The composite abuse scale: further development and assessment of reliability and validity of a multidimensional partner abuse measure in clinical settings

Absence of a well-validated comprehensive partner abuse questionnaire has been a major methodological issue in domestic violence research. A new multidimensional measure of partner abuse, the Composite Abuse Scale (CAS), has four dimensions: Severe Combined Abuse, Emotional Abuse, Physical Abuse, and Harassment. A general practice patient sample (N = 1,836) has been used in the development and testing of CAS. Factor analyses in this current study confirmed the four dimensions from a preliminary nurses sample study and resulted in a final scale of 30 items consisting of acts of physical, emotional, and sexual abuse. These four factors exhibited good internal reliability (Cronbach's alpha > 0.85) and the corrected item-total correlations were high (> 0.5). Evidence of criterion and construct validity is presented.     

Information and ambiguity: herd and contrarian behaviour in financial markets

The paper studies the impact of informational ambiguity on behalf of informed traders on history-dependent price behaviour in a model of sequential trading in financial markets. Following Chateauneuf et al. (J Econ Theory 137:538–567, 2008), we use neo-additive capacities to model ambiguity. Such ambiguity and attitudes to it can engender herd and contrarian behaviour, and also cause the market to break down. The latter, herd and contrarian behaviour, can be reduced by the existence of a bid-ask spread.     

Biases in Ethical Decision Making among University Faculty

Over the years, cognitive biases have been examined throughout the decision-making literature, but little work has investigated the cognitive biases operating in ethical decision making. The present effort explores a taxonomy of biases through interviews with university faculty members. Additionally, this study identifies the psychological processes giving rise to these biases in ethical decision making. Results suggest that the biases listed in the taxonomy are indeed operating in the ethical decision making of university faculty. Implications of these results are discussed.     

Maternal Social Coaching Quality Interrupts the Development of Relational Aggression During Early Childhood

Previous research has shown that parents of socially competent young children provide them with elaborative, explicit, appropriate, and emotion‐laden advice about peer interactions. The current study analyzed mothers' conversations with preschoolers (N = 175; 52 percent female; M age = 52 months, SD = 7 months) about peer conflicts involving relational aggression. Conversations were coded for maternal elaboration, emotion references, and discussion of norm violations. Information about relational and physical aggression was collected from teachers at two assessments approximately 12 months apart for a subsample of 136 children. Regression analyses, controlling for physical aggression, showed that average and high levels of effective coaching operated as a protective factor against stable high levels of relational aggression. Theoretical and practical implications for our understanding of the early development of relational aggression are discussed.     

Living with Dementia: Lay Definitions of Alzheimer's Disease among African American Caregivers and Sufferers

While the medical world aggressively pursues scientific knowledge about Alzheimer's disease, sufferers and caregivers live with this ailment, not as patients, but as people going about their lives, needing and providing care. This article reports explanations of Alzheimer's from the perspectives of African American family caregivers and sufferers. Data were collected from thirty‐six families using participant observation and focus group interviews. Although caregivers sought and used medical expertise, their explanations of Alzheimer's were not only nonmedical, but not necessarily explanations of illness per se. Alzheimer's was presented instead as a way of being, predominantly characterized by views of the sufferer as childlike and by issues of continuity/discontinuity, though some saw Alzheimer's as part of a larger picture.     

Evaluating the Roles of Professional Geriatric Care Managers in Maintaining the Quality of Life for Older Americans

This study examined the roles of Professional Geriatric Care Managers (PGCMs). In-depth telephone surveys were completed with 19 PGCMs. Qualitative data were coded independently by two researchers. PGCMs reported that most clients and/or families seek services in response to a health crisis or because a family member was providing care at a distance. Most emphasized the importance of treating clients as autonomous decision-makers. Services described as most useful were supporting families and caregivers, being an advocate for clients, conducting initial assessments and ongoing follow up, and educating families about community resources and the financing of long term care. Regarding maintaining the quality of life for their older clients, a number of care managers described assisting clients to live independently at home, arranging for transfer to an appropriate level of care, and helping clients die peacefully with dignity. Major challenges PGCMs encountered were family conflicts and obtaining needed services. Recommendations to improve PGCM practice include increasing awareness of services, and establishing minimum professional standards through certification.     

Research Methodology and Community Participation: A Decade of Indigenous Social Science Research in Canada

Those engaged in community‐based participatory research often comment on tensions between social scientific and community values, yet little systematic evidence exists about the relationship between social science research methodologies and community participation. We analyze nearly 500 peer‐reviewed articles published between 2005 and 2015 on Indigenous issues in Canada, where policies encourage participatory research methods with disempowered groups. We find that research that includes Indigenous participation is more likely to include Indigenous epistemologies and participatory evidence sources and analysis methods. We also find that peer‐reviewed research involving Indigenous participants often fails to go beyond minimum levels of consultation required by policies.     

Bringing men in from the margins: Father‐inclusive practices for the delivery of parenting interventions

Although there is a growing body of international work on barriers to engaging fathers in child and family services, there is limited research on factors that promote father engagement. In this article, we draw on case study data from the Australian Baby Makes 3 (BM3) programme to explore factors that promote father engagement in parenting support programmes. Our analysis shows single‐gender group work supported father engagement. BM3's father group work provided a safe space in the parenting support context where men could form intimate connections with other fathers and talk openly about their parenting experiences without fear of criticism from partners. These findings suggest that men often feel silenced and marginalized in the parenting sphere.     

When is ambiguity–attitude constant?

This paper studies how updating affects ambiguity attitude. In particular we focus on generalized Bayesian updating of the Jaffray–Philippe sub-class of Choquet Expected Utility preferences. We find conditions for ambiguity attitude to be the same before and after updating. A necessary and sufficient condition for ambiguity attitude to be unchanged when updated on an arbitrary event is for the capacity to be neo-additive. We find a condition for updating on a given partition to preserve ambiguity attitude. We relate this to necessary and sufficient conditions for dynamic consistency. Finally, we study whether ambiguity increases or decreases after updating.