Monthly Archives: October 2010

Grantees on national projects are often required by their funders to take part in evaluation activities. While the requirement can encourage compliance, grantees can feel overburdened and disempowered with their evaluation experience. Evaluators in a national cross-site evaluation utilized multiple strategies for obtaining buy-in of participating grantees: (1) an initial evaluation needs assessment to foster a collaborative partnership and inform a plan for capacity building; (2) an ‘evaluation summit’ to facilitate input on the evaluation framework and cross-site measures, encourage …

Evaluations of complex interventions such as sentencing guidelines provide an opportunity to understand the mechanisms by which policies and programs can impact intermediate and long-term outcomes. There is limited previous discussion of the underlying frameworks by which sentencing guidelines can impact outcomes such as crime rates. Guided by a realist evaluation framework, this article examines the impact of linkages of sentencing policy to resource capacity—a cost-control paradigm under which a few states created guidelines to control rising prison populations and …

A total of 271 early childhood professionals completed pre- and post training knowledge assessments in True-False only (TF) or True-False with ‘‘unsure’’ option formats (TFU). In Study 1, only TFU format was used. In Study 2, participants were randomly assigned to TF or TFU formats. Responses which were initially ‘‘unsure’’ were more likely than confident responses to become ‘‘correct’’ at post test. Hence, teachable moments may be created when individuals acknowledge being unsure, and adding ‘‘unsure’’ to these tests may …

How effective are policy interventions to fight crime and how valid is the policy theory that underlies them? This is the twofold research question addressed in this article, which presents an evidence-based evaluation of Dutch social safety policy. By bridging the gap between actual effects and assumed effects, this study seeks to make fuller use of the practical relevance of evidence-based evaluations. The results reveal promising interventions and mechanisms for policy practice. In addition, the chosen approach advances current practice …

(No abstract is available for this citation)

Multiequation models that contain observed or latent variables are common in the social sciences. To determine whether unique parameter values exist for such models, one needs to assess model identification. In practice, analysts rely on empirical checks that evaluate the singularity of the information matrix evaluated at sample estimates of parameters. The discrepancy between estimates and population values, the limitations of numerical assessments of ranks, and the difference between local and global identification make this practice less than perfect. In …

The author discusses the general problem of evaluating differences in adjusted survivor functions and develops a heuristic approach to generate the expected events that would occur under a Cox proportional hazards model. Differences in the resulting expected survivor distributions can be tested using generalized log rank tests. This method should prove useful for making other kinds of comparisons and generating adjusted life tables. The author also discusses alternative specifications of the classical Cox model that allow time-varying effects and thus …

As an extension of hierarchical linear models (HLMs), cross-classified random effects models (CCREMs) are used for analyzing multilevel data that do not have strictly hierarchical structures. Proportional reduction in prediction error, a multilevel version of the R 2 in ordinary multiple regression, measures the predictive ability of a model and is useful in model selection. However, such a measure is not yet available for CCREMs. Using a two-level random-intercept CCREM, the authors have investigated how the estimated variance components change …

In this article, an alternative randomized response model is proposed. The proposed model is found to be more efficient than the randomized response model studied by Bar-Lev, Bobovitch, and Boukai (2004). The relative efficiency of the proposed model is studied with respect to the Bar-Lev et al. (2004) model under various situations.

In this article, the authors demonstrate the utility of an extended latent Markov model for analyzing temporal configurations in the behaviors of a sample of 550 domestic violence batterers. Domestic violence research indicates that victims experience a constellation of abusive behaviors rather than a single type of violent outcome. There is also evidence that observed behaviors are highly dynamic, with batterers cycling back and forth between periods of no abuse and violent or controlling behavior. These issues pose methodological challenges …

Nations elected to the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) as temporary members have lower levels of economic growth, become less democratic, and experience more restrictions on press freedoms than comparable nations not elected to the UNSC. Using regression and matching techniques the authors show, for instance, that over the two-year period of UNSC membership and the following two years during which a nation is ineligible for reelection, UNSC nations experience a 3.5 percent contraction in their economy relative to nations …

Does trade influence whether individuals view other states as friendly or threatening? Liberal theory implies that it should, but the individual-level implications of the liberal argument are rarely tested. Trade should influence individual attitudes more strongly where trade is more economically important. International trade also creates both winners and losers within the trading states, and the foreign policy attitudes of these winners and losers should differ. The authors test hypotheses drawn from this line of argument using a forty-seven-country survey …

