After a Disaster: Lessons in Survey Methodology from Hurricane Katrina

In 2005, the National Science Foundation funded a number of projects to study the impact of Hurricane Katrina. The current article provides an overview of several research approaches used to conduct post-Katrina research. Each method had some advantages and disadvantages. The post-disaster context meant that experience from traditional survey methods often did not apply. Comparisons of advantages and disadvantages associated with each sampling method serve to inform future post-disaster research and illuminate the limits of classical research methods.     

Household Support and Social Integration in the Year After Prison

The conventional household is typically conceived as a fixed residence where married adults pool incomes and raise their children. In poor communities, however, households are often residentially unstable, fluid in composition, and economically insecure. Men and women who leave prison face extreme disadvantage, and their households are likely to shape social integration after incarceration. Drawing on qualitative and quantitative data from the Boston Reentry Study, this article describes the complex living situations of men and women newly released from prison and proposes a multifaceted concept of household support. Regression analysis with an index measuring household support shows that living in a stable well‐resourced household just after prison release is associated with reduced risks of a new criminal charge, social isolation, and unemployment six to twelve months later. More than just a social unit for sampling and enumeration, the analysis suggests the household is an explanatory concept that can account for the social integration of poor, minority populations often detached from formal sources of economic and social support.     

Self-compassion and suicidal behavior in college students: Serial indirect effects via depression and wellness behaviors

Objective: College students may be at heightened risk for suicide and suicidal behavior due to maladaptive cognitive-emotional factors and failure to practice basic health behaviors. However, self-compassion and wellness behaviors may protect against risk. The relation between self-compassion and suicidal behavior and the contributing roles of depressive symptoms and wellness behaviors was examined. Participants: Participants were 365 undergraduate students. Data were collected in April 2015. Methods: A cross-sectional, survey design was employed. Participants completed measures assessing self-compassion, depressive symptoms, wellness behaviors, and suicidal behavior. Serial mediation analyses were conducted covarying age, sex, and ethnicity. Results: Self-compassion was inversely related to suicidal behavior, and this relationship was serially mediated by depressive symptoms and wellness behaviors. Conclusions: Self-compassion may protect against suicidal behavior, in part, due to reduced depressive symptoms and heightened engagement in wellness behaviors. Individual and campus-wide strategies promoting self-compassion and wellness behaviors may reduce suicide risk on college campuses.     

Trajectory of quality of mother-child interactions: Prospective links with child socioemotional functioning

Research shows that the quality of mother-child interactions is a robust antecedent of child socioemotional functioning. Yet, relatively little is known about the evolution of this relational quality over time, and even less about how changes in relational quality may bear on child adjustment. This study aimed to describe the trajectory of quality of mother-child interactions between ages 2 and 7 and to investigate associations between individual differences in this trajectory and child socioemotional functioning at age 8. In a sample of 233 mother-child dyads primarily comprised of White French-Canadian mothers, the quality of interactions was assessed during 10-min play sequences when children were aged 2, 4, and 7 years. Child internalizing, externalizing, and prosocial behaviors were reported by a subsample of 171 teachers at age 8. The results showed that on average, quality of mother-child interactions decreased over time. In terms of individual differences, children who experienced a slower decrease in the quality of interactions with their mother from 2 to 7 years showed less internalizing behavior at age 8, over and above initial quality at 2 years. Children involved in higher quality interactions with their mother at 2 years showed more prosocial and less externalizing behavior at age 8, independent of the subsequent decrease in the quality of those interactions. The findings suggest that initial levels and subsequent changes in the quality of mother-child interactions are two distinct indicators of their relationship with potentially different implications for child adjustment.     

Do Infants Recognize Engagement in Social Interactions? The Case of Face‐to‐Face Conversation

This study explores 12‐month‐olds' understanding of face‐to‐face conversation, a key contextual structure associated with engagement in a social interaction. Using a violation‐of‐expectations paradigm, we habituated infants to a “face‐to‐face” conversation, and in a test phase compared their looking times between “back‐to‐back” (conceptually novel) and “face‐to‐face” (conceptually familiar) conversations, while simultaneously manipulating perceptual familiarity in a 2 × 2 factorial design. We also analyzed dynamic changes in pupil dilation, which are considered a reliable measure of cognitive load that may index processing of social interactions. Infants looked relatively longer at perceptual changes (new speaker positions) but not at conceptual change (back‐to‐back conversation), suggesting that face‐to‐face conversation may not elicit particular expectations, and so may not carry any particular conceptual significance. Moreover, on the first test trial, larger pupil dilation was observed for familiar conditions, suggesting that familiarity with perceptual features could enhance processing of conversations. Thus, this study undermines assertions regarding infants' conceptual understanding of the social signals underlying engagement. Infants may rather recognize such signals through their perceptual familiarity and associated positive feelings. This may then increase their engagement when observing and participating in others' collaborative activities, in turn allowing for the development of knowledge regarding others' intentions.