Sibling Conflict and Ineffective Parenting as Predictors of Adolescent Boys' Antisocial Behavior and Peer Difficulties: Additive and Interactional Effects

Extensive sibling conflict is predictive of multiple poor adjustment outcomes during adolescence and early adulthood, but the frequency and developmental impact of such conflict may be conditional on ineffective parenting. Thus, sibling conflict may add to or amplify the negative effects of ineffective parenting on adolescent boys' adjustment. Hypotheses in this study were that: (a) multiple informant measures of problematic parent–child relationships and of sibling conflict would form distinct constructs rather than a single negative family process construct, and (b) ineffective parenting, sibling conflict, and their interaction measured at ages 10 to 12 would predict boys' concurrent status and developmental trajectories for antisocial behavior and peer adjustment across a 4‐year span from ages 12 to 16. Confirmatory factor and latent growth modeling analyses were consistent with these hypotheses, demonstrating the important developmental impact of sibling conflict.     

PARENTAL INFLUENCE ON GENDER AND MARITAL ROLE ATTITUDES: IMPLICATIONS FOR INTERVENTION

This study examined parental influence on specific attitudes toward marital and parental roles and nonspecific gender-role attitudes. Respondents included 173 young adults (127 women and 46 men) and their parents. Young adults' scores on the Role Orientation scale of the Marital Statisfaction Inventory and on masculinity and femininity scales from two self-report inventories (the MMPI-2 and the Personal Attributes Questionnarie) were correlated with their parents' scores on a subset of these same measures. Results indicated that (a) marital and parental role attitudes among young adults are strongly related to specific marital role attitudes of their parents but only modestly related (for women) or unrelated (for men) to nonspecific gender-role attitudes of their parents; (b) broader gender-role attitudes of young men are moderately correlated with their father's attitudes but generally uncorrelated with their mother's attitudes regarding gender roles; and (c) the relationship of young women's gender-role attitudes to both maternal and paternal attitudes is generally weaker and more complex than for young men. Clinical implications of these findings for assessment and intervention with distressed couples are discussed.     

Community Involvement: Opportunities and Challenges in Socializing Adults to Participate in Society

The concluding article of this issue devoted to community involvement considers the unique perspective offered by each article on this topic in this issue, yet does so in the context of the commonalities among them. Most important of these commonalities, perhaps, is that all of the articles address, to some degree, the question of how adults can best be socialized to develop a habit of community participation. Some articles consider this question of encouraging community involvement in educational settings, while others consider the question in more general settings. Some articles focus on key conceptual processes, whereas others concentrate on practical issues in promoting involvement. Finally, virtually all of the articles consider the benefits of community involvement; some of the articles also explore the downside to efforts to promote community involvement.     

A unionist’s perspective on the future of American unions

In summary, I do not see a major change in American unions over the next decade. The exception is further consolidation of national unions through mergers and affiliations which will change the makeup and increase the effectiveness of the unions involved. It behooves us all who love freedom and democracy to do what we can to assure strong and viable unions in America. We in the labor movement do not believe that we can have a free society and a high standard of living without free and effective unions. In this regard, I conclude with a statement made in 1945 by my first boss, Philip Murray, president of the United Steelworkers of America and the Congress of Industrial Organizations: “American democracy cannot survive in an atmosphere of insecurity, joblessness, and poverty. When people are at work at high wages, prosperity is continuous. To return to an era of low wages is to invite unemployment and catastrophe from which no segment of the population, no matter how apparently secure, will escape. We dare not allow mass misery and unemployment to overtake us again.”     

“I Don't Go By Sean Patrick”: On-Line/Off-Line/Out Identity and SeanPatrickLive.com

Web cams are cameras that are attached to a computer in order to send continuously updated pictures over the Internet. SeanPatrickLive is a Web cam site that documented the life of Sean, a gay man living in the Washington, D.C. area. This essay is the result of ethnographic interviews with Sean Patrick. It discusses Web cams within the context of the cyberqueer, examining how sexuality is presented on-line, using the Internet and the Web cam as a form of gay/queer politics, and performing identity on- and off-line.     

