College Students’ Online Pornography Use: Contrasting General and Specific Structural Variables with Social Learning Variables

This research partially tests Akers’ social structure-social learning theory (SSSL). The data was collected online through a self-report questionnaire and nearly half (48.8%) of the sample of 812 college students reported visiting a porn site. To better understand this self-report behavior, bivariate correlations and three binary logistic regression analyses were conducted. In Model A, participants who were male, Hispanic, had more years in college, and more inclined toward homosexuality had an increased likelihood of visiting a porn site. In Model B, again, gender, ethnicity, year in school, and the sexuality scale were significant predictors. However, race appeared as significant for the first time along with number of sex partners, and frequency of masturbation, indicating that participants who were Black, had a greater number of sexual partners, and masturbated more frequently had an increased likelihood of visiting porn site. As with the first and second models, gender, race, sexuality scale, and frequency of masturbation were significant predictors in Model C. Additionally, differential peer association, differential reinforcement, and definitions favorable were significant, indicating that participants who had greater association with peers who viewed porn, who had observed someone watching porn and decided to mimic their behaviors, and who had defined visiting porn sites favorably had an increased likelihood of visiting a porn site. Overall, Akers’ SLT variables fully mediated ethnicity, year in school, and number of sex partners, but it only partially mediated gender, race, and sexuality scale.     

How to Maintain Emotional Health When Working with Trauma

Vicarious traumatization, compassion fatigue, or secondary traumatization refers to the cumulative effect of working with survivors of traumatic life events as part of everyday work. Although this issue has been acknowledged and addressed among professionals such as police officers and medical professionals, it has been discussed less among juvenile and family court judges who also experience secondary traumatic stress. In fact, in one recent study, a majority of judges reported one or more symptoms of secondary traumatization. This article describes the common signs and symptoms of secondary trauma, job‐related factors that contribute to secondary trauma among judges, and the potential negative impact on organizational performance. The authors conclude with specific recommendations tailored for juvenile and family court judges.     

Interpersonal violence as social construction: the potentially undermining role of claims making and advocacy statistics

The relationship between empirical research inquiry and advocacy efforts is complex and seldom addressed in the interpersonal violence literature. In this article, we first examine how social conditions come to be seen as social problems, using a social constructionist perspective. Next, we focus specifically on the problem of interpersonal violence as viewed through a social constructionist lens, highlighting the many ways in which advocacy has influenced public perceptions of interpersonal violence as a social problem. Finally, this article considers some of the consequences that may result from exaggerated or misleading claims, especially when they are made by social scientists who are presumably engaged in an objective discussion of a problem. These consequences include generating skepticism toward the social sciences, feeding a backlash movement, and diverting attention away from the most severe forms of interpersonal violence. Contrary to the goals of many advocates, some of these consequences may be detrimental to the very social problems they hope to alleviate.     

Reading the State as a Multi-Identity Formation: The Touch and Feel of Equality Governance

How does a sense of touch, figuratively and practically, get deployed within equality governance, and to what questions and ways of thinking about the state does this direct us? Taking 2009–2010 as a snap-shot moment in the development of British equality reform—the year leading up to passage of the Equality Act 2010—this article explores the relationship between touch (the haptic) and equality governance from three angles. First, how have governmental bodies used touch language and imagery, including in geometrical representations of disadvantage? Second, what other, more challenging encounters and actions are imaginable; specifically, can touch mobilise the feeling state as a critical form of active citizenship? Third, what re-conceptualisations of the state does the touching, feeling state invoke, and with what effects? Specifically, does conceiving of the state as a multi-identity formation reframe the risks associated with a haptic state, thereby opening up new strategies for political action?