Conditions for complex innovations: evidence from public organizations

The Journal of Technology Transfer - Despite the growing interest in understanding innovative activities, an important limitation of the current literature on innovation—both public and...     

Parenting Coordination In Cases Involving Intimate Partner Violence

Parenting Coordination is a “hybrid legal‐mental health role that combines assessment, education, case management, conflict management, dispute resolution and, often times, decision‐making functions (AFCC, 2019, https://www.afccnet.org/Portals/0/PublicDocuments/Guidelines%20for%20PC%20with%20Appendex.pdf?ver=2020-01-30-190220-990 ). This article addresses issues that arise when the case has allegations or findings of intimate partner violence (IPV). Considerations of the type of IPV, the severity, timing, perpetrator and effects on coparenting are discussed in the context of the parenting coordinator's role. Through screening and assessment, we differentiate the kinds of cases with the presence of IPV where a PC may be effective as opposed to other IPV cases that may not predict success for retaining a PC.     

Can We Make Accurate Long-term Predictions About Patterns of De-escalation in Offending Behavior?

This study consists of a comparative analysis of patterns of de-escalation between ages 17–18 and 32, based on data from two well-known prospective longitudinal studies, the Cambridge Study in Delinquent Development (a study of 411 working-class males in London) and the Montreal Two Samples Longitudinal Study (a sample of 470 adjudicated French-Canadian males). Analyses focus on within-individual change, with individuals serving as their own controls. In this regard, the magnitude of measured change is relative to the past degree of involvement in offending. These results are contrasted with predictors of between-individual differences in offending behavior at age 32. We investigate the respective roles of cognitive predispositions and social bonds in the prediction of patterns of de-escalation, and assess whether it is possible to make relatively long-term predictions (over a 15-year period) about offending in adulthood. Findings suggest that traditional measures of social bonds and cognitive predispositions measured at age 17–18 are generally weak predictors of de-escalation up to age 32. However, these measures are stronger predictors of between-individual differences in offending gravity. These findings highlight the difficulties in making accurate long-term predictions about changes in individual offending patterns early in the criminal career.

Childhood and Adolescent Predictors of Late Onset Criminal Careers

This study explores the emergence of a criminal career in adulthood. The main hypothesis tested is that late criminal onset (at age 21 or later) is influenced by early factors that delay antisocial manifestations. The Cambridge Study in Delinquent Development (CSDD) was used to examine early determinants of criminal behavior. 400 Inner London males were followed from ages 8–10 to 48–50, and were classified as follows: 35 late onsetters who were first convicted at age 21 or later, and did not have high self-reported delinquency at ages 10–14 and 15–18; 129 early onsetters first convicted between ages 10 and 20; and 236 unconvicted males. Odds ratios and logistic regression analyses revealed that the best predictors of late onset offenders compared with early onset offenders included nervousness, having few friends at ages 8–10, and not having sexual intercourse by age 18. The best predictors of late onset offenders compared with nonoffenders included teacher-rated anxiousness at ages 12–14 and high neuroticism at age 16. It is concluded that being nervous and withdrawn protected boys against offending in adolescence but that these protective effects tended to wear off after age 21. These findings show that adult offending can be predicted from childhood, and suggest that early intervention might prevent a variety of maladjustment problems and difficulties in adult life.

The Intergenerational Transmission of Values in National and Immigrant Families: The Role of Zeitgeist

Correspondence in value orientation between parents and their offspring may be due to actual transmission processes between generations, but it may also be due to influences from the general value context in society that are common to parents and their offspring. This common value context is referred to as Zeitgeist. The present study deals with one family relationship value (i.e., parents’ and adolescents’ obligations toward the family). Participants were 1,252 immigrant and 726 national adolescent–parent dyads from 10 Western countries. There were significant relationships between the value placed on family obligations among parents and offspring, and these were independent of gender. Zeitgeist effects, both intergenerational and intragenerational, were found. The strength of these Zeitgeist effects depended on the basis for defining Zeitgeist, either a person’s own ethnic group or the wider community including both nationals and immigrants. For explaining national adolescents’ acceptance of their family obligations, both the ethnic and the national Zeitgeist played a role, whereas in the immigrant groups only the ethnic Zeitgeist played a significant role. In short, in an immigration context it makes sense to distinguish the influence of a person’s own ethnic group from the influence of the wider community, including other ethnic groups. Explanations are suggested and implications are discussed.