Forecasting intraday time series with multiple seasonal cycles using parsimonious seasonal exponential smoothing

This paper concerns the forecasting of seasonal intraday time series that exhibit repeating intraweek and intraday cycles. A recently proposed exponential smoothing method involves smoothing a different intraday cycle for each distinct type of day of the week. Similar days are allocated identical intraday cycles. A limitation is that the method allows only whole days to be treated as identical. We introduce a new exponential smoothing formulation that allows parts of different days of the week to be treated as identical. The result is a method that involves the smoothing and initialisation of fewer terms. We evaluate forecasting up to a day ahead using two empirical studies. For electricity load data, the new method compares well with a range of alternatives. The second study involves a series of arrivals at a call centre that is open for a shorter duration at the weekends than on weekdays. Among the variety of methods considered, the new method is the only one that can model in a satisfactory way in this situation, where the number of periods on each day of the week is not the same.     

Fostering transnational dialogue: Lessons learned from women peace activists

Abstract

Given the incredible diversity of the anti-globalization movement, developing inclusive and participatory spaces is an enormous challenge. Inequities in power, resources, and experience between Northern and Southern activists are of particular concern to a movement that values democratic participation. Dialogue is seen as a critical new way of addressing conflicts within the movement. For three decades, women's organizations dealt with similar issues at the UN World Conferences on Women. It was not until the 1990s that a global women's movement emerged. This paper, which is based on a qualitative study of women's peace organizations gathered at the Fourth UN World Conference on Women in 1995, addresses the development of positive coalition dynamics. The focus on individual activist stories fills in gaps left by studying organizations as units of analysis or on transnational movements as a whole. My research shows that if transnational activists use constructive approaches, conflict can assist in building coalition dynamics necessary for effective and equitable cooperation. I conclude that a commitment to respond to conflict in a constructive manner is as important for coalition building as formal processes or mechanisms that foster dialogue.     

Unrepresentative Information: The Case of Newspaper Reporting on Campaign Finance

This article examines evidence of sampling or statistical biasin newspaper reporting on campaign finance. We compile all storiesfrom the five largest circulation newspapers in the United Statesthat mention a dollar amount for campaign expenditures, contributions,or receipts from 1996 to 2000. We compare these figures to thoserecorded by the Federal Election Commission (FEC). The averagefigures reported in newspapers exceed the figures from the FECby as much as eightfold. Press reports also focus excessivelyon corporate contributions and soft money, rather than on themore common types of donors—individual—and typesof contributions—hard money. We further find that thesebiases are reflected in public perceptions of money in elections.Survey respondents overstate the amount of money raised andthe share from different groups by roughly the amount foundin newspapers, and better-educated people (those most likelyto read newspapers) showed the greatest discrepancy betweentheir beliefs and the facts.     

Faculty Support of Student Dissent

This paper replicates an earlier study of faculty status and tolerance of political dissent by Abramson and Wences. The data support the hypothesis that length of residence on a university campus is inversely related to faculty tolerance of student dissent. The expected relationship between academic rank and tolerance was eliminated by controlling for longevity, but the predicted relationship between academic field and tolerance was unaffected. The effect of longevity appears to be independent of political orientations, and the data suggest that peer group influence is operative among faculty members.     

MARRIAGE, DEPRESSION, AND COGNITION: UNRAVELING THE GORDIAN KNOT-REPLY TO ETTINGER ET AL.

Heim and Snyder (1991) explicitly applied a multidimensional assessment and data-analytic strategy to predict husbands' and wives' depressive symptoms from measures of marital disaffection, overt marital conflict, appraisals of relationship prognosis, characterizations of the spouse, and causal attributions. For both genders, the best single predictor of depression was a measure of marital disaffection—accounting by itself for approximately one third of the variance in subjects' depressive symptoms. Additional attributional predictors of depression for married women indicated the need for therapists to support wives' assertive expression of relationship concerns and confrontation of husbands' behaviors contributing to their distress. We reiterate the complex and recursive relationships among marital difficulties, depression, congnitive processes, and their antecedents and consequences and encourage focused research on components of this intricate puzzle.