Sexual Orientation Victimization and Posttraumatic Stress Symptoms Among Lesbian,Gay, and Bisexual Youth

This cross-sectional study utilized data gathered from 350 lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) youth, and examined the relationship between significant life experiences and posttraumatic stress symptoms (PSS), with an ultimate goal of analyzing contribution of sexual orientation victimization (SOV) to PSS among LGB youth. Results of bivariate analyses indicate that verbal and physical sexual orientation victimization, childhood gender atypicality, internalized homophobia, and stressful life events unrelated to sexual orientation were all individually related to PSS. Multivariate analysis showed that verbal and physical sexual orientation victimization explained a significant portion of variance, over and above the study's other variables. Internalized homophobia, stressful life events, and verbal sexual orientation victimization were found to be the most significant predictors of PSS among LGB youth.     

Money talks: The role of finance in social work education and practice

Finance is crucial to every aspect of social care, yet has traditionally been neglected in social work training and practice. Despite the overwhelming importance of budgetary issues for the provision of social services, few workers understand how the system works or how their work is financed. The result is that they continue in ignorance, operating without an awareness of the financial context in which they work, lacking the financial skills to move successfully into management positions and failing to challenge a chaotic and anachronistic system which undermines local democracy as a deliberate tool of central control. Against this background, this paper highlights the importance of a financial overview for social work educators and practitioners, exploring the factors which contribute to the widespread inability to engage with financial issues and calling for a greater emphasis on this topic in social work training. In the process, it builds on a recently published introduction to local government finance which is designed specifically to counter the anti-financial tendencies inherent in social work, providing a detailed but easily comprehensible handbook for managers, practitioners and members of the general public alike. To place these issues in context, the paper begins with a personal account of working in a department experiencing financial difficulties.     

Trauma and Stress Among Older Adults in the Criminal Justice System: A Review of the Literature with Implications for Social Work

The purpose of this article was to review the empirical literature that investigated trauma and stress among older adults in the criminal justice system. Nineteen journal articles published between 1988 and 2010 were identified and extracted via research databases and included mixed age samples of adjudicated older and younger adults (n = 11) or older adult only samples (n = 8). Findings revealed past and current trauma and stress, consequences and/or correlates, and internal and external coping resources among aging offenders. The implications and future directions for gerontological social work, research, and policy with older adults in the criminal justice system are advanced.     

Understanding Mechanisms Underlying Peer Effects: Evidence From a Field Experiment on Financial Decisions

Using a high‐stakes field experiment conducted with a financial brokerage, we implement a novel design to separately identify two channels of social influence in financial decisions, both widely studied theoretically. When someone purchases an asset, his peers may also want to purchase it, both because they learn from his choice (“social learning”) and because his possession of the asset directly affects others' utility of owning the same asset (“social utility”). We randomize whether one member of a peer pair who chose to purchase an asset has that choice implemented, thus randomizing his ability to possess the asset. Then, we randomize whether the second member of the pair: (i) receives no information about the first member, or (ii) is informed of the first member's desire to purchase the asset and the result of the randomization that determined possession. This allows us to estimate the effects of learning plus possession, and learning alone, relative to a (no information) control group. We find that both social learning and social utility channels have statistically and economically significant effects on investment decisions. Evidence from a follow‐up survey reveals that social learning effects are greatest when the first (second) investor is financially sophisticated (financially unsophisticated); investors report updating their beliefs about asset quality after learning about their peer's revealed preference; and, they report motivations consistent with “keeping up with the Joneses” when learning about their peer's possession of the asset. These results can help shed light on the mechanisms underlying herding behavior in financial markets and peer effects in consumption and investment decisions.     

Friendship and Gender Differences in Task and Social Interpretations of Peer Collaborative Problem Solving

Investigations of peer collaboration often vary task or social aspects of collaborative contexts and assume that these aspects of the context are experienced similarly by individuals. The present study examined how social aspects (group friendship and gender) of a peer collaborative context related to differences in adolescents' interpretations of task and social problems that occurred while collaborating with peers in a naturalistic classroom setting. Eighth-grade adolescents ( N = 82, 44 females) worked with peers on a six-week Spanish project at school. Adolescents chose to work primarily with same-gender peers and friends. Task and social interpretations of problems were assessed twice. The salience of task problems decreased over time; social problems became somewhat more salient. Social problems were less salient to females than to males. Greater group friendship was associated with the lesser salience of task problems early in the project. The salience of social problems, gender, and friendship were important for understanding performance on the project. The value of considering the context of peer collaborative problem solving from individuals' perspectives is discussed.     

