Photographs of young generations on the Dutch labour market

In the light of the decline of “standard” employment relationships in many countries and its particular effect on young people, this article provides a detailed analysis of the labour market trajectories of early-career workers in the Netherlands between 1985 and 2014, adopting the approach of the sequence analysis of life-course events. Using two indicators for instability (entropy and turbulence), the authors find that cohorts that entered the labour market after 2000, and particularly in 2008, experience greater employment status instability despite the flexicurity policies applied. Transitions into stable employment are the exception rather than the rule.     

Adolescent Internalizing Symptoms and the “Tightknittedness” of Friendship Groups

Adolescents with depression have lower peer status overall, but tend to befriend each other. We examined the “tightknittedness” of their friendship groups by testing whether adolescent friendship groups’ average levels of or variability in internalizing symptoms predict group cohesiveness. We used four waves (9th–12th grades) of survey and social network data on 3,013 friendship groups from the PROmoting School‐Community‐University Partnerships to Enhance Resilience study. Friendship groups with higher average depressive symptoms were less cohesive; groups with higher average anxiety symptoms had greater reciprocity. Groups with greater variability in depressive symptoms had greater density; variability in anxiety symptoms was not consistently associated with cohesion. The friendship groups of depressed adolescents appear less cohesive than the “typical” adolescent friendship group.     

Strategic framing in the BP crisis: A semantic network analysis of associative frames

This paper contributes to the analysis of the interplay of public relations and news in crisis situations, and the conceptualization of strategic framing by introducing the idea of associative frames and the method of semantic network analysis to the PR research field. By building on a more advanced understanding of communication as process of social meaning construction that is embedded in networks of differential relations between different actors, it contributes to extend the perspective of first- and second-order agenda building towards a kind of “third order” or “network agenda building”. Via an automated content analysis of more than 3700 articles we examine agenda- and frame-differences between public relations, UK and US news in the BP crisis. The study documents that BP successfully applied a decoupling strategy: It dissociated itself from being responsible for the cause and at the same time presented itself as solvent of the crisis. It shows that in crises, associative frames in PR resonate partly to associative frames in news. Especially the US news followed BP and did not succeed in presenting political actors as solution providers.     

Recognizing Emotions in a Foreign Language

Expressions of basic emotions (joy, sadness, anger, fear, disgust) can be recognized pan-culturally from the face and it is assumed that these emotions can be recognized from a speaker’s voice, regardless of an individual’s culture or linguistic ability. Here, we compared how monolingual speakers of Argentine Spanish recognize basic emotions from pseudo-utterances (“nonsense speech”) produced in their native language and in three foreign languages (English, German, Arabic). Results indicated that vocal expressions of basic emotions could be decoded in each language condition at accuracy levels exceeding chance, although Spanish listeners performed significantly better overall in their native language (“in-group advantage”). Our findings argue that the ability to understand vocally-expressed emotions in speech is partly independent of linguistic ability and involves universal principles, although this ability is also shaped by linguistic and cultural variables.

The Diagnostic Utility of the Child Sexual Behavior Inventory for Sexual Abuse: A Systematic Review

Children with alleged child sexual abuse (CSA) need to be assessed systematically. The use of validated instruments during the assessment, like the Child Sexual Behavior Inventory (CSBI), could add diagnostic value. We aim to assess the diagnostic utility of the CSBI to differentiate between sexually abused and non-abused children. We conducted a systematic review. We searched the electronic databases MEDLINE and PsychInfo for studies comparing CSBI scores in sexually abused children and non-abused children (2–12 years old). Two independent reviewers extracted data and assessed the methodological quality. We included 7 (out of 1048) articles. The CSBI total scores were significantly higher in CSA-victims compared with non-abused children (in case–control settings). However, in children with suspected CSA, the results were ambiguous. One study reported significant differences. Another study reported weak diagnostic ability for the CSBI-3 in children with suspected CSA (a sensitivity and specificity of 0.50, with a positive predictive value of 0.28, and a negative predictive value of 0.72). Research on the diagnostic utility of the CSBI for suspected CSA is limited and shows disappointing results. Until more research is done, the CSBI should not be used on its own to differentiate between sexually abused and non-abused children.     

Early Sexual Initiation and Mental Health: A Fleeting Association or Enduring Change?

The present research examined how the within‐person association between sexual initiation and internalizing symptoms decays over time, using data with annual measurement occasions across adolescence (N = 1,789) and statistical models of within‐person change. Sexual initiation was associated with increased levels of internalizing symptoms for early‐initiating girls (ninth grade, approximately age 15), but not for on‐time‐initiating girls or for boys. The association between girls' early sexual initiation and internalizing symptoms declined precipitously over time. Indeed, 1 year after sexual debut, early‐initiating girls were similar to on‐time or noninitiating girls on internalizing symptoms, suggesting early sexual initiation does not produce lasting detriments to girls' mental health. Findings inform how researchers perceive sexual initiation, both as a developmental milestone and as a prevention target.     

Chronic avoidance helps explain the relationship between severity of childhood sexual abuse and psychological distress in adulthood

Recent studies have found that chronic avoidance of unpleasant internal experiences (e.g., thoughts, emotions, memories) is a maladaptive means of affect regulation often adopted by women with a history of sexual victimization in childhood. The primary aim of this study was to replicate and extend previous findings suggesting that higher levels of experiential avoidance may account for the relationship between childhood sexual abuse (CSA) and psychological distress in adulthood. It was hypothesized that, in a sample of undergraduate females (n = 151), the relationship between severity of CSA (e.g., frequency, nature of victimization) and trauma-related psychological distress would be mediated by avoidance. Results supported this hypothesis. Findings are consistent with previous studies, and further suggest that the general tendency to avoid or escape from unpleasant internal experiences may be a specific factor that exacerbates psychological distress among women with a history of sexual victimization in childhood.     

The Dark Side of Information and Market Efficiency in E‐Markets*

Price dispersion reflects the differences in prices for identical products. While in physical markets such dispersion is prevalent due to high search costs, many researchers argue that search costs and price dispersion will be much lower in electronic markets (e‐markets). Empirical evidence does not support this contention, and researchers have studied search costs, market factors, and service‐quality factors to explain this dispersion. Previous research has largely assumed that more information is better. By ignoring the dark side of information, we argue that only a partial understanding of price dispersion is possible. In this article, information overload and equivocality are studied as two dark attributes of information that lead sellers to different pricing decisions in e‐markets. Hypotheses relating these attributes to price dispersion are supported through analysis of 161 product markets. This work opens up new avenues in the study of e‐markets and discusses the implications of these findings for research and practice on consumer and seller decisions.     

First Episode Psychosis: A Magical Realist Guide Through Liminal Terrain

This paper presents a narrative of a client, ‘Eva’, who experienced what is termed by psychiatry a first episode psychosis. As a family and relationship counsellor practicing narrative therapy with its backdrop of post‐structuralism and curiosity of exploring new entry points for narratives of identity, I tentatively sought new ways to engage with Eva's story. My endeavour in meeting with ‘First Episode Psychosis’ is described through adopting a listening position from a reading of magical realist literature. This extends Michael White's political exploration of ethnographer Arnold van Gennep's liminal spaces (in the rites of passage metaphor) to understand units of experience, units of meaning, and the fluidity of identity in psychosis, which is contextualised as a response to events in the client's story.