Deconstructing maternal sensitivity: Predictive relations to mother‐child attachment in home and laboratory settings

Despite the well‐documented importance of parental sensitivity for child development, there is a lack of consensus regarding how best to assess it. We investigated the factor structure of maternal caregiving behavior as assessed at 12 months by the Maternal Behavior Q‐Sort (Pederson & Moran) with 274 mother‐infant dyads. Subsequently, we examined associations between these empirically‐derived dimensions and child attachment, assessed in the home and laboratory (final N = 157). Three dimensions of maternal behavior were identified, corresponding fairly closely to Ainsworth's original scales. They were labeled Cooperation/Attunement, Positivity, and Accessibility/Availability. Only Cooperation/Attunement consistently predicted home‐based attachment at 15 months and 2 years, and at comparable strength to the overall sensitivity score, suggesting that this construct may be central to sensitivity. At 18 months, compared to their primarily secure counterparts, different types of laboratory‐assessed insecure attachment were associated with different patterns of maternal behavior. Mothers in avoidant relationships (n = 18) were low on Cooperation/Attunement and Accessibility/Availability, but fairly high on Positivity. Mothers of disorganized infants (n = 11) were Cooperative/Attuned but somewhat less Positive toward, and less Accessible/Available to, their infants. A multidimensional approach to parental behavior may facilitate the identification of parenting precursors of insecure parent‐child relationships.     

Cultural factors in the intervention of child maltreatment

The focus of this paper is to suggest an approach to cultural factors in intervention efforts with child maltreatment cases. General issues as well as issues specific to Black and Hispanic Americans are explored. Various risk factors commonly used to guide intervention efforts are examined from a cultural perspective. Recommendations are provided in four key practice areas; organizational and administrative adaptations, staff recruitment and training, research, and public relations.     

Penalized contrast estimator for adaptive density deconvolution

The authors consider the problem of estimating the density g of independent and identically distributed variables X_I, from a sample Z₁,… Z_n such that Z_I = X_I + σ? for i = 1,…, n, and E is noise independent of X, with σ? having a known distribution. They present a model selection procedure allowing one to construct an adaptive estimator of g and to find nonasymptotic risk bounds. The estimator achieves the minimax rate of convergence, in most cases where lower bounds are available. A simulation study gives an illustration of the good practical performance of the method.     

Introduction: making the case for qualitative interviews

ABSTRACT

We introduce four papers comprising a Themed Section for this issue of the International Journal of Social Research Methodology, which together ‘Make the Case for Qualitative Interviews’. Here our aim is to show how this collection provides a timely contribution to key debates concerning the value of qualitative interviews, particularly as these are employed and analysed in much recent social scientific thinking. We explore ways to move beyond recent, sometimes constraining and occasionally dismissive, approaches to interviews in the social sciences through reframing and reconfiguring central questions germane to these debates. We also seek to challenge a broader neo-liberal trend towards valuing quantitative over depth qualitative research. Through this Introduction, and the collection of papers that follows, we seek to re-establish the value of qualitative interviews by shifting the focus from a preoccupation with what interviews can be said to do, towards questions centring on what can be done with interviews.     

Deconvolution Estimation of Onset of Pregnancy with Replicate Observations

In general, the precise date of onset of pregnancy is unknown and may only be estimated from ultrasound biometric measurements of the embryo. We want to estimate the density of the random variables corresponding to the interval between last menstrual period and true onset of pregnancy. The observations correspond to the variables of interest up to an additive noise. We suggest an estimation procedure based on deconvolution. It requires the knowledge of the density of the noise which is not available. But we have at our disposal another specific sample with replicate observations for twin pregnancies. This allows both to estimate the noise density and to improve the deconvolution step. Convergence rates of the final estimator are studied and compared with other settings. Our estimator involves a cut‐off parameter for which we propose a cross‐validation type procedure. Lastly, we estimate the target density in spontaneous pregnancies with an estimation of the noise obtained from replicate observations in twin pregnancies.     

Health-Related Stereotype Threat Predicts Health Services Delays Among Blacks

To our knowledge, no published research has developed an individual difference measure of health-related stereotype threat (HRST). We adapted existing measures of academic stereotype threat to the health domain on a sample of black college students (N = 280). The resulting health-related stereotype threat scale-24 (HRST-24) was assessed for internal consistency, construct and incremental validity, and whether it explains variance in self-reported delays among four preventive health behaviors—blood pressure and cholesterol assays, physical exams, and routine checkups. After adjusting for several control variables, the HRST-24’s (full scale α = 0.96) perceived black health inferiority (18 items; α = 0.96) and perceived physician racial bias (6 items; α = 0.85) subscales explained unique variance in delays among two of the four behaviors including a blood cholesterol check (p < .01) and routine checkup—albeit at marginal levels (p = .063) in the case of the latter. Overall, these data provide preliminary evidence of construct and incremental validity for the HRST-24 among blacks. Recommendations for administering the scale are provided and future directions for HRST research are discussed.