Beyond Correlates: A Review of Risk and Protective Factors for Adolescent Dating Violence Perpetration

Dating violence is a serious public health problem. In recent years, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other entities have made funding available to community based agencies for dating violence prevention. Practitioners who are tasked with developing dating violence prevention strategies should pay particular attention to risk and protective factors for dating violence perpetration that have been established in longitudinal studies. This has been challenging to date because the scientific literature on the etiology of dating violence is somewhat limited, and because there have been no comprehensive reviews of the literature that clearly distinguish correlates of dating violence perpetration from risk or protective factors that have been established through longitudinal research. This is problematic because prevention programs may then target factors that are merely correlated with dating violence perpetration, and have no causal influence, which could potentially limit the effectiveness of the programs. In this article, we review the literature on risk and protective factors for adolescent dating violence perpetration and highlight those factors for which temporal precedence has been established by one or more studies. This review is intended as a guide for researchers and practitioners as they formulate prevention programs. We reviewed articles published between 2000 and 2010 that reported on adolescent dating violence perpetration using samples from the United States or Canada. In total, 53 risk factors and six protective factors were identified from 20 studies. Next steps for etiological research in adolescent dating violence are discussed, as well as future directions for prevention program developers.     

Irish Divorce and Domestic Violence, 1857–1922

Ireland was excluded from the Divorce and Matrimonial Causes Act of 1857, which moved divorce proceedings from parliament to court. Whilst other areas of the Empire were encouraged to follow the 1857 reform, Ireland retained the costlier, lengthier and more socially and gender biased parliamentary process. Louisa Westropp's divorce of 1886 was the first divorce granted by Westminster to an Irishwoman and established legal precedent in applying case law, initially concerning domestic violence, derived in the divorce court to parliament. The result was an increase in Irish parliamentary divorce petitions, particularly from women, who utilised an augmenting definition of marital cruelty to secure a permanent release from spousal abuse.     

The Perils and Penalties of Meritocracy: Sanctioning Inequalities and Legitimating Prejudice

This article deploys insights from Michael Young’s 1958 satire The Rise of the Meritocracy to challenge the dominant ideology of meritocracy in contemporary British society. It draws on ethnographic research in schools over a twenty-five year period to illustrate the damage the illusion of meritocracy inflicts on children and young people, but particularly those from working class backgrounds. It argues that the consequences of the pretence of meritocracy are to be found in everyday practices of testing, hyper-competition and setting, and beyond the classroom in the designation of predominantly working class schools as ‘rubbish schools for rubbish learners’. It concludes that, beyond the negative consequences for working class learners, there are wider consequences for British society, exacerbating social divisions and encouraging the growth of distrust, prejudice, envy, resentment, and contempt between different social groups.     

Children's Welfare and Short-term Migration from Rural India

Few papers in the literature provide quantitative analysis of the difficult circumstances faced by children of short-term labour migrants. This article uses new survey data from rural northwest India to study both children who migrate and those left behind. It finds that, unlike in other contexts, children who migrate rarely work when they accompany adult migrants. Additionally, this article reports a robust, previously unquantified negative relationship between children's migration and educational outcomes and investments. It calls for further research about externalities of migration for children and suggests that the expansion of a large public employment programme might help these children.     

Treating depression in adolescence: A review of the effectiveness of cognitive-behavioral treatments

The literature of the last decade reveals a renewed interest in treating adolescent depression. Several treatments have been proposed that are derived from adult models, but few studies have evaluated their efficiency. Those that have been done, have typically used a cognitive-behavioral approach. This article reviews studies published from 1980 to 1994 on the efficacy of these programs. Groups of 6–10 adolescents were treated in these programs. Some programs also included treatment for parents. Treatments were multimodal, utilizing intervention strategies from cognitive and/or behavioral models of depression. Treatment components included relaxation, cognitive restructuring, self-control skills, and communication and problem-solving skills. Studies were most often done in school settings but only rarely in a clinical milieux. Depression measures included self-report questionnaires and semistructured interviews. Results suggest that short-term group cognitive-behavioral interventions are effective with early and late adolescents. Futhermore, depressive symptoms remained improved at follow-up. No single strategy, however, seemed to be clearly more effective than the others.Financial support for this work was provided by the Fonds institutionnel de recherche of the Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières.