Measuring intimate partner violence (IPV): you may only get what you ask for

With the goal of understanding the true extent of intimate partner violence (IPV), researchers have put tremendous effort over the past 20 years developing, revising, and assessing IPV screening instruments. The enhancements made in IPV instrumentation reflect our improved understanding of the nature of IPV. Unfortunately, as is often the case with progress, we are presently at the stage where IPV researchers have an arsenal of multiple IPV screens that are, in some cases, slightly different, whereas in others, the differences are sizeable. This article explores the evolution and variation of a sample of IPV screens. To further progress in IPV research, we must make conscious decisions concerning the best tool for our individual research. Simultaneously, we must enhance our understanding of how these IPV screening instruments overlap so that comparisons of IPV prevalence or incidence across time and population are possible.     

Identity Orientation, Voice, and Judgments of Procedural Justice During Late Adolescence

This study focused on the relationship between voice and judgments of procedural justice in a sample of older adolescents and examined potential moderating and mediating influences of identity orientation (personal, social, and collective) and negative emotional response. Participants read 1 of 2 different family conflict scenarios (voice and no voice) asking them to imagine themselves in a disagreement with their parents over grades and financial support. In the voice condition, parents were described as making their decision after listening to the participant’s input. In the no voice condition, parents were described as making their decision without listening to the participant’s input. The adolescents then judged the fairness of the parental decisions and responded to questions concerning their identity orientation. Findings indicate that in addition to replicating the effect of voice in a novel context, the present investigation found moderating effects of personal identity orientation on procedural fairness judgments. Additionally, negative emotional response partially mediated the relationship between voice and global judgments of procedural fairness.Mark R. Fondacaro is an Associate Professor of Psychology and Associate Director of the Levin College of Law Center on Children and Families at the University of Florida. He received his Ph.D. in clinical psychology from Indiana University and his J.D. from Columbia University School of Law. His major research interests are ecological jurisprudence and the conceptualization and assessment of procedural justice in legal and extra-legal contexts including the family and the juvenile justice and health care systems.Eve M. Brank is an Assistant Professor of Criminology, Law & Society at the University of Florida. She received her Ph.D. in social psychology and her J.D. from the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. Her major research interests are parental responsibility laws and juvenile law issues.Jennifer Stuart is a graduate student in counseling psychology at the University of Florida. Her major research interests are adolescent development and delinquency prevention.Sara Villanueva-Abraham received her Ph.D. in developmental psychology from the University of Florida. Her major research interests are adolescent development and parent-child relationships.Jennifer Luescher is a Forensic Psychology Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. She received her Ph.D. in counseling psychology from the University of Florida. Her major research interests are in the areas of procedural justice, risk assessment and risk management, and mental health and juvenile justice policy.Penny S. McNatt is a Visiting Assistant Professor at the University of North Florida. She received her Ph.D. in social psychology from the University of Florida. Her major research interests are in the area of intergroup relations.     

A consumer's perspective on domestic violence interventions

The current study takes a consumer perspective to examine the impact of legal and mental health systems on couples who are experiencing problems with domestic violence. Unfortunately, their thoughts and wishes are rarely considered when planning for change in their lives. The study asks couples what they think happens to cause abusive episodes, what happens to them when someone finds out about the abuse, and what their thoughts are about the interventions they receive. The specific interventions in this study were a pro-arrest policy and solution-focused brief therapy.     

Patients Are More than their Illnesses: The Use of Story in Medical Education

[W]hen a poet's mind is perfectly equipped for its work, it is constantly amalgamating disparate experiences; the ordinary man's experience is chaotic, irregular, fragmentary. The latter falls in love, or reads Spinoza and these experiences have nothing to do with each other, or with the noise of the type-writer or the smell of cooking; in the mind of the poet these experiences are always forming new wholes. —T.S. Eliot     

Towards a European Law of Contracts

Abstract: European contract law has recently been the subject of increasing attention and intense debate. In addressing this issue, the following contribution departs from traditional analyses of the necessity, feasibility, and opportunity to harmonise national legislation on contractual relations. Instead, the author seeks to demonstrate that, with the objective of promoting the internal market and developing trade within it, EC authorities have long since given birth to a genuine European contract law. Beginning with the analysis of a body of EC directives, this article argues that the genuine nature of this law can be ascertained despite its limits or rather by taking these limits into account. The important rights granted to different contracting parties (consumer‐purchaser, consumer‐tourist, and certain professionals) stand in contrast to the formal incoherence and fragmented character of the legal texts. The article concludes that, in analysing the notion of European contact law, it is necessary to adapt a functional approach rather than a formal one, because the functional approach has dominated European integration and the European law of contracts since its inception.     

Toward public value?

Selected articles from a conference organised by the Department of Management at Monash University in November 2003 entitled ‘Toward Public Value? Management and Employement for Outcomes’.