Predictors of victim-perpetrator relationship stability following a sexual assault: a brief report

The researchers assessed the predictors of victim-perpetrator relationship stability following a sexual assault. Participants included 254 women sexually assaulted by a friend, casual dating partner, or steady dating partner. Results suggested that most victim-perpetrator relationships (75%) continued following the sexual assault. Greater trauma symptomatology, less perpetrator blame, and nondisclosure of the assault by victims predicted relationship continuation with the perpetrator. Additionally, the odds of continuing the relationship were greater following acts of sexual coercion than following acts of completed rape. Close relationships (steady dating partner) were more likely to continue following the sexual assault than less close relationships (friends and casual dating partners). Unexpectedly, the odds of relationship stability were greater for women without histories of childhood sexual abuse than women with histories of childhood sexual abuse. Implications for future research and intervention are discussed.     

Family boundary ambiguity and the measurement of family structure: the significance of cohabitation

We used data from the first wave of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health to examine family boundary ambiguity in adolescent and mother reports of family structure and found that the greater the family complexity, the more likely adolescent and mother reports of family structure were discrepant. This boundary ambiguity in reporting was most pronounced for cohabiting stepfamilies. Among mothers who reported living with a cohabiting partner, only one-third of their teenage children also reported residing in a cohabiting stepfamily. Conversely, for those adolescents who reported their family structure as a cohabiting stepfamily, just two-thirds of their mothers agreed. Levels of agreement between adolescents and mothers about residing in a two-biological-parent family, single-mother family, or married stepfamily were considerably higher. Estimates of the distribution of adolescents across family structures vary according to whether adolescent, mother, or combined reports are used. Moreover, the relationship between family structure and family processes differed depending on whose reports of family structure were used, and boundary ambiguity was associated with several key family processes. Family boundary ambiguity presents an important measurement challenge for family scholars.     

Peer-Learning Networks in Social Work Doctoral Education: An Interdisciplinary Model

Peer-learning networks (PLN) can be valuable tools for doctoral students. Participation in these networks can aid in the completion of the dissertation, lead to increased scholarship productivity, and assist in student retention. Yet, despite the promise of PLNs, few studies have documented their effect on social work doctoral education. This article explores aspects of an interdisciplinary PLN focused on child welfare. This study used a questionnaire with scaled survey items and open-ended questions to examine the use, benefits, and challenges to participating in the PLN. After a brief review of the literature, this article presents findings from the study, discusses the implications for social work education, and concludes by explicating strategies for developing PLNs in social work education programs.     

Agroecological and social characteristics of New York city community gardens: contributions to urban food security,ecosystem services,and environmental education

There is growing public interest and participation in food-producing urban community gardens in North America, yet little research has examined agricultural production and ecological processes in these spaces. We describe the agroecological and social characteristics of 61 food-producing gardens in New York City, drawing on gardener interviews, land-use maps, plant species inventories, arthropod scouting, and soil sampling and analysis. Gardens contained agricultural crops, food production infrastructure, ornamental plants, and recreational areas in varying proportions, indicating that gardens serve multiple and distinct purposes depending on community needs and interests. On average, gardeners devoted the greatest proportion of garden area (44 %) to food production, and supplied a large share of their households’ produce needs from their community gardens. Solanaceae, Brassicaceae, and Cucurbitaceae crops dominated food crop areas, hindering effective crop rotation to prevent disease and pest problems. Most gardeners grew crops in raised beds constructed with clean fill and compost. These soils generally had sandy textures, low water-holding capacity, high organic matter levels (with a large proportion from recent inputs) and excessive nutrient levels. Soil water content at field capacity increased exponentially with total soil carbon, suggesting that organic matter enhances water-holding capacity. Insect pest densities greatly exceeded action thresholds in nearly all gardens for aphids and whiteflies on Brassica crops, aphids on Cucurbit crops, and two-spotted spider mites on tomatoes. Predator and parasitoid densities were generally low (less than one per plant on average), perhaps partially due to low floral and woody perennial cover in most gardens (12 % and 9 % on average, respectively). Dominant groups of natural enemies were minute pirate bugs, spiders, and parasitoid wasps. A wide variety of people of differing experience levels, incomes, and ethnicities participate in community gardening in NYC, and most gardens host multiple languages. Promising directions for urban gardening research, education, and practice include: 1) Cover cropping to improve soil quality and nutrient management, and diversify crop rotations; 2) Improving access to soil testing and guidance on appropriate use of soil amendments, 3) Enhancing habitat for arthropod natural enemies that provide biological control of insect pests with floral and woody perennial plantings; and 4) Incorporating ecological knowledge and inquiry-based approaches into gardening workshops, educational materials, and technical support, and offering these resources in multiple languages.     

Navigating the Road to College: Race and Class Variation in the College Application Process

College attendance brings significant financial gain in lifetime earnings, and in order to reap those benefits more students are attending college than ever before. At the same time as more students have been applying to college, the application process itself has changed dramatically in the last few decades. As the last hurdle on the road to college, the application process is a critical step in the overall college‐choice process. However, until recently much of the research on college choice gave little attention to the actual steps of college application and did not always attend to variations by race and class. Considering the increasing importance of a college education and the consistent inequalities by race and class in who attends college, research examining how social background affects the ways in which students navigate the college application process is crucial. This review examines what we do know about race and class variation in college application, drawing from literature across sociology, economics, and higher education. This review addresses three questions: how does the admissions and application process affect race and class inequalities in college attendance? How have scholars modeled this process and do these models capture the experiences of students across race and class? And finally, how do students from different social backgrounds vary in their approach to applying to college?     

Diet and Exercise in Parenthood: A Social Control Perspective

Previous work on social control—the direct and indirect regulation of an individual's health behaviors by others—suggests that parent–child relationships promote healthy diet and exercise. Yet parenthood is associated with less healthy diet and exercise patterns. The authors investigated this paradox by examining social control processes in 40 in‐depth interviews with mothers and fathers. They found that parenthood involves social control processes that both promote and compromise healthy behavior, contributing to contradictory perceived effects of parenthood on health behavior. Moreover, the dynamics of social control appear to unfold in different ways for mothers and fathers and depend on the child's gender and life stage, suggesting that gender and age dyads are central to understanding the seemingly contradictory consequences of parenthood at the population level. These articulations of gendered social control processes provide new insight into the consequences of the gendered organization of parenthood for diet and exercise.     

Multisystemic Therapy for Disruptive Behavior Problems in Youths With Autism Spectrum Disorders: A Progress Report

Youths with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) often engage in serious disruptive behaviors that interfere with their ability to successfully manage day‐to‐day responsibilities and contribute to relationship problems with caregivers, peers, and teachers. Effective treatments are needed to address the factors linked with disruptive behavior problems in this population of youths. Multisystemic therapy (MST) is a comprehensive family‐ and community‐based treatment approach that has been effective with other difficult‐to‐treat populations of youths and holds promise for youths with ASD. In this article, we review the broad range of factors associated with disruptive behaviors among youths with ASD and discuss how MST interventions can be adapted to address those factors. We also present a framework for our adaptation of the MST model for youths with ASD. This framework includes a recently completed pilot study as well as an ongoing efficacy trial that together have served to identify key interventions for our adaptation of the MST model.     

Examining Attachment Avoidance and Attachment Anxiety Across Eight Sessions of Couple Therapy

This study examined initial levels of attachment anxiety and avoidance, as well as their patterns of change, across eight sessions of couple therapy. Participants were 461 couples in a treatment‐as‐usual setting. Dyadic latent growth modeling was used to determine whether couples started therapy at similar levels of attachment anxiety and avoidance and whether attachment anxiety and avoidance changed. An actor partner interdependence model was used to see whether partner attachment anxiety was related to avoidance. Results showed relative stability of attachment anxiety and avoidance over the course of therapy, with the only change being a slight decline in attachment anxiety among women. Results showed that a person's attachment anxiety was not related to their partner's avoidance and vice versa.