Factors Related to the Delivery of Trauma Services in Outpatient Treatment Programs

In recent years there has been growing recognition of the role of trauma in substance abuse treatment; however, only 20% of outpatient treatment programs report offering trauma services. We conducted a secondary analysis of the 2012 National Survey of Substance Abuse Treatment Services (N-SSATS) and explore how demographic, population served, and organization variables distinguish those programs that offer trauma services from those that do not. In this article, we present the findings, which revealed that organizational structure, process, and population served variables were the most important predictors of trauma services. Implications for social work practice in the addictions are discussed.     

The risk of partner aggression research: impact of laboratory couples conflict protocols on participants

The impact of male-to-female intimate partner violence (IPV) research on participants is unknown. A measure of impact was given to participants in an IPV study to assess systematically the impact of completing questionnaires, engaging in conflict conversations, and being interviewed individually about anger escalation and de-escalation during the conversations. Participants completed a six-question, Likert-scaled impact measure. Both male and female participants rated the impact of the study as helpful to them personally and to their relationships. Female participants rated different segments of the study as more helpful to themselves and their relationships, while male participants did not find any segment of the study to have a different impact than other segments.     

Improving quality at the point of service

The authors provide a research-based construct of youth program quality that differentiates safety, support, interaction, and engagement, four important issues for practitioners working with youth in the middle years. They describe two tools that have helped direct staff to be intentional about creating offerings that are appropriate for early adolescents: the focusing idea of point-of-service quality and the technology of observational assessment. They describe how these tools can be used to create cultures of accountability and intentionality that extend across program levels.     

Sexual practices at last heterosexual encounter and occurrence of orgasm in a national survey

In order to examine factors associated with orgasm in heterosexual encounters, we analyzed data from the Australian Study of Health and Relationships, a national telephone survey of sexual behavior and attitudes and sexual health knowledge carried out in 2001-2002 with a representative sample of 19,307 Australians aged 16 to 59. Respondents were asked whether at their last sexual encounter they gave or received manual stimulation and oral sex, had vaginal intercourse or anal intercourse, and whether they had an orgasm. Vaginal intercourse was the dominant practice: 95% of encounters included it. Of the 64 possible combinations of these practices, 13 account for 93% of encounters: vaginal intercourse alone (12%), vaginal + manual stimulation of the man's and/or woman's genitals (49%), and vaginal intercourse + manual + oral (32%). Encounters may also have included other practices. Men had an orgasm in 95% of encounters and women in 69%. Generally, the more practices engaged in, the higher a woman's chance of having an orgasm. Women were more likely to reach orgasm in encounters including cunnilingus. This is the first large-scale empirical study worldwide to link specific practices with orgasm. Demographic and sexual history variables were comparatively weakly associated with orgasm.     

Interpersonal Reasons for Interpersonal Perceptions: Gender-incongruent Purpose Goals and Nonverbal Judgment Accuracy

Women’s tendency to outperform men on measures of accuracy in interpreting the meaning of nonverbal behavior might be due to such measures being more congruent with women’s interpersonal goals than men’s. The present study examined undergraduate men’s and women’s (N = 41) nonverbal judgment accuracy on the Interpersonal Perception Task-15 (IPT-15; Costanzo & Archer, 1993 [.The interpersonal perception task-15 (IPT-15). Berkeley: University of California Center for Media and Independent Learning) when the purpose for using their judgment skills was manipulated to be either congruent or incongruent with stereotypic “masculine” and “feminine” interpersonal goals. Results showed that each gender was at a relative disadvantage in judgment accuracy in the gender-incongruent goal conditions: women were relatively less accurate when they thought the IPT-15 measured judgment skills of use to interrogators in the military, whereas men were relatively less accurate when they thought the IPT-15 measured judgment skills of use to social workers in the social services. Discussion centers on the importance of matching individuals’ interpersonal goals to the purpose goals of the measure when using measures of interpersonal sensitivity.

Cultural Sociology, Modes of Inquiry, and Political Analysis: A Rejoinder to Steensland

Closely bounded research programs are both common and effective in sociology. Describing such programs as operating with a "restricted code" is deeply problematic. These matters aside, the remarkable rise of cultural sociology in fact reflects adaptation to sociology's disciplinary norms and core thematic concerns. Steensland (2009) might better have reversed his argument: faced with the achievements of cultural analysis, the slumbering giant called "mainstream sociology" should wake up.