Parental Cohabitation Experiences and Adolescent Behavioral Outcomes

Children are increasingly spending time in cohabiting parent families. Most studies that examine the implications of parental cohabitation focus on parental living arrangements at a single point in time. Using data from the National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG), we assess whether and how parental cohabitation during childhood influences adolescent girls’ well-being. This work moves beyond prior studies by specifically considering the effects of the exposure to, transitions, and age at which children lived in cohabiting parent families. The results indicate living in cohabiting parent families is consequential for earlier sexual initiation, likelihood of having a teen birth, and high school graduation. Prior work suggests that the explanation for the negative effect of parental cohabitation is family instability. Yet, our empirical work shows that family instability does not explain the relationship between cohabitation and negative child outcomes. We conclude that the best way to understand the implications of parental cohabitation is to adopt a dynamic family experience model.

Teaching Note—Teaching Self-Care and Wellness as a Professional Practice Skill: A Curricular Case Example

Educating for human rights and justice requires attention to the well-being of those being prepared to pursue these aims. This article describes an MSW program’s implementation of teaching self-care as a core practice skill. This curricular innovation stems from the increasing literature documenting the deleterious effects of burnout in professional helping and the need to address this concern in educational curricula. Further, this curricular change is a result of increased student exhaustion affecting academic performance and professional preparedness, and the ethical imperative to address this phenomenon. We describe specific components, strategies, and assignments in the curriculum as well as assessment of the curricular innovation. This curricular example is readily adaptable for other programs.     

Maternal Affective Expression and Adolescents' Subjective Experience of Positive Affect in Natural Settings

This study investigated the association between maternal affective expression during laboratory‐based interaction tasks and adolescents' experience of positive affect (PA) in natural settings. Participants were 80 healthy adolescents and their mothers. Durations of maternal positive (PA) and negative affective (NA) expressions were observed during a conflict resolution task and a positive event planning interaction task. Ecological momentary assessment (EMA) procedures were employed to assess adolescents' momentary and peak experience of PA in daily life. Results indicated that maternal NA, but not maternal PA, was related to adolescents' EMA‐reported PA. Adolescents whose mothers expressed more NA experienced less PA in daily environments. Results suggest that adolescents' exposure to maternal negative affective behavior is associated with adolescents' subjective daily well‐being.     

Engaged or Disengaged? Examining the Relationship Between Electoral Ambivalence and Indicators of Political Engagement in the 2012 U.S. Election

This study uses uncertainty theories to examine the relationship between presidential electoral ambivalence and three political belief variables: internal efficacy, skepticism, and apathy. We propose that the relationship between ambivalence, which is an indicator of uncertainty, and information-seeking intentions should be mediated by our political belief variables. Our proposed model suggests that presidential electoral ambivalence is characteristic of a disengaged citizenry, with ambivalence correlating with lower levels of internal efficacy and skepticism in a cross-sectional analysis. We also found ambivalence associated with higher levels of apathy in this same analysis. Moreover, we found an over-time indirect effect of ambivalence on information seeking through internal efficacy.     

Influence of the Caldwell report,and other computer generated interpretive reports,in child custody evaluations: A brief report

Abstract

This brief report reviews the use of MMPI-2 computer-generated interpretive reports in child custody evaluations. Particular attention was aimed at the Caldwell Report’s MMPI-2 Custody Report. Considering the recent temporary closure of the Caldwell Report, this article will discuss what scoring and report options remain currently for interpretive custody reports. A perspective is shared that a dependence on computer-generated interpretive reports is detrimental to the science and practice of custody evaluation work. Finally, the author calls for future and revised computer-generated interpretive reports to include more information regarding a link to conclusions, gender bias, and peer reviewed research.     

Job stability in Europe over the cycle

This article investigates the evolution of job tenure for the time period 2002–2012 using microdata from the European Union Labour Force Survey (EU‐LFS). Overall, the data show a slight increase in average job tenure at the EU level, which can be explained by disproportional lay‐offs of short‐tenured workers during the crisis. When controlling for changes in the demographic composition of the workforce, an underlying negative trend in mean tenure becomes visible. Job tenure evolved very differently across the EU before and during the crisis, highlighting the importance of institutional frameworks, especially employment protection legislation (EPL).     

Dynamic models and cross-sectional data: The consequences of dynamic misspecification

Most social variables are inherently imbedded in time and, therefore, are generated by a dynamic process of some kind. This paper explores the consequences of applying a static model to such variables. We find that unbiased estimates of the underlying dynamic parameters through the application of a static model to a cross-section of data are possible only if the underlying dynamic process is “nonergodic,” that is, that the process is a function of the initial conditions. A wide-sense stationary dynamic model that is not a function of the initial state of the system is proposed here, and we find that the application of static models to such processes is not successful, in particular, we find that the static estimates are attenuated or inflated versions of their dynamic counterparts.     

Disaggregating the effect on profits in manufacturing industries of having imperfectly competitive consumers and suppliers

Casting the American economy as a network of economic exchange relations between firms in sectors, industries are those sectors engaged in manufacturing and are here analyzed as network positions. The structure of an industry's dollar transactions with suppliers is demonstrated to affect industry profits in a manner distinct from that in which its structure of transactions with consumers affects profits. For the 335 four-digit SIC manufacturing industries corresponding to unique sectors of the 1967 Input-Output Study, price-cost margins corrected for interindustry differences in capital requirements are regressed over four-firm concentration ratios and various structural indicators of imperfect competition among suppliers versus consumers. The structural indicators are computed from dollar flow coefficients among 492 sectors of the 1967 Input-Output Study. Only one type of product flows from an industry to its consumers, who have no trouble seeing the value of collusion despite the multiple sectors in which their own products are sold; however, products from different sectors may flow to the industry without creating the competition among suppliers that prompts collusion. Industry profits are constrained by suppliers to the extent that firms in the industry purchase supplies from few separate sectors as product markets. In contrast, industry profits are constrained by consumers to the extent that firms in the industry sell to a small number of oligopolistic sectors.