Adolescents' and Mothers' Understanding of Children's Rights in the Home

Adolescents' and mothers' understanding of children's self‐determination and nurturance rights was examined in the context of the home. In individual interviews, 141 sixth, eighth, and tenth graders and their mothers responded to hypothetical vignettes in which a child story character wished to exercise a right that conflicted with parental practices. For each vignette, participants were asked to judge whether the story character should have the right in question and to provide a justification for their decision. Generally, eighth and tenth graders were more likely than their mothers to endorse requests for self‐determination and less likely than their mothers to support requests for nurturance. Mothers of tenth graders were more likely to support requests for self‐determination and less likely to favor adolescents' request for nurturance in the home than were mothers of sixth and eighth graders. In terms of reasoning, adolescents and mothers were more likely to consider the individuals' rights when discussing self‐determination situations, whereas nurturance situations elicited responses pertaining to participants' understanding of familial roles and relationships. Furthermore, mothers' reasoning about childrenà s rights reflected sensitivity to the developmental level of their children. The findings are discussed in terms of previous research on the development of children's understanding of rights and adolescent autonomy.     

External Information Model in a Compositional Perspective: Evaluation of Campania Adolescents’ Preferences in the Allocation of Leisure-Time

Social Indicators Research - The study of preferences of leisure-time activities provides important information on the characteristics and inclinations of specific demographics. Modeling these data...     

Unspanned Macroeconomic Factors in the Yield Curve

In this article, we extract common factors from a cross-section of U.S. macro-variables and Treasury zero-coupon yields. We find that two macroeconomic factors have an important predictive content for government bond yields and excess returns. These factors are not spanned by the cross-section of yields and are well proxied by economic growth and real interest rates.     

Some maximum-indifference estimators for the slope of a univariate linear model

As known, the least-squares estimator of the slope of a univariate linear model sets to zero the covariance between the regression residuals and the values of the explanatory variable. To prevent the estimation process from being influenced by outliers, which can be theoretically modelled by a heavy-tailed distribution for the error term, one can substitute covariance with some robust measures of association, for example Kendall's tau in the popular Theil–Sen estimator. In a scarcely known Italian paper, Cifarelli [(1978), ‘La Stima del Coefficiente di Regressione Mediante l'Indice di Cograduazione di Gini’, Rivista di matematica per le scienze economiche e sociali, 1, 7–38. A translation into English is available at http://arxiv.org/abs/1411.4809 and will appear in Decisions in Economics and Finance] shows that a gain of efficiency can be obtained by using Gini's cograduation index instead of Kendall's tau. This paper introduces a new estimator, derived from another association measure recently proposed. Such a measure is strongly related to Gini's cograduation index, as they are both built to vanish in the general framework of indifference. The newly proposed estimator is shown to be unbiased and asymptotically normally distributed. Moreover, all considered estimators are compared via their asymptotic relative efficiency and a small simulation study. Finally, some indications about the performance of the considered estimators in the presence of contaminated normal data are provided.     

Prevalence and characteristics of sexual violence victimization among U.S. adults, 2001-2003

This article provides the most recent U.S. prevalence estimates of forced sex and unwanted sexual activity. Results of a national telephone survey conducted in 2001-2003 indicate that 1 in 59 U.S. adults (2.7 million women and 978,000 men) experienced unwanted sexual activity in the 12 months preceding the survey and that 1 in 15 U.S. adults (11.7 million women and 2.1 million men) have been forced to have sex during their lifetime. There were 60.4% of females and 69.2% of males who were 17 years old or younger at the time the first forced sex occurred. This study provides an update to the National Violence Against Women Survey with more recent national data. Findings suggest that victimization rates have remained consistent since the 1990s. These findings suggest that a continued effort toward primary prevention of sexual violence, particularly rape of children and adolescents, is needed.     