The authors bring together and extend three strands of existing research: the propensity of democracies to ally with each other, the effects of alliances being institutionalized, and the causal impact of democracy in promoting investment. This literature is applied to corporate alliances, predicting the probability that announced alliance contracts will be completed by the participants. The authors find that democratic political regimes generate rules that create corporate shareholder democracy and that the latter promotes the institutionalization of corporate alliances. Corporate …

When do civil wars last especially long? Commitment problems can stymie conflict resolution but they are not homogeneous across all civil wars. Indeed, combatants’ perceptions of their adversaries significantly affect the severity of commitment problems. Intergroup interactions provide combatants with one crucial type of information about their adversaries and about the risks associated with signing a peace settlement, shaping strategic decisions. The argument is tested against a new data set of all ethnic civil wars between 1945 and 2004. The …

This laboratory experiment studies two-stage contests between political parties. In the first stage, parties run their primaries, and in the second stage, the winners of the primaries compete in the general election. The resource expenditures in the first stage by the winning candidates are partially or fully carried over to the second stage. Experimental results support all major theoretical predictions: the first-stage expenditures and the total expenditures increase, while the second-stage expenditures decrease in the carryover rate. Consistent with the …

Although conflicts most often occur between groups, research and theory on conflict management and negotiation have largely focused on the interpersonal system and ignored how groups negotiate a solution to their intergroup conflict. Thus we have a thorough understanding of the motivational, cognitive, and affective processes underlying the development of high quality solutions in interpersonal negotiation, but we know little about the extent to which these insights can be comfortably generalized to intergroup settings. Likewise, the large volume of work …

Two experiments utilized a new experimental paradigm—the Intergroup Prisoner’s Dilemma— Maximizing Difference (IPD-MD) game—to study how relative deprivation at the group level affects intergroup competition. The IPD-MD game enables group members to make a costly contribution to either a within-group pool that benefits fellow ingroup members, or a between-group pool, which, in addition, harms outgroup members. We found that when group members were put in a disadvantaged position, either by previous actions of the outgroup (Experiment 1) or by random …

In intergroup conflict, individual cooperation may be directed at strengthening the ingroup, thus undermining the effectiveness and sustainability of the competing outgroup. Reversely, cooperation directed towards the competing outgroup indirectly undermines the viability of the ingroup and is often seen by ingroup members as disloyal, non-cooperative behavior. Using the Intergroup Prisoner’s Dilemma—Maximizing Differences Game to model intergroup conflict, the experiment reported here shows that compared to individuals with a chronic pro-self orientation, those with a chronic prosocial orientation display stronger …

The aim of the current study was to show that the type of conflict behavior (constructive vs. unconstructive) groups use in conflicts depends on their power position as well as the likelihood that power determines victory and defeat. In an alleged online debate, we created a conflict between two opinion based groups. We then measured participant’s action tendencies and their actual behavior. Overall, the results show that especially when the likelihood that power determines victory and defeat is low, power …

We investigated the relationship between emotions of fear and anger and people’s motivation for intergroup aggression within the context of Serbian—Albanian relations in Serbia (Study 1) and Serbian—Bosniak intergroup relations in Bosnia (Study 2). Serbian students in Belgrade and Banja Luka completed a survey that assessed their attitudes towards Albanians or Bosniaks. We found that fear of the outgroup was related to increased motivation for aggression in the context of the ongoing conflict in Serbia, whereas fear was negatively related …

This overview of the publication market for sociologists in Austria also examines a few recent publications by Austrian sociologists. Writing in German, Austrian sociologists are highly dependent on the market in neighbouring Germany, where approximately one-third of the books written by Austrians are published. Particular deficiencies of books by Austrians published in Austria are careless editing, indexing and copy editing. Among types of publication, most common are volumes of collected papers and monographs. A small number of publications attempt ‘diagnoses …

This review essay discusses the attempts of four books to surpass traditional disciplinary borders and address a basic question across the social sciences: What motivational forces guide human behaviour, and how do these forces affect and how are they affected by, the dynamics of social cooperation and collective action? Even though the books adopt different theoretical and methodological perspectives for examining this question, they all challenge the univalent and decontextualized economic (self-interested) view of human motivation, supporting interdisciplinarity and a …

This current study analyzes the content of popular pornographic videos, with the objectives of updating depictions of aggression, degradation, and sexual practices and comparing the study’s results to previous content analysis studies. Findings indicate high levels of aggression in pornography in both verbal and physical forms. Of the 304 scenes analyzed, 88.2% contained physical aggression, principally spanking, gagging, and slapping, while 48.7% of scenes contained verbal aggression, primarily name-calling. Perpetrators of aggression were usually male, whereas targets of aggression were …

