A Native American Exposure Scenario

EPA's Risk Assessment Guidance for Superfund (RAGS) and later documents provide guidance for estimating exposures received from suburban and agricultural activity patterns and lifestyles. However, these methods are not suitable for typical tribal communities whose members pursue, at least in part, traditional lifestyles. These lifestyles are derived from a long association with all of the resources in a particular region. We interviewed 35 members of a Columbia River Basin tribe to develop a lifestyle-based subsistence exposure scenario that represents a midrange exposure that a traditional tribal member would receive. This scenario provides a way to partially satisfy Executive Order 12898 on environmental justice, which requires a specific evaluation of impacts from federal actions to peoples with subsistence diets. Because a subsistence diet is only a portion of what is important to a traditional lifestyle, we also used information obtained from the interviews to identify parameters for evaluating impacts to environmental and sociocultural qualify of life.     

A Longitudinal View of the Association Between Therapist Warmth and Couples' In‐Session Process: An Observational Pilot Study of Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy

This longitudinal dyadic clinical process study used coded data from eleven couples to determine the influence of therapist warmth behaviors on couples' warmth behaviors over time in therapy. A mixed effects model was used to examine within‐ and between‐individual variability. Men and women were modeled separately. A series of two‐level multilevel models of change were examined, where Time is Level 1 and Individual is Level 2. Findings were mixed. There was no significant relationship between therapist warmth toward wife and wife warmth toward husband; however, there was a significant relationship between therapist warmth toward husband and husband warmth toward wife. Findings demonstrated that 62.9% of the variance in husband warmth toward wife was accounted for by therapist warmth to husband across time in therapy. Specifically, therapist warmth toward husband was significantly and positively related to husband warmth toward wife over time in therapy. Clinical implications and directions for future research are discussed.     

From the Editor

While walking has long been implicated in ethnography and arts practice, in recent years it has become increasingly central as a means of both creating new embodied ways of knowing and producing scholarly narrative. This introduction explores this cross-disciplinary coalescence of interest in peripatetic practice. It raises a series of questions inspired by the walking/arts event, which was the starting point for this collection, as well as by the articles and works published in this special issue.     

No strings attached: The nature of casual sex in college students

The purpose of this article was to identify the circumstances associated with casual sex encounters, as well as to identify the link between casual sex, depressive symptoms, and infidelity among college students. We found that casual sex was a fairly common occurrence related to early sexual transition, engaging in first sex with a casual sex partner, drug use, and alcohol consumption. Casual sex occurred more often between “friends” than with strangers. Depressive symptoms were associated with engaging in casual sex differently for males and females. Males who engaged in casual sex reported the fewest symptoms of depression, and females who had a history of casual sex reported the most depressive symptoms. Frequencies of affectionate and genital behaviors were associated with expectations of the relationship, the relationship to the partner, infidelity, and the individual's relationship style. We discuss results in light of evolutionary and sociocultural theories of sexuality.     

‘Come to Corby’: A Scottish Steel Town in the Heart of England

Cross-border migration to England is a long-established feature of the Scottish diaspora. In the twentieth century, that phenomenon was demonstrated most visibly and persistently in the Northamptonshire steel-making centre of Corby, which from the 1930s to the 1960s was transformed from an English village into an outpost of Scotland in the heart of the Midlands. The migration, which helped to reconfigure the industrial landscape of inter-war and post-war Britain, offers an insight into the social, economic and cultural repercussions of large-scale relocation within both the donor and host communities. The article explores the causes, immediate consequences and long-term legacies of Corby's Scottish influx.     

A Systematic Review of Strengths and Resilience Outcome Literature Relevant to Children and Adolescents

The concepts of strengths and resilience are essential for understanding and promoting positive development in children and adolescents. These concepts have been studied in the research literature for many years and more recently have been applied to child and adolescent assessment and intervention research. However, strength and resilience based intervention programs have not been evaluated rigorously for their use of empirical methodology. In this article, we systematically identified and reviewed all of the outcome studies over the last decade for strength and resilience based intervention programs to assess the extent to which these studies utilized controlled empirical methodology. The results of the review yielded 11 outcome studies that examined strength and resilience based practices. Using the Quality Assessment Tool for Quantitative Studies developed by the Effective Public Health Practice Project, we found three studies to be high quality, exhibiting high levels of experimentally controlled research. The remaining 8 studies we considered to be moderate to weak quality research. We concluded that these 11 studies provide preliminary support for the efficacy of strength and resilience based interventions. Our systematic review also highlights areas where methodology in future studies can be strengthened to provide more conclusive evidence of these approaches.     

The Spokane Tribe''s Multipathway Subsistence Exposure Scenario and Screening Level RME

Exposure scenarios are a critical part of risk assessment; however, representative scenarios are not generally available for tribal communities where a traditional subsistence lifestyle and diet are relevant and actively encouraged. This article presents portions of a multipathway exposure scenario developed by AESE, Inc. in conjunction with the Spokane Tribal Cultural Resources Program. The scenario serves as the basis for a screening-level reasonable maximum exposure (RME) developed for the Midnite Uranium Mine Superfund site. The process used in developing this scenario balances the need to characterize exposures without revealing proprietary information. The scenario and resulting RME reflect the subsistence use of original and existing natural resources by a hypothetical but representative family living on the reservation at or near the mine site. The representative family lives in a house in a sparsely populated conifer forest, tends a home garden, partakes in a high rate of subsistence activities (hunting, gathering, fishing), uses a sweat lodge daily, has a regular schedule of other cultural activities, and has members employed in outdoor monitoring of natural and cultural resources. The scenario includes two largely subsistence diets based on fish or game, both of which include native plants and home-grown produce. Data gaps and sources of uncertainty are identified. Additional information that risk assessors and agencies need to understand before doing any kind of risk assessment or public health assessment in tribal situations is presented.