Indigenous data,indigenous methodologies and indigenous data sovereignty

The field of Indigenous methodologies has grown strongly since Tuhiwai Smith’s 1999 groundbreaking book Decolonizing Indigenous Methodologies. For the most part however, there has been a marked absence of quantitative methodologies with the methods aligned with Indigenous methodologies predominantly qualitative. This article proposes that the absence of an Indigenous presence from Indigenous data production has resulted in an overwhelming statistical narrative of deficit for dispossessed Indigenous peoples around the globe. Using the theoretical concept of Indigenous Lifeworlds this article builds on the core premises of Walter and Andersen’s 2013 book Indigenous quantitative methodologies. Arguing for a fundamental disturbance of the Western logics of statistical data the article details recent developments in the field including the emergence of the Indigenous Data Sovereignty movement. The article also explores Indigenous quantitative methodologies in practice using the case study of a Tribal Epidemiology Centre in New Mexico.     

Examining the Effects of a Service-Trained Facility Dog on Stress in Children Undergoing Forensic Interview for Allegations of Child Sexual Abuse

Disclosure of child sexual abuse can be a stressful experience for the child. Gaining a better understanding of how best to serve the child, while preserving the quality of their disclosure, is an ever-evolving process. The data to answer this question come from 51 children aged 4–16 (M = 9.1, SD = 3.5), who were referred to a child advocacy center in Virginia for a forensic interview (FI) following allegations of sexual abuse. A repeated measures design was conducted to examine how the presence of a service-trained facility dog (e.g. animal-assisted intervention (AAI) may serve as a mode of lowering stress levels in children during their FIs. Children were randomized to one of the two FI conditions: experimental condition (service-trained facility dog present-AAI) or control condition (service-trained facility dog not present- standard forensic interview). Stress biomarkers salivary cortisol, alpha-amylase, immunoglobulin A (IgA), heart rate, and blood pressure, and Immunoglobulin A were collected before and after the FI. Self-report data were also collected. Results supported a significant decrease in heart rate for those in the experimental condition (p = .0086) vs the control condition (p = .4986). Regression models revealed a significant decrease in systolic and diastolic blood pressure in the experimental condition (p = .03285) and (p = .04381), respectively. Statistically significant changes in alpha-amylase and IgA were also found in relation to disclosure and type of offense. The results of this study support the stress reducing effects of a service-trained facility dog for children undergoing FI for allegations of child sexual abuse.     

Coping With Stress as an LGBTQ+ Health Care Professional

Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and other sexual/gender minority (LGBTQ+) health care providers face both general work-related stresses and working in heteronormative settings with ill-informed or hostile coworkers and patients, yet there has been little study of whether the coping strategies are specific to LGBTQ+ stress. We analyzed qualitative data from 277 health care professionals. Sources of stress included religiously and politically conservative coworkers, coworker/patient lack of knowledge, stresses of being closeted, and concerns about being out to patients. Consequences of being out as LGBTQ+ included lack of promotions, gossip, refusals of tenure, and anti-LGBTQ+ comments and behaviors in the workplace. Respondents showed mostly positive coping strategies to deal with stress, including becoming educators/advocates and self-care activities. Self-care options were common in rural areas with few LGBTQ+ social resources. Negative coping strategies were reported by 18% of respondents. The study highlights the extra burden of stress on LGBTQ+ health care providers.     

Are cutout handles used when available in real occupational settings? Description of grips and upper extremities movements during industrial box handling

In order to achieve better postures and decrease musculoskeletal risks adequate design of hand/box couplings for manual materials handling (MMH) are still needed. No studies evaluating upper limb movement thorough direct measurements during box handling in workplace were identified in the literature. In this study we describe the types of grip and movements adopted by ten workers when handling redesigned boxes with cutout handles between different heights on industrial pallets. The new handles were used by 90% of the workers through different types of grip. Electrogoniometric measurements showed relatively safe forearm and wrist movements, although elbow inadequate range of movement was recorded. Despite the good acceptance of the cutout by workers, the new design requires extra internal space in the boxes reducing applications for this alternative of box.