This study examined correlates of making an intimate partner engage in unprotected sex among perpetrators of sexual violence. Based on the Confluence Model, we hypothesized that power and impersonal sex motives would be higher among perpetrators who made a dating partner have unprotected sex. Among a subsample of 78 male college students, significant differences were found for acceptance of verbal pressure, positive attitudes about casual sex, frequency of sexual intercourse, and physical injuries to dating partners. These findings highlight the …

Testimonies of wartime sexual violence contribute to the recognition of rape as a serious human rights violation. Although acknowledgement and justice are imperative to ending silence and impunity, this article critiques some commonly held therapeutic assumptions about disclosure through examining the way so-called “unspeakable” events are communicated through legal discourse. In this article, the author explores the inherent limitations of language for bearing witness to wartime rape, specifically focusing on international war crimes tribunals. The author argues that trials contribute …

As part of a larger study, predictors of self-blame were investigated in a sample of 149 undergraduate sexual assault survivors. Each participant completed questionnaires regarding their preassault, peritraumatic, and postassault experiences and participated in an individual interview. Results confirmed the central hypothesis that, although several established correlates independently relate to self-blame, only cognitive content and process variables— negative self-cognitions and counterfactual-preventability cognitions—uniquely predict self-blame in a multivariate model.

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In this article we seek to rehabilitate the radical insights of the pragmatist/interactionist tradition and to establish its continued relevance to a distinctively sociological and feminist analysis of sexuality. We argue for the importance of the contribution of Gagnon and Simon in arguing for a fully social understanding of sexuality. We offer an account of the process whereby interactionism has been rendered all but invisible and make a case for recovering its insights. We argue that interactionism accounts for the …

Even though the normativity of heterosexuality has come into question in recent years, heterosexual norms continue to figure as a structuring principle in contemporary social life. Drawing on 40 qualitative interviews with a diverse group of young German and British women, this article analyses empirical research on feminist disidentification to show that heteronormativity plays a central role in young women’s negotiations of feminism. Numerous respondents established a link between feminism, unfemininity, man-hatred and lesbianism. By exploring constructions of ‘the feminist’, …

This ethnographic research interrogates the relationship between sexuality, gender and homophobia and how they impact on 16- to 18-year-old boys in a coeducational sixth form in the south of England. Framing our research with inclusive masculinity theory, we find that, unlike the elevated rates of homophobia typically described in academic literature, the boys at ‘Standard High’ espouse pro-gay attitudes and eliminate homophobic language. This inclusivity simultaneously permits an expansion of heteromasculine boundaries, so that boys are able to express physical …

Scholars have interpreted changes in sexual discourses from behaviouralist and structuralist perspectives, in the context of social movements, as expressions of power relations, among other approaches. This ar ticle advocates the study of shifting discourses of sexualities from the viewpoint of transformations in individuals’ moral orientations over time. To this end, thematically, the article recovers Foucault’s view of sexuality as a field of moral self-formation; conceptually, it follows Taylor and examines selfhood through the person’s moral sources. The article uses …

Recent increases in the immigrant population in Norway have raised the issue of immigrant inclusion in the Norwegian society. The political emphasis has been on welfare, education and health for many decades. However, today the increasing shortage of labor in the market has raised the issue of inclusion of the immigrant population in work life. This article documents a 3-year-long action research process that laid the groundwork for collaboration among public, private, and nongovernmental organizations in order to find solutions …

We propose a framework for viewing action research (AR) by considering the level of criticality and the emphasis on methodological process. Specifically, we propose conventional AR, critical AR, and dialogic AR as three broad categories for considering AR. This framework is explored through discussing the philosophical foundations upon which these approaches rest and providing examples of AR studies and conceptual writings in the organizational change and development literature. This literature appears to be dominated by perspectives and discourses close to …

This article aims to explore critically the role of an action research team in the social construction of interorganizational collaboration aimed at transgressing organizational and professional boundaries. We argue that the new relationships, actor conceptions and in some cases forms of work organization arising from the change process have been socially constructed through the discursive interventions of the researchers. This has largely occurred through informal interaction with and between the actors engaged in the development process. The action researcher, rather …

