Internalizing Symptoms: Effects of a Preventive Intervention on Developmental Pathways from Early Adolescence to Young Adulthood

This study examined the mediated and moderated effects of a universal family-focused preventive intervention, delivered during young adolescence, on internalizing symptoms assessed in young adulthood. Sixth grade students (N=446; 52% female; 98% White) and their families from 22 rural Midwestern school districts were randomly assigned to the experimental conditions in 1993. Self-report questionnaires were administered at seven time points (pre-test to young adulthood-age 21) to those receiving the Iowa Strengthening Families Program (ISFP) and to the control group. Results showed that growth factors of adolescent internalizing symptoms (grades 6-12) were predicted by ISFP condition and risk status (defined as early substance initiation). Moderation of the condition effect by risk status was found, with higher-risk adolescents benefitting more from the ISFP. Results also supported the hypothesis that the ISFP's effect on internalizing symptoms in young adulthood was mediated through growth factors of adolescents' internalizing symptoms; risk moderation, however, was only marginally significant in young adulthood. The relative reduction rate on clinical or subclinical levels of young adult internalizing symptoms was 28%, indicating that for every 100 young adults displaying clinical or subclinical levels of internalizing symptoms from school districts not offering an intervention, there could be as few as 72 displaying those levels of symptoms in school districts that offered middle school prevention programming. These findings highlight how the positive effects of family-focused universal interventions can extend to non-targeted outcomes and the related potential public-health impact of scaling up these interventions.     

Coming of age under Hitler and Stalin: the everyday life of adolescent girls in occupied Latvia

This article explores the possibility of the continuation of everyday life in occupied Europe through a case study of the lives of twenty‐five adolescent girls and young women living in Latvia between 1939 and 1944. Late adolescence is the period in which young women are struggling to establish some degree of independence, especially through leaving the parental home and entering the labour market. These transitions are the conventional markers of adulthood in modern societies. The article explores how occupation by the Soviet Union and the Third Reich affected daily life and the speed and nature of the transition to adulthood.     

Narratives of family,community and waged work: Latvian European volunteer worker women in post-war Britain

In the mid to late 1940s displaced people in camps in Germany were recruited by the British Government to work in industries in which labour market shortages were severe. This article looks at the recruitment of women who were originally from Latvia for domestic work in hospitals, other institutions and private households and as textile workers. The author argues that as well as reconstructing a sense of belonging to Latvia through the creation of imagined communities in exile, waged work was also a significant part of these women's lives. The author explores the ways in which different types of work influenced the future lives of EVW (European Volunteer Worker) women, both as workers and as members of locally based networks, and discusses the connections between employment and home/community life in the social construction of identity among Latvian women in Britain. The article draws on recent oral testimonies of twenty-five women who came to Britain under the Balt Cygnet and Westward Ho schemes between 1946 and 1949, have lived in this country since then and are now retired.     

The Sexual Contract,Youth, Masculinity and the Uncertain Promise of Waged Work in Austerity Britain

Abstract

Economic restructuring, the rise of service sector employment and precarious forms of attachment to the labour market have coincided with the financial crisis and the subsequent austerity programme in Britain to disadvantage young working-class men. In the context of high rates of youth unemployment, the consequences for the social construction of masculinity, for young men's labour market disadvantage and for the distribution of responsibilities between generations are explored though the lens of a comparative case study in two English towns, Luton and Swindon.     

The environmental nightmare of the economic miracle: Land abuse and land struggles in Taiwan

Abstract

This is an article about gut feelings: The kind of gut feeling you get when you step out of an elegant wood-paneled coffee shop in Taipei, where you have sipped a dense European brew at U.S. $6.00 for a small cup, and are assaulted by a whirl of grit and trash in the humid eddies of air, the noxious fumes of motorcycles, and the growl and honk of nearby traffic. The mounting nausea you feel when you cannot avoid eyeing slop spilled from restaurant pails left for pickup by pig farms, mounds of used styrofoam bowls and drink cartons, mangy dogs rooting in the corner garbage heaps awaiting early morning collection, and scraps of rotting wood and rusting metal from long-abandoned carts. The unease you feel when you seek escape from the congested city center and find debris from construction sites egregiously scattered in supposedly scenic spots, and industrial and household waste piled up on every otherwise open piece of land, whether vacant lot or graveyard knoll. The choke and dry cough that becomes habitual after a few days of too many hours in stop-and-go city traffic, evenings of endless banquets with chain smokers, and nights in which the smoke of chemical emissions from faraway factories—venting illegally but with impunity under cover of darkness—seeps into your apartment, where you thought you were safe with your cool tiled floors and humming air conditioners.     

Intimate Partner Violence Control Scale: Development and Initial Testing

Although control has long been considered central to understanding intimate partner violence (IPV), there continues to be a notable lack of validated scales measuring control (e.g., Strauchler et al. Journal of Family Violence, 19(6), 339–354, 2004). The purpose of this study was to develop and empirically validate a brief assessment tool, the Intimate Partner Violence Control Scale (IPVCS), designed to measure control in the context of IPV. Data from a sample of male undergraduate and graduate students (n = 436) were used to examine the scale’s properties. After reviewing theoretical conceptualizations and measurement issues of control, psychometric properties of the IPVCS and results of exploratory hypotheses tests are presented. The availability of a brief and reliable measure of control offers a tool for professionals in the judicial system, for IPV victims’ advocates, and for human services workers in practice settings to adequately assess for control and fills a gap in this area of research and practice.