The evaluation of Healthy Families Arizona: a multisite home visitation program

Healthy Families Arizona is a broadly implemented home visitation program aimed at preventing child abuse and neglect, improving child health and development, and promoting positive parent/child interaction. The program began as a pilot in two sites in 1991 and by 2004 had grown to 48 sites located in urban, rural, and tribal regions of the state. The unique administrative structure of the program and collaboration between evaluation and quality assurance have helped overcome many of the problems familiar to home visitation programs. This paper describes how a systematic focus to improve processes and outcomes has positioned the program for a randomized longitudinal study. Key components of the program are described and evaluation results are presented.     

Neighborhood Disadvantage, Individual Economic Distress and Violence Against Women in Intimate Relationships

A continuing debate in sociological criminology involves the association of crime with economic disadvantage at both aggregate and individual levels of analysis. At the aggregate level, data from law enforcement sources suggest that rates of intimate violence are higher in disadvantaged neighborhoods. Disadvantaged neighborhoods may experience higher rates of intimate violence for compositional or contextual reasons, or rates may only appear to be higher because of differential reporting. Similarly, at the individual level, intimate violence appears more common among couples that are economically distressed, but whether economic distress triggers intimate violence is not certain. Using data from waves 1 and 2 of the National Survey of Families and Households and from the 1990 U.S. Census, we investigate the effects of neighborhood economic disadvantage and individual economic distress on intimate violence against women. Controlling for violence at time 1 and other individual level characteristics, we find that neighborhood economic disadvantage, neighborhood residential instability, male employment instability, and subjective financial strain influence the likelihood of violence at time 2. The relationship between neighborhood disadvantage and intimate violence appears to reflect both compositional and contextual effects.     

Parents' and Children's Views on Talking to Judges in Parenting Disputes in Australia

Judicial interviews with children in contested parenting proceedingsare an uncommon and contentious practice in Australia and manyother common law jurisdictions. While there has been some debateabout the merits and risks of such a practice among professionalsand academic commentators, there is little research on the viewsof children and parents. In this study, children and parentsinvolved in contested and non-contested family law matters inAustralia were asked to comment on this practice. A subsequentarticle will explore the views of Australian judges on talkingwith children in chambers, and their experience of doing so.Children and parents had mixed views but most children saidthat it should be an option even if they did not want it forthemselves. Children who had been the subject of contested proceedingswere generally keen to talk to the judge even though most hadbeen interviewed by an independent expert and had a child legalrepresentative. Resident parents were, however, much more likelythan non-resident parents to be in favour of children beingable to talk with the judge, either alone or together with acounsellor or ‘interpreter’. Both parents and childrenwho were in favour of children talking directly to judges gavevery similar reasons. They were related to children's rightto be heard and acknowledged, the value of direct communicationand the likely beneficial effect on the decision.     

Who should code your conduct? Trade union and NGO differences in the fight for workers' rights

The debate over workplace codes of conduct has created tensions between trade unions and human rights NGOs. These tensions result from the inherent structural differences between interest‐driven trade unions and ideals‐driven human rights NGOs. The differences play themselves out in how these actors pursue social justice in a globalised economy. Human rights NGOs tend to see codes of conduct as a method to prevent violations, akin to their traditional work on legal reform and human rights monitoring. Trade unions assess codes for their potential to help empower workers, especially to help ensure freedom of association, which will lead to the realisation of participatory rights. In our understanding of human rights as a means of empowerment for vulnerable groups, we argue that the trade union perspective on human rights is a good long‐term approach. Short‐term successes, such as improving working conditions through outside patronage, seem useful only to the extent they serve this long‐term goal.     

Parent-Child Conflict during Elementary School as a Longitudinal Predictor of Sense of Purpose in Emerging Adulthood

Having a sense of purpose is viewed as a benchmark of adaptive development. Though adolescence and emerging adulthood are viewed as central periods for the development of a purpose, work still is needed to understand the childhood factors that influence this developmental process. The current study provides an initial investigation into whether parent-child conflict during elementary school predicts later sense of purpose, assessed during emerging adulthood (mean age: 21.01 years; range: 19.97–23.53). The sample included 1074 students (50% female), and their parents, who both reported on their levels of parent-child conflict during grades 1–5. Higher levels of parent-child conflict were associated with lower levels of purpose in emerging adulthood. Moreover, the study examined whether these effects remained when predicting the variance unique to purpose while accounting for other indicators of well-being in emerging adulthood. Bi-factor models demonstrated that the child’s perception of mother-child conflict has a unique prospective effect on purpose in emerging adulthood, above and beyond its negative association with general well-being. The findings are discussed with respect to how positive parent-child relationships may prove important for starting youth on the path to purpose.