Action research has been recognized as a necessary part of teacher preparation programs. It is assumed that with sufficient training in action research methodology, teachers will continue as action researchers to improve the quality of instruction in their classrooms. Expecting this benefit and outcome, a college in the Middle East requires students to complete one total semester of action research in the final year of their Bachelor of Education program, with students’ research conducted in schools during their assigned teaching …

Problem-solving teams composed of members possessing unique knowledge tend to be ineffective because of impediments that limit information sharing, including the sampling advantage of common information and differential schema structures among team members. Teams using a team training strategy aimed at ameliorating these impediments were expected to experience knowledge building and high performance. Data were collected from 40 teams of three co-located members, which were randomly assigned to a training or control condition. All teams completed a realistic military-based hidden …

Based on Mitchell and Silver’s (1990) tower-building paradigm, the authors performed two experiments on multilevel quantity goals, strategies, and performance in task-interdependent groups. The study compared four goal types: IG (individual goal), GG (group goal), IG + GG (individual + group goal), and NSG (nonspecific goal). IG yielded low cooperation and performance, whereas, unexpectedly, NSG yielded high cooperation and performance. To explain this finding, we discerned two goal-setting components: Goal referent (performance-level targeted; individual/group) and goal specificity. Mediation analyses suggest …

Prejudice and hate crimes against lesbians and gay men are prevalent throughout the United States. Prejudice in public school settings is particularly problematic for lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) students and LGB parents. Efforts to reduce prejudice for LGB groups have met with limited success. Creating safer and more inclusive school environments is essential. An experimental mixed methods field design tested outcomes of an intergroup dialogue intervention on public school teacher attitudes, feelings, and behaviors toward LGB students and parents. …

This article addresses the role of age-based faultlines in relation to the perceived productive energy of work teams and transformational leadership as a potential moderator of this relationship. Based on social identity and social categorization theory, teams that have strong age-based faultlines— defined as age subgroup formation that is reinforced by internal alignment with other demographic characteristics (tenure and sex)—should show a lower level of perceived productive energy than do teams that have weak faultlines. In teams with high levels …

Despite increased research on team leadership, little is known about the conditions under which coaching versus directive forms of team leadership are more effective, or the processes through which team leadership styles influence team outcomes. In the present study, the authors found that coaching leadership was more effective than directive leadership when the team leader was highly charismatic and less effective than directive leadership when the team leader lacked charisma. Directive leadership was more effective than coaching leadership when team …

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Major depression and bipolar disorder in children and adolescents are serious conditions associated with considerable morbidity as well as increased risk of suicide. The treatment of depression in young people is currently controversial and this article reviews the evidence base and potential risks and benefits of antidepressants. Although the diagnosis of bipolar disorder is also controversial, medication is the first-line treatment of choice in cases that meet diagnostic criteria. The limited evidence base in children and adolescents is presented, along …

Issues pertaining to the medical treatment of children and young people can be both complex and emotive for all involved. At such times the courts may be asked to intervene and decide. Cases invariably need to consider issues of capacity to consent and treatment under best interests. Furthermore, such cases inevitably have human rights aspects. This article analyses the diverse role of the Human Rights Act 1998 in these cases and illustrates key underlying Human Rights Act principles that can …

(No abstract is available for this citation)

Abstract   Walkability has been linked to quality of life in many ways. Health related benefits of physical exercise, the accessibility and access benefits of being able to walk to obtain some of your daily needs, or the mental health and social benefits of reduced isolation are a few of the many positive impacts on quality of life that can result from a walkable neighborhood. In the age of increasing energy costs and climate considerations, the ability to walk to important …

Abstract   Victims of intimate partner violence (IPV) often are blamed for remaining in abusive relationships. As a result, victims may communicate messages rationalizing why they stay. Systematic, comparative examinations of these messages directed toward self and others by males versus females have not been conducted. This study addresses a gap in the literature by exploring victims’ communication regarding staying. Self-reports of 345 heterosexual IPV victims (N = 239 women, 106 men) demonstrated that more justifications were communicated internally to self than externally …

Abstract   Across two studies we assessed the clinical utility of the Canadian Problem Gambling Index (CPGI). In Study 1, the scored items on the CPGI significantly correlated with those of the South Oaks Gambling Screen (SOGS), yet their shared variance was low. Importantly, clinician evaluation of the client’s level of pathology was more strongly associated with that revealed by the CPGI than the SOGS. In terms of utility, clinicians found the non-scored items on the CPGI more useful in treatment …