A Qualitative Analysis of Vietnamese Adolescent Identity Exploration Within and Outside an Ethnic Enclave

Focusing on identity development explorations enables a greater understanding of contexts that affect immigrant adolescents. Utilizing thematic and grounded narrative analysis of 46 journal writings, during a one-month period, from first and second generation Vietnamese adolescents ranging in age from 15 to 18 (26 residents of a culturally and politically active ethnic enclave in Southern California; 20 adolescents living outside the enclave), this study establishes ways in which a focus on social context and exploration processes illuminates the complexity of immigrant adolescents’ identity formation. The two groups shared many similarities, including precipitants to exploration and steps undertaken to explore identity. However, two factors—social and cultural influences and emotional reactions—revealed interesting contrasts distinguishing enclave from non-enclave dwelling Vietnamese adolescents. Data also suggested that immigrant adolescents strive to integrate different domains of identity (ethnicity, gender, career) both with one another and with the historical, social, and cultural contexts they occupy.

Chinese American Adolescents’ Perceptions of the Language Brokering Experience as a Sense of Burden and Sense of Efficacy

Children of immigrants who do translations and who interpret for others using their heritage language and English are known as language brokers. Although prior research suggests that children of immigrants’ perceptions of the language brokering experience vary greatly—from feeling a sense of efficacy to feeling a sense of burden—what remains unanswered in the literature is identification of the antecedents and processes that help to explain the varying psychological experience of language brokers. Using data from a two-wave prospective longitudinal study of 256 Chinese American adolescents, the present study tested potential mechanisms that may be responsible for adolescents’ perceptions of the language brokering experience as a sense or burden or sense of efficacy. The results demonstrate that adolescents’ Chinese orientation sets in motion a family process that is linked to variations in the perceptions of adolescents’ language brokering experience. Adolescents who are more Chinese oriented have a stronger sense of familial obligation, and these adolescents are more likely to perceive that they matter to their parents. Adolescents’ perceived sense of mattering to parents, in turn, is associated positively with a sense efficacy, and negatively with a sense of burden as language brokers. Those adolescents who are less Chinese oriented have a weaker sense of familial obligation, and these adolescents are more likely to feel a sense of alienation from their parents. Adolescents’ sense of perceived alienation from parents, in turn, is associated with a sense of burden as language brokers. Implications for developing interventions for children who act as language brokers for their parents are discussed.

Associations Between Smoking and Extreme Dieting Among Adolescents

This study examined the association between cigarette smoking and dieting behaviors and trends in that association among US adolescents in grades 9–12 between 1999 and 2007. Youth Risk Behavior Survey datasets were analyzed using the multivariable logistic regression method. The sample size of each survey year ranged from 13,554 to 15,273 with girls representing 49–51% of the sample (N = 71,854). About 62% of the entire study participants were whites and 14% were blacks. Prevalence estimates of current smoking and corresponding 95% confidence intervals were computed across four comparison groups formed by gender and body weight. Extreme dieting was an independent predictor of smoking. Extreme dieters showed a higher variability of smoking behavior than their peers. The magnitude of the association between smoking and extreme dieting became smaller in recent years among adolescents but remained unchanged among non-overweight girls over that same time period. When adolescent smoking behavior is examined, the intensity of dieting behavior should be considered within its association with other co-occurring unhealthy behaviors.     

Perceptions of Problem Behavior in Adolescents’ Families: Perceiver,Target, and Family Effects

Considerable research has focused on the reliability and validity of informant reports of family behavior, especially maternal reports of adolescent problem behavior. None of these studies, however, has based their orientation on a theoretical model of interpersonal perception. In this study we used the social relations model (SRM) to examine family members’ reports of each others’ externalizing and internalizing problem behavior. Two parents and two adolescents in 69 families rated each others’ behavior within a round-robin design. SRM analysis showed that within-family perceptions of externalizing and internalizing behaviors are consistently due to three sources of variance; perceiver, target, and family effects. A family/contextual effect on informant reports of problem behavior has not been previously reported.     

Depressive Symptoms and School Burnout During Adolescence: Evidence from Two Cross-lagged Longitudinal Studies

The main purpose of this study was to examine the extent to which middle and late adolescents’ depressive symptoms predict their later school burnout and, in turn, the extent to which school burnout predicts depressive symptoms. Drawing on data gathered at ages 15–19 in two-three-wave longitudinal studies, we investigated cross-lagged paths between school burnout and depressive symptoms. In Study 1 the participants were 15-year-old adolescents (Time 1: N = 611, Time 2: N = 614, Time 3: N = 725) who completed the School Burnout Inventory and depressive symptoms twice during their final term of comprehensive school and once after the transition to upper secondary high school or vocational school. In Study 2 the participants were 17-year-old adolescents whose school burnout and depressive symptoms were measured three times annually (Time 1: N = 474, Time 2: N = 412, Time 3: N = 414) during their 3 years of secondary education. Results of both studies revealed moderate stability for both school burnout and depressive symptoms. They also showed that school burnout more strongly predicted subsequent depressive symptoms later on than vice versa. Lastly, they revealed cumulative cycles between school burnout and depressive symptoms.