The social context of teenage childbearing: Effects on the infant's care-giving environment

The effects of maternal age and the social context on the home environment, and maternal behaviors of adolescent and older mothers, as well as the stability of the care-giving environment, were studied. Fifty low-middle socioeconomic status (SES), primiparous, Caucasian mothers and their fullterm healthy infants were included. At four months, support systems and life stress were assessed, as well as the home environment and maternal behaviors. At two years, a similar home visit was conducted in a subsample. Adolescent mothers had less education, lower SES, and a different child care support system. They also differed in the home environment and maternal behaviors at four months. Some of these differences disappeared when maternal education and SES, or child care support and life stress, were controlled. Moderate correlations were observed between four months and two years home environment and maternal verbalizations. Thus, a combination of maternal age and other social factors mediate the negative characteristics of the adolescent mother's care-giving environment, which is relatively stable during the infancy period.Received Ph. D. from Harvard University. Main research interests are sociocultural aspects of development, teenage pregnancy, and infant temperament.Received Ph. D. from University of California, Los Angeles. Main research interests are determinants of neonatal and infant development and statistical systems.Received Ph. D. from Brown University. Main research interests are mother-child interaction, and language acquisition in the hearing impaired.Received M. D. from the University of Santo Tomas, Manila, Philippines. Main research interests are both animal and human studies during the perinatal period.     

Staff Quality and Treatment Effectiveness: An Examination of the Relationship between Staff Factors and the Effectiveness of Correctional Programs

Although a growing body of research has focused on identifying the characteristics of effective interventions, relatively little research has looked at the impact that staff factors have on treatment effectiveness. The current research conceptualizes staff quality via three domains: staff characteristics, staff training, and staff supervision. Process and outcome evaluations of 54 community correctional facilities are used to examine the relationship between staff quality and reduced recidivism of program participants. The results suggest that measures of all three domains maintain substantively meaningful relationships with program effectiveness.     

Reuniting families: an online database to aid in the identification of undocumented immigrant remains

The Reuniting Families project attempts to aid federal, state and local agencies currently working towards the identification of deceased undocumented immigrants. This initiative has created a distributed on-line database, accessible by public officials and private citizens interested in searching for missing individuals based on both phenotypic and genotypic characteristics. This broad effort includes the exhumation of individuals from geographically disparate pauper graves, the classification of their physical characteristics, and the cataloging of observed metric traits in a local relational database, to include associated articles of possession and related metadata. Concurrent with the documentation of physical forensic evidence is the analysis of mitochondrial DNA sequences. Computational techniques and scoring parameters are applied to automate the process of discovery and identification as well at to preserve information on the missing. The result is a prototype knowledge base that may serve as a model for future efforts in international forensic science collaborations.     

Factors related to willingness to help survivors of intimate partner violence

Although researchers have found that survivors of intimate partner violence seek support from a multitude of sources, ranging from professionals to informal support networks, little is known about the extent to which community members reach out to help survivors. This study explored the type of support provided to survivors and various factors that relate to individuals' willingness to help. Survivors were more likely to be helped by women, younger individuals, those who strongly endorsed criminal justice interventions for perpetrators, and those who perceived intimate partner violence as a frequently occurring issue in their communities. Two additional factors were found to relate to an individual's likelihood of assisting others, including witnessing intimate partner violence as a child and prior victimization. Further research is needed in this area to explore helper, survivor, and contextual characteristics that may affect one's likelihood to offer assistance to survivors.     

