Age Adjustment and Recall Bias in the Analysis of Domestic Violence Data: Methodological Improvements Through the Application of Survival Analysis Methods

This methodological paper presents the utility of survival analysis methods to provide age adjustment in the analysis of domestic violence data. These methods improve the estimation of lifetime probability of domestic violence, improve identification of patterns of first victimization over the lifespan, and provide methods of testing risk factors for first victimization while adjusting for the respondents' age. Most importantly, these methods allow a new investigation of recall bias. Results suggest that lifetime probability of abuse may have been substantially underestimated in previous studies because of problems in recall/disclosure encountered by middle-aged women.     

The age of death: Appraising public opinion of juvenile capital punishment

Despite its original purpose to protect and rehabilitate wayward children, the juvenile system has grown more punitive and has embraced the use of harsher punishments, including execution, for juvenile offenders. Relatively little is known, however, about public attitudes toward the use of capital punishment for juveniles. This research explored the determinants of death penalty opinion, identified the minimum age at which respondents were willing to allow a juvenile to be put to death and examined the willingness of respondents to support an alternative sentence of life without the possibility of parole (LWOP). The results suggested that, while one-quarter of the sample was willing to execute juveniles who were fifteen and under at the time of the crime, there was less support for the execution of juveniles than of adults. In addition, of those who supported the use of the death penalty for juveniles, almost one-half would support LWOP as an alternative to the death penalty.     

Kirchheimer Revisited: Party Polarisation,Party Convergence,or Party Decline in the German Party System

The 2005 German parliamentary elections produced two parties claiming victory, the inability to form a government, and Germany's second post-war grand coalition government. This article explores the peculiarities in the contemporary dynamic of the German party system. It considers the strategy and motivation of parties and the effect of party competition. A key focus is to revisit and evaluate the predictive power of Otto Kirchheimer's ‘end of ideology’ proposition in the German case. On the one hand, mainstream parties seem to be converging at the ideological centre across Western Europe. At the same time, some party polarisation within the party system is evident as more marginal parties such as those of the far left and far right have gained votes at the expense of the mainstream parties in recent elections. A third possibility is that both of these circumstances have produced a political void with voters becoming increasingly apathetic and non-ideological. This paper argues that in the aggregate, trends do not reflect the predictions of Kirchheimer.     

Reframe policymaking dysfunction through bipartisan-inclusion leadership

Policy Sciences - Persistent policy failures have been examined in recent years with a focus on the role of political systems. We evaluate the growth of dysfunctional policymaking in the U.S. and...     

Characterizing the Self-System over Time in Adolescence: Internal Structure and Associations with Internalizing Symptoms

The longitudinal effects among self and identity processes, and between these processes and internalizing symptoms, are not well understood. As a result, the present study was designed to ascertain the over-time effects among identity commitment, reconsideration of commitments, and self-concept clarity, as well as to map the interplay of these self and identity processes with anxiety and depressive symptoms in early adolescence. A sample of 923 Dutch adolescents (mean age 12.4 years at Time 1; 49.3% female) participated at each of five annual assessments. Multivariate growth curve and cross-lagged panel models indicated that the association between self-concept clarity and commitment was bidirectional, that reconsideration occurs based on problems or dissatisfaction with self-concept clarity and with identity commitments, and that self-concept clarity (but not commitment or reconsideration) temporally precedes depressive and anxiety symptoms. Results are discussed in terms of the structure of the self-system and its associations with internalizing symptoms.     

Female repeat offenders negotiating identity

This study examines the process of identity negotiation for Israeli female ex-convicts who were separated for extensive periods of time from their children and eventually lost custody over them. The content analysis of in-depth interviews reveals that these women were able to reconstruct their biographies and retrospectively account for their crimes and drug addiction in terms of the sexual, physical, and economic abuse they had endured and by appeal to higher loyalties, their children who they had to provide for. However, when having to account for their fallings as mothers, all biographical reconstruction, external blame, and accusation collapsed. Looking at themselves through their children's eyes, female offenders were simply unable to renegotiate the imputed identity of incompetent mother. They could neither confront their children's anger nor explain to them why they had abandoned them. Permanently alienated from the center of motherhood, these women were doomed to an existential chaos.     

Mediators of the Relation Between Beliefs in a Just World and Emotional Responses to Negative Outcomes

Research shows that strong believers in a just world respond with less negative and more positive emotion to their own negative outcomes than do weak believers. The present study investigated mediators of this relation. We proposed that strong believers in a just world (versus weak believers) would make stronger internal and weaker external attributions for their negative outcomes, leading to reduced perceived unfairness, which, in turn, was expected to lead to less negative and more positive emotion. We assessed the just world beliefs of a sample of undergraduates as well as measuring their cognitive and emotional responses to an exam grade. Mediational analyses showed that our data were consistent with the processes proposed above. Various cognitive and motivational interpretations of the present findings are discussed     

Adolescent women's developing identity: A study of self-definition in the context of family relationships

This study generated adolescent women's perception of their identity in relation to family members spanning three generations and related these perceived relationships to their sex-role orientation. Subjects were 20 firstborn university women from intact families. The methodology used multiple sources of information, including open-ended interviewing procedures, rating scales, and standard research measures of sex-role identity. Significantly more constructs empirically differentiated family by generation than by sex. Congruence of young women with both the parent and grandparent generation, relative number of masculine stereotypes produced, and personality traits of males and females were significantly influenced by the presence of a brother in the sibling generation. There was no relationship between family constellation and sex-role orientation. Feminine women were significantly more congruent with other females in their family than androgynous women. There was a linear trend for androgynous women to be increasingly individuated across the generations.Received her Ph.D. from Yale University. Research interests include observation of children and families in natural settings, longitudinal research with at-risk infants, and rural consultation.Received her Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota. Research interests include development of social competence in family, school, and community environment.Received his Ph.D. from Yale University. Research interests include the socialization of values, professional development, and studies of the family in religious and ethnic community contexts.