Parenting Styles and Juvenile Delinquency: Exploring Gendered Relationships

We use the NLSY97 dataset to examine the parenting‐delinquency relationship and how it is conditioned by parents’ gender, controlling for youths’ gender. Generally, neglectful and authoritarian parenting styles were associated with the highest levels of delinquency in youths. When the sample was split by parent gender, authoritarianism held up across both groups, but permissive and neglectful parenting was only significant for fathers. Independent of parenting style, boys have higher delinquency levels than girls. The strength and magnitude of this relationship is nearly identical in separate equations for mothers and fathers. Parental attachment was not a significant protective factor against delinquency for either mothers or fathers.     

Bringing Community Based Participatory Research to Domestic Violence Scholarship: an Online Toolkit

In the absence of ongoing involvement in the communities that are the subjects of research, even well-intentioned researchers can develop questions that are not relevant to community needs, employ methods that hurt community members, or disseminate findings in ways that are inaccessible to those most affected. Recognizing these harms, a growing number of domestic violence (DV) researchers have embraced community-based participatory research (CBPR), an approach in which researchers and community members share power at every level of the research process, co-creating knowledge that can be applied to enhance community well-being. Despite growing interest in this approach, however, there are insufficient opportunities for interested researchers to learn how to actually engage in it, especially in the DV context. To remedy this gap, the authors of this paper collaborated to develop an online toolkit for emerging researchers interested in CPBR. This brief report frames the need for CBPR in DV research using short vignettes that come from our own research experience; introduces Power Through Partnerships: A CBPR Toolkit for Domestic Violence Researchers; and presents recommendations for developing, promoting, and disseminating future CBPR research. We chose to announce the development and availability of this toolkit in an academic journal in order to highlight its scholarly and practical relevance for researcher audiences who might be less familiar with the CBPR approach.     

Police officer attitudes to the practicalities of the sex offenders’ register,ViSOR and Child Sexual Abuse Disclosure Scheme in England and Wales

This paper examines police officer understandings of and attitudes to the sex offenders’ register, Violent and Sex Offenders’ Register (ViSOR) and Child Sexual Offender Disclosure Scheme (CSODS) in England and Wales – an under-researched area in the management of sexual offenders in the UK. This research is an adaptation of an American study utilising a mixed-methods approach, combining an online questionnaire survey (N?=?227) with a series of semi-structured interviews (N?=?27). The study found that police officers, irrespective of role, were generally supportive of the register, ViSOR and CSODS in principle, but they thought that logistics, practicalities, infrastructure, multi-agency collaboration and public understandings had problematic impacts on the scheme in practice. The participants believed that greater investment was needed in terms of time and resource to make the register, ViSOR and CSODS easier to use and access and thus fit for purpose.     

Malingered Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and the Effect of Direct Versus Indirect Trauma Exposure on Symptom Profiles and Detectability

Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is arguably prone to malingering due to its subjective and heterogeneous nature. Various factors can influence PTSD symptom profiles including trauma type and trauma exposure. However, it is unknown whether trauma exposure influences malingered PTSD symptom profiles. We used a malingering simulation design with trauma type controlled to compare (1) PTSD symptom profiles (Posttraumatic Stress Checliklist-5; PCL-5) at the syndrome, symptom cluster, and individual symptom levels and (2) symptom validity profiles (Structured Inventory of Malingered Symptomatology; SIMS) at the overall and subscale level, as a function of direct and indirect trauma exposure. Seventy-three participants were randomly assigned to either the direct (“witnessed” trauma) or indirect (“learned about” trauma) condition. Participants were coached about symptoms and instructed to simulate PTSD. PCL-5 profile analyses revealed that simulators in the direct exposure group reported greater overall PTSD severity. Significant differences were found on cluster D (changes in cognition and mood) and individual symptoms including intrusive thoughts, amnesia, difficulty experiencing positive emotions, and risk-taking. No differences were identified for any other symptom scores nor for the symptom validity profile, except for the SIMS total score (direct: M?=?33.0, SD?=?12.8, indirect: M?=?26.5, SD?=?13.9, t(71)?=?2.06, p?=?.043, d?=?.48). These findings indicate that trauma exposure can influence malingered PTSD profiles at the syndrome, symptom cluster, and individual symptom levels (small effects), but, with one exception for a summary score, it does not produce a detectable difference on symptom validity testing. This study may provide insight for clinicians into the how malingered PTSD profiles can manifest as a result of direct and indirect trauma exposure; however, further research is strongly indicated.     

