Social networks,stress and child abuse

The study investigated the relationship between situational stress, strength of informal social networks and maternal child abuse. Structured interviews were conducted with 41 abusive mothers and 59 non-abusing mothers using an author-developed instrument to measure social network strength and situational stress. Abusing mothers, on the average, reported significantly weaker, less supportive informal social networks than the non-abusing mothers. Both the neighbor-friend networks and the kinship networks of the non-abusing mothers were found to be stronger than those of the abusing mothers. The data also supported the positive association of situational stress with child abuse. Both situational stress and strength of social network proved to be significant predictors of abuse. The findings supported the hypothesized mediating effect of strong social networks upon the relationship between situational stress and child abuse. Mothers living in highly stressful life situations who reported strong social networks were less likely to be abusers than mothers living in high stress situations who reported weak social networks. The mediating functions of social networks are proposed, and the implications of the findings for interventions with high risk parents to prevent child abuse are discussed.     

Economic determinants of family size in West Africa

The economic theory of fertility postulates that income and prices, broadly defined, are important determinants of family size. What follows is an attempt to test this theory against the behavior of 717 predominantly urban households in Sierra Leone. Husband's education is used as a proxy for income; the "price" of a child is accounted for by wife's education and wife's wage rate. Other important variables are wife's age, a measure of child "quality," wife's age at first birth, and child mortality. The findings of the study tend to lend support to the economic theory of fertility but contain certain peculiarities which indicate a need for further research.     

Rocking the Vote: Using Personalized Messages to Motivate Voting among Young Adults

We examined a nationwide effort to encourage young adults to vote in the 1996 U.S. presidential election. During the year before the election, individuals were given the chance to sign and self-address one of two kinds of postcards pledging to vote; these cards were mailed back to the individuals within 2 weeks prior to the election. It is important to note that some individuals completed pledge cards that prompted them to provide their own reason for voting by completing the sentence, "I will vote because ______," whereas other individuals completed pledge cards that did not contain this sentence prompt. We conducted a large-scale survey of individuals who filled out pledge cards and determined that receiving a pledge card with the sentence prompt had a positive influence on voting. Moreover, this effect was found above and beyond demographic and psychological predictors of voting. Implications of these findings are discussed.     

Relationship satisfaction of Mexican American and non-Hispanic white American interethnic couples: issues of acculturation and clinical intervention

Despite the increasing prevalence of interethnic marriages, remarkably little empirical literature exists for guiding clinical interventions offered to these couples. This study compared the marriages of 72 couples with one Mexican-American partner and one non-Hispanic White American partner, 75 Mexican-American couples, and 66 non-Hispanic White couples. Overall, the interethnic couples were more similar to non-Hispanic White couples than they were to Mexican-American couples across multiple domains, with the latter group indicating modestly higher levels of relationship distress. Among interethnic couples, Mexican-American wives' level of acculturation related significantly to both their own marital- and parental-role orientation and to distress in their relationships with children, as well as to their husbands' marital distress regarding child rearing and the couple's interactions regarding finances. Implications for clinical interventions with Mexican- and White-American interethnic couples are discussed.     

Cast from the Past: Using Screencasting in the Social Studies Classroom

This action research study followed a social studies educator as he developed and implemented screencasts in three ninth-grade world history classes. He focused on ways to increase student-centered learning and meeting the needs of broad ranges of learners. The study revealed an increase in student engagement, instruction in career and college technological skills, and facilitation of special education students’ needs. Few studies investigate the use of screencasting in social studies education. This study reveals the benefits and some of the drawbacks to using this technology in the social studies classroom.     

Multiple Roles and Psychological Well-Being

Abstract

Role theory generally views the performance of multiple roles as a source of psychological stress. Recently, however, the concept of role strain resulting from multiple roles has been criticized. Marks (1977) and Seiber (1974) argue that multiple roles may lead to positive personal well-being. The present research is a test of these recent ideas. Measures of subjective well-being are correlated with the quantity and quality of roles enacted. Five role spheres are specified: Spouse, parent, worker, friend, and church member. The findings offer some support for the proposition that involvement in multiple roles does not necessarily lead to role strain. Instead, well-being increases with the number of roles enacted, and satisfaction in one role can help to compensate for deprivation in another role sphere. Support is thus found for both Marks' (1977) “expansionist” theory and Seiber's (1974) role accumulation theory.     

Typologies of substance use and illegal behaviors: A comparison of emerging adults with histories of foster care and the general population

This study used latent class analysis (LCA) to explore whether patterns of substance use and illegal behaviors among emerging adults, 18 to 28 years old, differ depending on whether they have a prior history in foster care. The study sample, consisting of 316 respondents who had previously been in foster care and 14,301 respondents without a foster care history, was drawn from the third wave of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health. A multiple-group LCA compared former foster youth to their peers in the general population. The following four classes were identified: illegal behaviors, substance use, illegal behaviors with problematic substance use and normative behaviors. Most of the differences between the groups were not statistically significant. However, within the illegal behavior class former foster youth were less likely to have bought, sold, or held stolen goods; injured someone in a fight so that she or he needed medical attention; to have sold drugs; and to have been drunk at school or work. Additionally, in the illegal behaviors with problematic substance use class emerging adults in the general population were more likely to have used cocaine. Within the normative behaviors class, former foster youth were more likely to be current smokers, and to have injured someone in a fight so that he or she required medical attention. Within the substance use class, emerging adults from the general population were more likely to have taken place in a fight where one group fought another. Additional statistically significant, but very small differences were also identified.     

Impact of caregiver-receiver relationship quality on burden and satisfaction

The purpose of this study was to investigate, through an interview process, both the burden and satisfaction of the caregiving relationship between female primary caregivers and female care-receivers living in the same home. The ten cases were families involved in a caregiver/care-receiver shared-residence situation of at least one year's duration. The primary method of data collection was semi-structured interviews. The results of the qualitative approach called for a reversal of perspective. The intent was to examine how burden and satisfaction impacted the caregiver-receiver relationship quality. However, it was the quality of the relationship between the caregiver and care-receiver which distinguished low burden and high satisfaction.