An Examination of Mandated Versus Voluntary Referral as a Determinant of Clinical Outcome

A literature review was undertaken to examine evidence for the effectiveness of psychotherapy with mandated clients. The primary question addressed was whether or not clients mandated to therapy, whether by court order or by order of their employers, show poorer outcomes than clients who enter therapy voluntarily. To this end, research on client resistance and motivational readiness to change was reviewed. This was followed by an examination of research on the effectiveness of mandated treatment. The question of the potential influence of relationship factors such as the therapeutic alliance was also addressed. The literature review was followed by suggestions for future research on the effectiveness of treatment for clients with mandated or voluntary referral status.     

Volunteerism: Social Issues Perspectives and Social Policy Implications

This analytic review focuses on theory and research on volunteerism. First, we define volunteerism as freely chosen helping activities that extend over time and that are often performed through organizations and on behalf of receptive causes or individuals. Next, we link these definitional features to the Volunteer Process Model, which depicts volunteerism as a process with three sequential and interactive stages (antecedents, experiences, and consequences) and at multiple levels of analysis. Then, we use this model to organize the empirical literature on volunteerism and selected work on social movements. Finally, we discuss implications for social policy issues relevant to individuals, organizations, communities, and societies.     

Child maltreatment types and adolescent substance use: The role of deviant peer affiliation

This is the first study to examine the mediating effects of deviant peer affiliation on the association between different types of child maltreatment and adolescent substance use that includes alcohol, tobacco, and marijuana. Peer deviance is a well‐established correlate of adolescent substance use, but most studies exploring the relationship between child maltreatment and adolescent substance use have failed to include peer deviance. Structural equation modelling was conducted to examine the direct effects of each type of child maltreatment (i.e., physical, sexual, and emotional abuse, and neglect) on adolescent substance use, as well as indirect effects via deviant peer affiliation, using Longitudinal Studies of Child Abuse and Neglect. The results indicated that deviant peer affiliation fully mediated the individuals who had been emotionally abused showed increased deviant peer affiliation, which in turn was associated with higher levels of adolescent substance use. None of the four types of child maltreatment was directly associated with adolescent substance use. The study's findings underscore the importance of early assessment and intervention for the peer relationships of youth who have been emotionally abused.     

The Shale Boom and Family Structure: Oil and Gas Employment Growth Relationship to Marriage,Divorce, and Cohabitation

Shale oil and gas extraction technology has caused a large shift in the United States' energy landscape over the last decade. This had a wide range of impacts on rural communities mostly in which oil and gas extraction occurs. While many studies have focused on the economic and environmental impact of shale development, researchers have only begun to study the social changes brought on by the shale resource extraction. We examine the influence of shale oil and gas employment as a share of overall county employment on county marriage, divorce, and cohabitation rates. We find evidence that oil and gas employment growth is associated with decreased marriage rates and increased divorce rates from 2009 to 2014. We test several channels through which oil and gas development may influence marriage behaviors and find that changes in female labor force participation, county sex ratios, and median household incomes are associated with oil and gas development. We also test for differences across the rural/urban continuum and find that our results are largely driven by nonmetro counties.     

Fostering integrative community leadership

This longitudinal field study examined the determinants of integrative, volunteer community leadership. Using a sample of 1443 participants in 43 community leadership programs across North America, we linked altruistic, social- and self-oriented motives to the breadth of individuals' volunteer involvement in their communities. Individuals who engaged in volunteer community leadership reported more altruistic motives (i.e., they volunteered because they were concerned about others). High levels of voluntary community leadership were also associated with social motives, such as getting involved in the community because friends or important others think doing so is important. Regardless of their motives, participants engaged in their communities in new ways following participation in a community leadership program, suggesting that such programs foster integrative community leadership. Programs that focused on team building as part of their curriculum were the most successful in fostering new community leadership activities, and programs that focused on knowledge and awareness of the community were effective in increasing participants' knowledge and awareness of the community. Considered as a whole, results of this study suggest that community leadership programs can increase both knowledge and awareness of the community and actual engagement in the community for community members who choose to participate in such programs.     

Economic Well-being and Cohabitation: Another Nonmetro Disadvantage?

Our study examines residential variability in the prevalence of cohabiting households, the extent to which children are present, characteristics of the household head, and multiple indicators of economic well-being. Despite a lower prevalence of cohabiting households in nonmetropolitan compared to other areas, a larger proportion contain children. For all measures considered, economic well-being is lowest for cohabiting households with children in nonmetropolitan areas, and compared to their metro counterparts a larger proportion receive all forms of public assistance. The higher likelihood of poverty among nonmetropolitan cohabiting households with children is not explained by the characteristics of the household heads in multivariate models predicting household poverty. Cohabitation clearly has different family and economic implications in nonmetropolitan than in other residential areas.     

The Drift Toward Problem Behavior During the Transition to Adolescence: The Contributions of Youth Disclosure,Parenting, and Older Siblings

Prospective associations of mothers’ parenting processes, youth disclosure, and youth problem behavior were examined in a longitudinal design following 244 adolescent sibling dyads over a 3‐year period. For both siblings, authoritative parenting was positively associated with youth disclosure and was negatively related to problem behavior, and coercive parenting was negatively associated with youth disclosure and was positively related to problem behavior. When the influence of older sibling problem behavior on younger sibling problem behavior was modeled, younger sibling disclosure accounted for the relationship of maternal parenting processes to problem behavior. Findings indicate the important role of sibling influence in the development of problem behavior, contextualizing the relative roles of maternal parenting and youth disclosure in the transmission of risk.     

One-cluster sampling designs for an autocorrelated population

The variance of the sampling distribution of the sample mean is derived for two sampling designs in which a single cluster is randomly drawn from an autocorrelated population. The derivations are motivated by potential applications to statistical quality control, where a "one-cluster" sampling design may often be used because of ease of implementation, and where it is likely that process output is autocorrelated Scenarios in statistical process control for which either non-overlapping or overlapping clusters are appropriate are described The sampling design variance under non-overlapping clusters is related to the sampling design variance under overlapping clusters through the use of a circular population.