Abstract   A pilot study examined the relationship between job satisfaction and perceived mentoring among 56 mental health supervisors and practitioners in a county mental health agency. Participants completed the Alleman Mentoring Activities Questionnaires and the Job Descriptive Index and Job in General Scale. Practitioners who perceived they were involved in mentoring relationships with supervisors were more satisfied with their jobs than those who perceived that they were not involved in mentoring relationships. The mentoring functions of sponsoring, assigning challenging tasks, …

Abstract   Sense of community (SOC) is one of the most widely used and studied constructs in community psychology. As proposed by Sarason in (The Psychological sense of community: prospects for a community psychology, Jossey-Bass, San Francisco, 1974), SOC represents the strength of bonding among community members. It is a valuable component of community life, and it has been linked to positive mental health outcomes, citizen participation, and community connectedness. However, promotion of SOC can become problematic in community psychology praxis …

Abstract   In response to a call to better integrate culture in community psychology (O’Donnell in American Journal of Community Psychology 37:1–7 2006), we offer a cultural-community framework to facilitate a collaborative engagement between community psychologists and ethnic minority communities, focusing on Asian American communities as illustrations. Extending Hays’ (Addressing cultural complexities in practice: Assessment, diagnosis, and therapy, American Psychological Association, Washington, DC, 2008) ADDRESSING framework for considering cultural influences on a counseling relationship, the proposed framework provides a broad but …

Abstract   Many children with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) participate in social skills or Theory of Mind (ToM) treatments. However, few studies have shown evidence for their effectiveness. The current study used a randomized controlled design to test the effectiveness of a 16-week ToM treatment in 8–13 year old children with ASD and normal IQs (n = 40). The results showed that, compared to controls, the treated children with ASD improved in their conceptual ToM skills, but their elementary understanding, self reported empathic skills …

Abstract   The study examines how the home environment relates to the reading and writing ability of Kiswahili speaking children from a rural area in eastern Tanzania. Three hundred grade three children were assessed on letter, word, and sentence reading, and word writing abilities. Mothers/female guardians responded to a questionnaire-based interview about the home environment. The results show that performance in reading and writing measures was at a level slightly above 50% of the maximum score. Dispersion between the scores was …

There is a long history of psychoactive substances being regarded as dangerous and subsequently being banned or forbidden.1 Often the bans were introduced on substances new and unfamiliar to a society, which were viewed as more dangerous than substances which were well known and enculturated. With industrialisation and the globalisation brought by European empires, the growing availability of psychoactive substances was increasingly seen as a problem in the 1800s, setting off social and policy reactions – what we know as …

(No abstract is available for this citation)

(No abstract is available for this citation)

Although research has established an offending/victimization overlap and that offenders and victims share similar characteristics, much less work has examined the longitudinal sequencing of victimization and offending in the same developmental period and whether key risk/protective factors significantly distinguish both offenders and victims.This study uses longitudinal data from a large sample of adolescents to examine these issues and does so using a novel methodological approach, the trajectory methodology, which allows for the examination of covariation between offending and victimization. Results …

Using data from three waves of a large Canadian data set, this research examined the relationship between middle-childhood trajectories of family dysfunction and indirect aggression. The authors applied family systems, developmental psychopathology, and life-course conceptualizations to meet this objective. The data analytic strategy used separate multivariate logits to examine this relationship, with and without the extent to which other possible explanations (acting as control variables) predict belonging to the highest family dysfunction trajectory. These included marital transition, socioeconomic status, family …

The objective of this study was to determine whether female victims of physical forms of intimate partner violence (IPV) displayed deficits in risk recognition, or the ability to detect danger, in physically violent dating encounters. A total of 182 women watched a video depicting a psychologically and physically aggressive encounter between heterosexual dating partners and made repeated judgments about the interaction. Results from this study provided evidence for the validation of this methodology and found that history of physical forms …

Rape is a well-established risk factor for mental health disorders such as posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and depression. However, most studies have focused on forcible rape tactics and have not distinguished these from tactics that involve drug or alcohol intoxication. The authors’ aim was to examine correlates of PTSD and depression in a community sample of women, with particular emphasis on evaluating the unique effects of lifetime exposure to three specific rape tactics. A nationally representative sample of 3,001 noninstitutionalized, …

The study conducted involved assessing students from a Southeastern public university during two academic years, after their participation in an all-male sexual assault peer education program. The study findings revealed that 79% of 184 college men reported attitude change, behavior change, or both. Furthermore, a multistage inductive analysis revealed that after seeing The Men’s Program, men intervened to prevent rapes from happening. Participants also modified their behavior to avoid committing sexual assault when they or a potential partner were under …