Mother–Adolescent Conflict: Adolescent Goals,Maternal Perspective‐Taking,and Conflict Intensity

Younger and older adolescents were interviewed about their goals in recent disagreements with their mothers. Six goals were identified: instrumental (simply gaining their immediate desire); dyadic concern; achieving emotional support; autonomy; dominance; and nonengagement (avoidance of conflict). Younger adolescents reported significantly more instrumental and significantly fewer emotional support and dominance goals than did older adolescents. Maternal perspective‐taking predicted more dyadic concern and fewer dominance goals, as well as more nonengagement goals for younger adolescents. Dominance goals mediated the effect of maternal dyadic perspective‐taking on conflict intensity for older adolescents.     

A Model of Choice for Public Policy

Punctuated equilibrium is supposed to be a viable alternativeto incrementalism, and, indeed, the authors of the model havesometimes made such claims. But punctuated equilibrium was developedto explain change in policy subsystems and does not serve asa complete model of policy choice in the same way that incrementalismhas served. This article develops a full-blown and viable modelof choice for public policy based on disproportionate informationprocessing. Its dynamics are based in the allocation of politicalattention to policy topics and the manner in which politicalsystems process information. The model leads directly to outcomesthat are consistent with punctuated equilibrium and are notgenerally consistent with incrementalism. Incrementalism, however,may be deduced from the model as a special case. The model isbest tested using stochastic process approaches. Incrementalismlogically must yield a normal distribution of outcomes, butdisproportionate information processing yields leptokurtic outcomes.Adding institutional constraints only makes the stochastic processimplications more severe. To support our arguments, we presentboth static and dynamic simulations of these processes. We alsoshow that these simulations are consistent with observationsof U.S. government budgets.     

Using the Image Exchange to Enhance Interdisciplinary Team Building in Child Welfare

A team building activity, the image exchange, was helpful to interdisciplinary teams in clarifying perceptions and opinions of participants about the roles of each discipline (child welfare, domestic violence, mental health, and substance abuse workers) at a five-day interdisciplinary training workshop. Discussion of team members’ perceptions and views provided opportunities to develop insights about misperceptions. Training in team development and role clarification provided a foundation for the development of effective interdisciplinary collaboration, which may improve interdisciplinary practice.Dr. Packard is an Associate Professor and Dr. Jones is a Professor in the School of Social Work at SDSU. At the time of writing, Ms. Nahrstedt was a Research Assistant in the School of Social Work at SDSU. This project was funded by a grant from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children, Youth, and Families.