mexican American and European American Parents

This study investigated similarities and differences in relations between stress and parenting behaviors for 509 Mexican American and European American fathers and mothers in Southern California. Our model posited that family cohesion mediates the relation between stressors and parenting behavior, and we found that family cohesion strongly mediated most of the relations between stress and parenting behaviors. Important ethnic and gender differences were evident. In contrast with other groups, Mexican American fathers reported higher levels of family cohesion when faced with economic pressures. Implications for future research on stress and parenting are discussed.     

Modes of Network Governance: Structure, Management, and Effectiveness

This article examines the governance of organizational networksand the impact of governance on network effectiveness. Threebasic models, or forms, of network governance are developedfocusing on their distinct structural properties. Propositionsare formulated examining conditions for the effectiveness ofeach form. The tensions inherent in each form are then discussed,followed by the role that management may play in addressingthese tensions. Finally, the evolution of governance is explored.     

A Technological Science Perspective for Sociology1

Abstract The traditional positivist model is an inadequate foundation for sociology as a science. The phenomena of society differ from the phenomena assumed by positivism and existing in the world of nature in ways that prevent the successful use of that traditional approach. Agency, the ability to choose among alternatives where the choice makes an important difference, exists in social phenomena but has no counterpart in nature and cannot be dealt with adequately by positivism. A technological science perspective is suggested as an alternative for a science of sociology that can deal with the reality and importance of agency. Eight differences between the traditional perspective and the alternative are sketched. The alternative requires changes in the kind of generalized knowledge produced and the way it is produced, accumulated, and refined. The changes, though seemingly small, would produce a major reconstruction of much of sociology; such changes could result in important progress by the field of sociology.     

Community Development in the 21st Century: A Case of Conditional Development

During the last 5 years, the UK government has increased supportfor and resources to community development projects and strategies.These interventions have been deployed to assist the state addresskey issues of social exclusion notably at neighbourhood level.The thrust for tackling social exclusion and therefore the growthin community development can be linked to New Labour’sadherence to a neo-liberal agenda. The two articles and theworking paper considered here reflect this expansion of activityand articulate some of the central issues and challenges facingcommunity development. The central problem for community developmentappears to be that whilst it has secured a more prominent placewithin contemporary social policies, it is in danger of losingits ability effectively to address the expressed needs of localcommnuitties. Hence the development we are witnessing can beconsidered to be a case of conditional development.