Normative collective behavior in the Station building fire

Objective. This article offers a test of the normative explanation of collective behavior by examining the fire at the Station nightclub in Rhode Island that killed 100 and injured nearly 200 persons.Methods. Information on all persons at the club comes from content analysis of documents from the Rhode Island Police Department, the Rhode Island Office of the Attorney General, and The Providence Journal. We use negative binomial regression to test hypotheses about the effects of group-level predictors of the counts of dead and injured in 179 groups at the nightclub.Results. Results indicate that group-level factors such as distance of group members at the start of the fire, the number of intimate relations among them, the extent to which they had visited the nightclub prior to the incident, and the average length of the evacuation route they used predict counts of injured and dead. The research also looks at what behavioral differences exist between survivors and victims, ascertains the existence of role extension among employees of the nightclub, and provides support for the affirmation that dangerous contexts negate the protective influence of intimate relations in groups.Conclusion. We argue for the abandonment of current emphasis on irrationality and herd-like imitative behavior in studies of evacuation from structural fires in buildings and for the inclusion of group-level processes in social psychological explanations of these incidents.     

Undergraduate students' attributions of depicted adult-adolescent and adolescent-adolescent sexual interactions

The grayest areas of defining child sexual abuse appear to involve the age and sex of the individuals involved, resulting in a potential for different attributions regarding child sexual abuse across individuals. As a result, this study examines the responses of 262 male and female college student participants after viewing a series of hypothetical sexual abuse vignettes that depicted a 15-year-old victim that neither resisted nor encouraged the advances of a 15-, 25-, or 35-year-old perpetrator's actions. Gender roles and sexual attitudes were examined as potentially important covariates. Using a series of analyses of covariance, female participants gave more pro-victim ratings than male participants, and younger perpetrators were viewed less negatively than older perpetrators. Gender roles and sexual attitudes served as significant covariates. These findings emphasized the need to educate individuals about child sexual abuse and unwanted sexual contact involving individuals under the age of consent.     

Internalizing symptoms linking youths' maltreatment and delinquent behavior

This study examines internalizing mental health symptoms (depression and posttraumatic stress disorder) as potential intervening factors in the relationship between maltreatment and delinquency using data from the National Survey for Child and Adolescent Well-Being (N = 1179). Significant mediating effects indicated that youth at greater risk of maltreatment experienced higher levels of internalizing symptoms that result in increased risk for delinquent behavior, although longitudinal effects were not supported. These findings highlight internalizing mental health symptoms as an important factor to address in treating victimized children at risk of future delinquency. Implications for child welfare service provision are discussed.     

Are case management services associated with increased utilization of adolescent mental health treatment?

Retention in treatment is one of the strongest predictors of positive mental health outcomes. Adolescents, however, are particularly challenging to retain in mental health treatment. Concurrent case management services may offer one strategy for retaining youth in mental health treatment as it aims to reduce barriers to services, coordinate multiple services, and establish a consistent relationship between each client and a single contact person. This study combines three extant data sources from the state of Kansas to examine whether youths' participation in case management is associated with increased utilization of individual and group mental health treatment, controlling for client satisfaction, severity of mental health symptoms, and demographic factors. Linear regression results indicate that participation in case management services predicts increased utilization of both individual and group mental health treatment. Case management may be a useful tool for retaining adolescent clients in mental health services. Practical implications for community mental health service delivery are discussed.     

Conceptual model and map of financial exploitation of older adults

This article describes the processes and outcomes of three-dimensional concept mapping to conceptualize financial exploitation of older adults. Statements were generated from a literature review and by local and national panels consisting of 16 experts in the field of financial exploitation. These statements were sorted and rated using Concept Systems software, which grouped the statements into clusters and depicted them as a map. Statements were grouped into six clusters, and ranked by the experts as follows in descending severity: (a) theft and scams, (b) financial victimization, (c) financial entitlement, (d) coercion, (e) signs of possible financial exploitation, and (f) money management difficulties. The hierarchical model can be used to identify elder financial exploitation and differentiate it from related but distinct areas of victimization. The severity hierarchy may be used to develop measures that will enable more precise screening for triage of clients into appropriate interventions.     

Maternal Emotion Socialization in Maltreating and Non-maltreating Families: Implications for Children's Emotion Regulation

This study investigated the socialization of children's emotion regulation in physically maltreating and non‐maltreating mother–child dyads (N = 80 dyads). Mother–child dyads participated in the parent–child emotion interaction task ( Shipman & Zeman, 1999 ) in which they talked about emotionally‐arousing situations. The PCEIT was coded for maternal validation and invalidation in response to children's emotion. Mothers were also interviewed about their approach to emotion socialization using the meta‐emotion interview‐parent version ( Katz & Gottman, 1999 ). The meta‐emotion interview‐parent version was coded for maternal emotion coaching. Mothers also completed measures that assessed their child abuse potential and abuse‐related behaviors as well as children's emotion regulation. Findings indicated that maltreated children demonstrated fewer adaptive emotion regulation skills and more emotion dysregulation than non‐maltreated children. In addition, maltreating mothers engaged in less validation and emotion coaching and more invalidation in response to children's emotion than non‐maltreating mothers. Finally, maternal emotion socialization behaviors mediated the relation between maltreatment status and children's adaptive emotion regulation skills.     

Swedish Family Policy – Continuity and Change in the Nordic Welfare State Model

The main question addressed in this regional issue is whether or not the Nordic welfare states can still be considered a distinct welfare regime cluster given recent changes, such as the introduction of more private elements into the welfare state. The Nordic welfare states are often described as emphasizing full employment, economic and gender equality, and universal access to cradle‐to‐grave welfare state benefits and services. In the case of Sweden, often pointed to as the model of a social democratic welfare state, such elements remain intact in most aspects of the welfare state, even given the challenges presented by the global neo‐liberal economic paradigm since the 1970s. One way to determine whether or not the Nordic welfare states remain a distinct cluster is to provide an in‐depth examination of various welfare state policies in each Nordic country. To contribute to this analysis, an investigation of family policy in the Swedish context will be provided. Even given recent challenges, such as the introduction of private for‐profit childcare providers and a home care allowance, I argue that Swedish family policy has remained largely social democratic in its underlying goals, and thus acts to support the case for a distinct Nordic welfare regime cluster.     

Rank‐based estimate of four‐parameter logistic model

During drug development, the calculation of inhibitory concentration that results in a response of 50% (IC₅₀) is performed thousands of times every day. The nonlinear model most often used to perform this calculation is a four‐parameter logistic, suitably parameterized to estimate the IC₅₀ directly. When performing these calculations in a high‐throughput mode, each and every curve cannot be studied in detail, and outliers in the responses are a common problem. A robust estimation procedure to perform this calculation is desirable. In this paper, a rank‐based estimate of the four‐parameter logistic model that is analogous to least squares is proposed. The rank‐based estimate is based on the Wilcoxon norm. The robust procedure is illustrated with several examples from the pharmaceutical industry. When no outliers are present in the data, the robust estimate of IC₅₀ is comparable with the least squares estimate, and when outliers are present in the data, the robust estimate is more accurate. A robust goodness‐of‐fit test is also proposed. To investigate the impact of outliers on the traditional and robust estimates, a small simulation study was conducted. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Boundary Violations Scale: an empirical measure of intergenerational boundary violations in families

This article reviews the development of a new measure to assess children's perceptions of intergenerational boundary violations in families. The Boundary Violations Scale is a theoretically derived instrument consisting of 12 items. Principal components analysis using data from 119 young adolescents from diverse ethnic backgrounds (i.e., 56% Hispanic and 44% non-Hispanic) revealed three factors (promoting maturity, forming coalitions, and communicating as peers) that are consistent with the behavioral manifestations of this construct as posited by structural family theory. The validity of the measure was supported by significant correlations with theoretically relevant measures of family processes and child adjustment as reported by children and their mothers.