Patterns of family interaction and adolescent sex role concepts

This study examined the relationship between patterns of family interaction and adolescent development of sex role concepts. Sixty-six families of high school seniors completed a measure of daily family activities and a Plan Something Together Task, used to measure individuation in family communication. Adolescents' responses on the sex roles section of the Ego Identity Interview were coded to reflect Block's theory of the stages of development of sex role concepts. Results indicated gender differences in the development of sex role concepts as related to distinctive patterns of family communication and daily activity with the adolescents' mothers and fathers.This work was supported by grants from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (HD-29819 and HD-17983), the Hogg Foundation for Mental Health, and the University Research Institute and Institute of Human Development and Family Studies of the University of Texas at Austin.Received degree from the University of Texas at Austin. Research interests in adolescent development, adolescent mental health, and adolescents in high-risk families. To whom reprint requests should be addressed at School of Social Work, Annex C, University of Maine, Orono, Maine 04469-0124.Received degree from the University of Minnesota. Research interests are in adolescent development within the context of the family and adoptive family relationships.Received degree from the University of Minnesota. Research interests are in the role of ethnicity in adolescent identity development and family relationships.     

Contesting Feminist Orthodoxies

This article is concerned with the construction of feminist literary studies in the last twenty years and points out how we have created a literary history which is both selective and schematic. It suggests that we should be more critically aware of what we are constructing, how we are constructing it and of the political consequences of those constructs. It stresses three critical modes which might help us to complicate our history: a greater awareness of institutional contexts, a concern with empirical detail, and an ongoing analysis of the cultural and political significance of feminist literary practice. This article briefly applies these critical modes in a survey of eleven introductions to feminist literary studies - introductions which feature frequently and influentially in the teaching situation. The final section focuses on the key problem of inclusion and exclusion. Considering arguments from Third World feminism and postmodernist feminism, the study concludes that white, academic feminists should confront the privilege of their own inclusion as a necessary spur to political action.     

Exploratory Factor Analysis and Reliability of the Child Welfare Trauma-Informed Individual Assessment Tool

This article presents the development and psychometric analysis of the Child Welfare Trauma-Informed Individual Assessment Tool, an instrument designed to measure the extent to which child welfare service providers employ trauma-informed practices with the children and families that they serve. Using the responses of 213 front-line child welfare workers, exploratory factor analysis was used on a seventeen-item scale, resulting in a four-factor model. Based on the results of this analysis, implications for potential uses of the instrument are discussed, and specifications for additional evaluation of the measure's validity are outlined.     

Acknowledgment

Acknowledgment

Acknowledgment     

Adolescent Psychological and Academic Adjustment as a Function of Discrepancies Between Actual and Ideal Self-Perceptions

Actual-ideal discrepancies are associated with adolescent emotional distress and there is evidence that the size of discrepancies matters. However, the direction of discrepancies has not been examined, perhaps due to limitations of widely used self-discrepancy measures. Two hundred and twelve 7th, 9th and 11th grade students (59% female) in a public school in Jamaica described their actual and ideal selves in several different domains—friendship, dating, schoolwork, family, sports, and religion/spirituality—using a Pie measure. Students also completed measures of depressive symptoms, self-esteem, and academic achievement. Discrepancies favoring the ideal self and those favoring the actual self were linked to depressive symptoms, low self-esteem, and poor school grades in the domains of friendship, dating, and schoolwork. Effects were stronger among older adolescents than among younger adolescents. Theories of actual/ideal self-discrepancies have focused on problems arising when the ideal self overshadows the actual self; however, the present study finds that self-discrepancies, regardless of their direction, are a liability. Implications for self-discrepancy measurement, adolescent development, and clinical practice are discussed.     

Links between organised crime and Al‐Qaeda

Terrorist and organised crime networks are not natural partners due to differences in motivation, strategy and activities. However, terror groups are learning from crime networks and they are increasingly turning to crime to fund their activities.