Reductions in Perceived Injustice Are Associated with Reductions in Posttraumatic Stress Symptoms Among Individuals Receiving Treatment for Whiplash Injury

Research has accumulated to suggest that perceived injustice is a risk factor for poor recovery outcomes in individuals with whiplash injuries. The present study examined the relative contributions of treatment-related reductions in perceived injustice and pain severity, in the prediction of reductions in posttraumatic stress symptoms in individuals with whiplash injury. The study sample consisted of 146 individuals (66 women, 80 men) who sustained whiplash injuries in motor vehicle collisions and were enrolled in a multidisciplinary rehabilitation program designed to promote functional recovery following whiplash injury. Participants completed measures of pain severity, disability, posttraumatic stress symptoms, and perceived injustice prior to treatment and after treatment. Pearson correlations revealed that all study variables were significantly correlated. Regression analyses revealed that, at the time of enrollment in the intervention, perceived injustice accounted for a significant proportion of the variance in posttraumatic stress symptom severity, beyond the variance accounted for by pain severity. Paired sample t-tests revealed significant reductions in perceived injustice, pain severity, and posttraumatic stress symptom severity through the course of treatment. For individuals who scored above clinical threshold on a measure of posttraumatic stress symptoms at the time of enrollment in the intervention (N?=?71), regression analyses revealed that reductions in perceived injustice accounted for a significant proportion of the variance in reduction of posttraumatic stress symptoms, beyond the variance accounted for by reduced pain severity. Clinical and theoretical implications of the present findings are discussed.     

Rambling through the fields of justice in search of well-being for all

The article looks at basic questions of what constitutes a justice that takes into account the needs of all people. Thus an attempt is made to outline some of the basic tenets of a needs-based justice.     

Nonviolence Begins With Speech: An Interview with Emily Gaarder on the Practice of Nonviolent Communication

This article focuses on the nature of nonviolent communication, specifically how to practice such in our everyday lives. Emily Gaarder discusses a theory and method developed by Marshall Rosenberg of the Center for Nonviolent Communication. She offers practical measures that enable anyone interested in nonviolence to assess whether their ways of speaking are nonviolent and how they might modify their language to interact with others peaceably.     

Using the cognitive interview with adults with mild learning disabilities

Abstract

Forty-seven adults with mild learning disabilities (mild intellectual disabilities) attending day-centres and thirty-eight adults from the general population viewed a videorecording of an accident. A day later the participants were interviewed using either a cognitive interview (CI) or a structured interview (SI, a control interview). Compared with their counterparts with learning disabilities, adults from the general population recalled more correct information and made fewer confabulations about persons and objects. Nevertheless, the type of interview had an impact. For both groups, the CI was more effective than the SI in enhancing recall although, for the ‘learning disabilities’ group, the CI also produced a disproportionate increase in the reporting of person confabulations. All the same, the accuracy ratios were similar across interview types (80% for the CI and 82% for the SI). It is suggested that the CI could be helpful in assisting people with learning disabilities to provide information about events they have seen.     

Towards a common framework for assessing the activity and associations of groups who sexually abuse children

Abstract

Extensive social psychological research emphasises the importance of groups in shaping individuals' thoughts and actions. Within the child sexual abuse (CSA) literature criminal organisation has been largely overlooked, with some key exceptions. This research was a novel collaboration between academia and the UK's Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (CEOP). Starting from the premise that the group is, in itself, a form of social situation affecting abuse, it offers the first systematic situational analysis of CSA groups. In-depth behavioural data from a small sample of convicted CSA group-offenders (n =3) were analysed qualitatively to identify factors and processes underpinning CSA groups' activities and associations: group formation, evolution, identity and resources. The results emphasise CSA groups' variability, fluidity and dynamism. The foundations of a general framework are proposed for researching and assessing CSA groups and designing effective interventions. It is hoped that this work will stimulate discussion and development in this long-neglected area of CSA, helping to build a coherent knowledge-base.