     

Rationalizing pay inequity: women engineers,pervasive patriarchy and the neoliberal chimera

This article argues that neoliberalism with its pervasive patriarchy and co-option of feminism, renders women tacitly complicit in gendered pay inequalities. We show that in New Zealand, one of the world’s most neoliberal nations, women who might precisely be best equipped to argue for equal pay – engineers – do not do so because neoliberalism makes many feel responsible for, and accepting of, their lower salaries. In interviews and focus groups, many women engineers talk of deserving less pay than men because of their ‘choices’, their ‘personality’ and their lack of ‘responsibility’. In a disempowering environment, some women show agency by disavowing gender as a reason for the pay gap. Such narratives of individualized shortcomings reduce hope of collective action that might uncover and dismantle the systemic causes of pay inequity, which are not due to a woman’s choice or personality but rather what we frame as the neoliberal chimera.     

Fraud victimization: Risky business or just bad luck?

Victimology theory recognizes that the characteristics, attitudes, and behaviors of potential victims influence the likelihood of criminal victimization. An important question for victimologists is whether potential victims put themselves at risk by engaging in risky behavior or whether victimization is primarily a result of bad luck. While this question has been investigated extensively with respect to street crime victimization, little attempt has been made to apply it to victimization by fraud. This article investigates the influence of attitudes toward financial risk taking on the likelihood of fraud victimization. Using data from a telephone survey of 400 randomly sampled respondents, we find that age and attitudes toward financial risk taking are significantly related to the likelihood of attempted victimizations but not to successful victimizations.     

Reviews

E. Comisso and L. D'Andrea Tyson eds. Power, Purpose and Collective Choice. Economic Strategy in Socialist States. Cornell University Press: Ithaca and London, 1986, 422 pp. $43.45 h/b, $16.45 p/b.

Dietrich Andre Loeber ed. Ruling Communist Parties And Their Status Under Law. Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1986, xxi + 550 pp. £101.50 h/b.

E. S. Williams, The Soviet Military: Political Education, Training and Morale. London: Macmillan, 1987, xv + 203 pp. £27.50.

John Erickson, Lynn Hansen and William Schneider, Soviet Ground Forces: An Operational Assessment. London: Croom Helm & Westview, 1986, xix + 267 pp. £25.00.

Kurt M. Campbell, Soviet policy towards South Africa. London: Macmillan, 1986, xii + 223 pp. £27.50.

David A. Korn, Ethiopia, the United States and the Soviet Union, London: Croom Helm, 1986, 199 pp. £19.95.

Samuel M. Makinda, Superpower Diplomacy in the Horn of Africa, London: Croom Helm, 1987, 241 pp. £22.50.

Ivan Volgyes, Politics in Eastern Europe. Chicago: Dorsey Press, 1986, xvii + 368 pp. $20.00.

Olga A. Narkiewicz, Soviet Leaders: from the Cult of Personality to Collective Rule. Brighton: Wheatsheaf, 1986, ix + 256 pp. £18.95.

Simon Bergstrand and Rigas Doganis, The Impact of Soviet Shipping. London: Allen & Unwin, 1987, xvi + 184 pp. £30.00.

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Jeffery Simon and Trond Gilberg, eds. Security Implications of Nationalism in Eastern Europe, Westview Press. Boulder, Colorado and London, 1986 xvi + 327 pp. £27.75.

K. R. M. Short, ed., Western Broadcasting over the Iron Curtain, Croom Helm, London, 1986, 274 pp. £22.50.

John Bushnell, Mutiny amid Repression: Russian Soldiers in the Revolution of 1905–1906. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985, ix + 334 pp. £24.50.

Roger Woods, Opposition in the GDR under Honecker 1971–85. Macmillan, London, 1986, x + 257 pp. £27.50.

Yury Boshyk, ed., Ukraine during World War II— History and its Aftermath. Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, University of Alberta, Edmonton, 1986, xix + 219 pp. no price quoted.

Peter Beilharz, Trotsky, Trotskyism and the Transition to Socialism, London: Croom Helm, 1987. 197 pp. £25.00.

A. Buick & J. Crump, State capitalism: the wages system under new management. Basingstoke, Macmillan, 1987, ix + 165 pp. £25.00 h/b, £8.95 p/b.