Longitudinal Examination of the Bullying-Sexual Violence Pathway across Early to Late Adolescence: Implicating Homophobic Name-Calling

The Bully-Sexual Violence Pathway theory has indicated that bullying perpetration predicts sexual violence perpetration among males and females over time in middle school, and that homophobic name-calling perpetration moderates that association among males. In this study, the Bully-Sexual Violence Pathway theory was tested across early to late adolescence. Participants included 3549 students from four Midwestern middle schools and six high schools. Surveys were administered across six time points from Spring 2008 to Spring 2013. At baseline, the sample was 32.2% White, 46.2% African American, 5.4% Hispanic, and 10.2% other. The sample was 50.2% female. The findings reveal that late middle school homophobic name-calling perpetration increased the odds of perpetrating sexual violence in high school among early middle school bullying male and female perpetrators, while homophobic name-calling victimization decreased the odds of high school sexual violence perpetration among females. The prevention of bullying and homophobic name-calling in middle school may prevent later sexual violence perpetration.     

Beyond ‘Revenge Porn’: The Continuum of Image-Based Sexual Abuse

In the last few years, many countries have introduced laws combating the phenomenon colloquially known as ‘revenge porn’. While new laws criminalising this practice represent a positive step forwards, the legislative response has been piecemeal and typically focuses only on the practices of vengeful ex-partners. Drawing on Liz Kelly’s (Surviving sexual violence. Polity Press, Cambridge, 1988) pioneering work, we suggest that ‘revenge porn’ should be understood as just one form of a range of gendered, sexualised forms of abuse which have common characteristics, forming what we are conceptualising as the ‘continuum of image-based sexual abuse’. Further, we argue that image-based sexual abuse is on a continuum with other forms of sexual violence. We suggest that this twin approach may enable a more comprehensive legislative and policy response that, in turn, will better reflect the harms to victim-survivors and lead to more appropriate and effective educative and preventative strategies.     

The gender implications of large-scale land deals

This article introduces a discussion of gender dimensions into the growing debate on large-scale land deals. It addresses the current information gap on the differential gender effects of large-scale land deals through (1) an overview of the phases of large-scale land deals and discussion of related effects on rural men and women based on new literature on large-scale land deals and past literature on the gender effects of commercialization and contract farming; (2) a presentation of further evidence using several case studies on the gender effects of large-scale deals; and (3) a conclusion that looks at knowledge gaps and areas for further research as well as broad recommendations for gender equitable large-scale land deals.     

Who Cares? Welfare and Consent to Child Emigration from England to Canada, 1870–1918

Liverpool Law Review - From the 1870’s, children in the care of charities or state provided institutions, including workhouses and industrial schools, were subject to the practice of...     

A New Measure of Policy Spending Priorities in the American States

In this paper, we develop and test a general measure of policyexpenditures in the American states. Our approach is to constructa spatial proximity model of yearly state program spending.The empirical analysis reveals that state spending patternsvary along a clear and readily-interpretable unidimensionalcontinuum which differentiates policies that provide particularizedbenefits to needy constituencies from policies that providebroader collective goods. Based upon standard evaluative criteria,the variable created from our model possesses some highly desirablecharacteristics. And, it compares favorably to other measuresof state policy activity. The net result is a yearly score foreach state which summarizes that state's spending across allmajor program areas. More generally, we believe that our variablecan be interpreted as valid and reliable representational measurementof state policy priorities. In this capacity, it could occupyan important position within models of state politics. Author's note: Many colleagues provided useful feedback on earlierversions of this paper. We particularly appreciate the excellentcomments and suggestions from Robert Erikson, Richard Fording,Kim Hill, David Lowery, Andrea McAtee, and George Rabinowitz.We would also like to thank Daniel Lewis and William Myers fortheir assistance with the data collection. The yearly statepolicy priority scores obtained from the unfolding analysis,along with the data used to create the scores, the SAS macroto carry out the unfolding procedure, and all other supplemental materialsare available on the authors’ web sites: http://polisci.msu.edu/jacobyand http://polisci.msu.edu/schneider. All these materials arealso available on the Political Analysis Web site.     

Reciprocal Prospective Relationships Between Loneliness and Weight Status in Late Childhood and Early Adolescence

Adolescents who do not conform to weight ideals are vulnerable to disapproval and victimization from peers in school. But, missing from the literature is a prospective examination of weight status and feelings of loneliness that might come from those experiences. Using data from the Québec Longitudinal Study of Child Development, we filled that gap by examining the prospective associations between loneliness and weight status when the sample was aged 10–13 years. At ages 10, 12, and 13 years, 1042 youth (572 females; 92% from French speaking homes) reported on their loneliness and were weighed and measured. Family income sufficiency was included in our analyses given its relationship with weight status, but also its possible link with loneliness during early adolescence. The findings showed that (1) weight status and loneliness were not associated concurrently; (2) weight status predicted increases in loneliness from ages 12 to 13 years; and (3) loneliness predicted increases in weight from ages 12 to 13 years among female adolescents, but weight loss among male adolescents. The fact that loneliness was involved in weight gain for females suggests that interventions focused on reducing loneliness and increasing connection with peers during early adolescence could help in reducing obesity.