Beyond the Deficit Model: Bullying and Trajectories of Character Virtues in Adolescence

Previous work on peer victimization has focused primarily on academic outcomes and negative indicators of youth involved in bullying. Few studies have taken a strength-based approach to examine attributes associated with bullies and victims of bullying. As such, we examined developmental trajectories of moral, performance, and civic character components, and their links to bully status using data from 713 youth (63 % female) who participated in Wave 3 (approximately Grade 7) through Wave 6 (approximately Grade 10) of the 4-H Study of Positive Youth Development. Latent growth curve analyses indicated that moral character was stable across waves, whereas civic character increased slightly by Wave 6. Trajectories for performance character varied; some youth alternatively displayed positive versus negative growth. Youth who reported bullying behavior reported lower initial levels of moral, performance, and civic character as compared to youth not involved in bullying. Bully–victims reported lower initial levels of moral and civic character as compared to youth not involved in bullying. Implications for future work examining character-related components in the context of peer victimization are discussed.     

National autonomy and democratic standardization: Should popular votes on European integration be regulated by the European Union?

Given the increasing use of direct democratic devices on questions of European integration, this paper explores whether or not Member States may have good reason to agree on common regulations for popular votes of this nature. Conceiving of the European Union as a political system designed to serve the interests of states and citizens, it is argued that where direct votes have the potential to undermine the territorial, functional, normative or existential integrity of the EU, then states may have good reason to sacrifice a degree of national autonomy to adopt common regulations for certain uses of direct democracy. This leads to a case for democratic standardization across Member States when it comes to withdrawal, accession, Treaty ratification and opt‐in decisions.     

Perceptual Biases, Graffiti and Fraternity Crime: Points of Deflection that Distort Social Justice

Although the official, law-enforcement policy in Bloomington, Indiana, categorized graffiti as vandalism, prominently displayed graffiti produced by Indiana University's student organizations escaped criminalization. This article documents the differential, criminal justice treatment of graffiti vandalism based on the group producing it thereby reaffirming the existence of a class-based system of justice. This article also uncovers a hidden bias inherent in Chambliss' “The Saints and the Roughnecks” by arguing that university students, whose graffiti do not receive negative sanctioning, represent Saints at the college level who exhibit criminal behavior. University-level lessons about how the crimes of the privileged go unprosecuted or become transformed into civil rather than criminal events could very well pave the way for further crimes after graduation rather than the “Saintly” adulthood implied by Chambliss. More research into the alternate system of justice used with regard to university students could shed light on both the problems and possibilities encountered when implementing alternate systems of social justice. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

The Average Direct Current Offset Values for Small Digital Audio Recorders in an Acoustically Consistent Environment

In this research project, nine small digital audio recorders were tested using five sets of 30‐min recordings at all available recording modes, with consistent audio material, identical source and microphone locations, and identical acoustic environments. The averaged direct current (DC) offset values and standard deviations were measured for 30‐sec and 1‐, 2‐, 3‐, 6‐, 10‐, 15‐, and 30‐min segments. The research found an inverse association between segment lengths and the standard deviation values and that lengths beyond 30 min may not meaningfully reduce the standard deviation values. This research supports previous studies indicating that measured averaged DC offsets should only be used for exclusionary purposes in authenticity analyses and exhibit consistent values when the general acoustic environment and microphone/recorder configurations were held constant. Measured average DC offset values from exemplar recorders may not be directly comparable to those of submitted digital audio recordings without exactly duplicating the acoustic environment and microphone/recorder configurations.