Victimization Within Mutually Antipathetic Peer Relationships

Children's victimization experiences within relationships characterized by mutual animosity were examined among 210 6th‐ and 7th‐grade boys and girls. Participants reported that a greater proportion of mutual antipathies, relative to other peers, victimized them. Moreover, the receipt of victimization within antipathetic relationships was greater when the partner in the relationship was aggressive, physically strong, non‐victimized and had low levels of internalizing problems. Perceptions of victimization and levels of maladjustment were also found to be more strongly associated with victimization from mutual antipathies than with victimization from other peers. Together, these findings highlight the importance of studying victimization in the context of antipathetic relationships and contribute to an emerging literature on the developmental significance of these relationships.     

Gender and friendship: relationships within peer groups of young children

We examined the influences of developing gender segregation on children's friendship maintenance in a longitudinal sample of 40 (17 girls) children who began their peer group experiences as infants. Friendships were behaviorally identified and social interaction was observed and rated six times between average age 16.3 months and average age 49.1 months. The proportion of cross-gender friendships increased with age only when children formed friendships outside of the core group of peers with whom they had begun infant care. Girl-girl and cross-gender friendships were more likely to be maintained than boy-boy friendships. Cross-gender friends tended to be similar in gregariousness in both toddler and preschool periods, similar in hostile aggression as toddlers, and similar in withdrawn behavior as preschoolers. Same-gender friends were not similar in social interaction style. Social skill similarity was generally more important as a basis for friendship in the toddler periods than in the preschool periods. However, cross-gender friends tended to be similar in social skills throughout both the toddler and preschool periods.     

Gender‐specific or Common Classroom Norms? Examining the Contextual Moderators of the Risk for Victimization

We tested whether gender‐specific vs. common classroom norms were more powerful moderators of the association between a risk factor (rejection) and peer victimization among girls and boys. The participants were 1220 elementary schoolchildren from grades 4–6 (with 10–13 years of age). We compared different multilevel models including combined vs. separate regressions for boys and girls, as well as the effects of norms of the whole class, same‐sex classmates, and cross‐sex classmates. Among girls, the association between rejection and victimization was strongest in classes where bullying behavior was common, and anti‐bullying attitudes were rare among girls. Among boys, the strength of the slope of victimization on rejection could not be explained by either common or gender‐specific classroom norms, but boys' level of bullying behavior was related to overall classroom level of victimization. The findings suggest that contextual factors may contribute to victimization especially among high‐risk girls. The importance of exploring multiple levels of influence on children's social development is discussed.     

Children's Psychological Response to Parental Victimization

Abstract

This study found that African American children, 6 through 12 years of age, whose parents had been victims of community violence (i.e., gunshot or stabbing) experienced distress symptoms differently, depending on their gender. In the authors' previous work (Dulmus & Wodarski, 2000), children, age 6-12, whose parents were victims of community violence (e.g., gunshot, stabbing), and whose victimization the children did not witness, were found to be experiencing distress symptoms related to their parents' victimization. The purpose of this current study was to do further analysis to examine children's psychological response to parental victimization by gender. Results indicated that all children in the study were experiencing symptoms in the borderline clinical range as measured by the total score on the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL), with females having a mean score of 39.5 and males having a mean score of 38. The differences that were found by gender were in children's expression of symptoms; with females experiencing more internalizing symptoms (i.e., withdrawn, somatic complaints, anxiety, depression) and males experiencing more externalizing symptoms (i.e., aggression, delinquent behaviors). Such results support feminist theory, which suggests that girls and boys respond differently to stimuli because of gender differences related to socialization. Such distinctions may be clinically useful when choosing approaches to behavioral interventions.     

Correcting Corrupt Research: Recommendations for the Profession to Stop Misuse of p-Values

ABSTRACT

p-Values and Null Hypothesis Significance Testing (NHST), combined with a large number of institutional factors, jointly define the Generally Accepted Soft Social Science Publishing Process (GASSSPP) that is now dominant in the social sciences and is increasingly used elsewhere. The case against NHST and the GASSSPP has been abundantly articulated over past decades, and yet it continues to spread, supported by a large number of self-reinforcing institutional processes. In this article, the author presents a number of steps that may be taken to counter the spread of this corruption that directly address the institutional forces, both as individuals and through collaborative efforts. While individual efforts are indispensable to this undertaking, the author argues that these alone cannot succeed unless the institutional forces are also addressed. Supplementary materials for this article are available online.