Feminism,Religion, and Shared Reasons: A Defense of Exclusive Public Reason

The idea of public reason is central to political liberalism’s aim to provide an account of the possibility of a just and stable democratic society comprised of free and equal citizens who nonetheless are deeply divided over fundamental values. This commitment to the idea of public reason reflects the normative core of political liberalism which is rooted in the principle of democratic legitimacy and the idea of reciprocity among citizens. Yet both critics and defenders of political liberalism disagree over whether or not the idea of public reason permits citizens to appeal to their comprehensive conceptions of the good in public deliberation over matters of basic justice. Our aim in this paper is to provide a defense of an exclusive idea of public reason, and at the same time we aim to dispel the underlying concerns of two prominent criticisms of the idea of public reason—the concern of alienation from the political process, as expressed by religiously oriented critics, and the concern over women’s equality, as expressed by feminist critics. We argue that inclusive accounts of the idea of public reason are not consistent with political liberalism’s core commitments. Further, we claim, inclusive accounts of the idea of public reason deepen feminist concerns. We think that, properly understood, an exclusive account of the idea of public reason can address feminist concerns about political liberalism and avoid alienating (reasonable) religious persons in an unacceptable way. Thus, we conclude that an exclusive account of the idea of public reason is our best hope for reconciliation. For comments and suggestions on earlier versions of this paper, we thank Andrew Altman, H.E. Baber, Andrew Jason Cohen, Steven Daskal, Peter Gratton, Blain Neufeld, Linda Peterson, Rodney Peffer, Kevin Timpe, Matt Zwolinski and David Cummiskey. An earlier version of this paper was presented at a Pacific Division Meeting of the American Philosophical Association; we thank audience participants for helpful feedback. We would also like to thank an anonymous referee for Law and Philosophy, we believe the article is much improved as a result of his/her suggestions.     

The democratic deficit: Paul Martin and parliamentary reform

Abstract: Paul Martin's plan to reform parliamentary government in order to eliminate the so‐called democratic deficit calls for greater independence for individual mps and the House of Commons vis‐à‐his the government. In this article, we first examine what is required to make the reforms work according to his measures of success. We then consider why he has restricted his assault on the democratic deficit to the reform of Parliament. Third, we consider whether parliamentary reform is sufficient to address the discontents and criticisms of Canadian government that have given rise to the perceived democratic deficit. We conclude that the Martin plan, except for the review of government appointments, is sound from the perspective of representative democracy but that it will be successful in addressing the democratic deficit only to the extent that the prime minister and his reform‐minded colleagues are able to convince Canadians that citizen participation in the institutional processes of reformed parliamentary government can be meaningful. Sommaire: Le projet qu'a M. Paul Martin de réformer le gouvernement parlementaire afin d'éliminer le soi‐disant déficit démocratique exige une plus grande indé‐pendance des députés individuels et de la Chambre des communes à l'égard du gouvemement. Dans le présent article, nous examinons tout d'abord les exigences nécessaires pour que les réformes fonctionnent selon ses mesures de succés. Nous examinons ensuite pourquoi M. Martin a restreint son attaque du déficit démocratique à la seule réforme parlementaire. Troisiémement, nous examinons si la réforme parlementaire est suffisante pour remédier aux insatisfactions et critiques envers le gouvemement canadien qui ont engendré le déficit démocratique perçu. Nous con‐cluons que le plan de M. Martin, à I'exception de la revue des nominations gouveme‐mentales, est solide du point de vue de la démocratie représentative. Il ne parviendra cependant à s'attaquer au déficit démocratique que dans la mesure où le Premier ministre et ses collégues soucieux de réforme seront capables de convaincre les Canadiens que la participation des citoyens aux processus institutionnels d'un gouverne‐ment parlementaire réformé peut être constructive.     

The Correlates of Discord: Identity,Issue Alignment,and Political Hostility in Polarized America

The American public remains largely moderate on many issues, but incivility and hostility are rife in American politics. In this paper, I argue that the alignment of multiple issue attitudes along the traditional ideological spectrum helps explain the asymmetrical rise in negative political affect. I introduce belief congruence theory as a supplemental theoretical framework to social identity theory. Cross-sectional data reveal a significant association between issue alignment and negative out-party affect that is neither mediated nor moderated by partisan identity. A first-difference approach using two panel studies then addresses potential heterogeneity bias by testing a change-on-change model within individuals. Both panels, which are from different time periods, covering different issues, reveal significant associations between issue alignment and outgroup dislike. In contrast, partisan identity was only significantly associated with ingroup affect. This work suggests that cross-cutting issue preferences could help attenuate political hostility and reiterate the need to reconsider the role of issue-based reasoning in polarized America.     

Individual Characteristics and the Multiple Contexts of Adolescent Bullying: An Ecological Perspective

This paper uses an ecological perspective to explore the risk factors associated with bullying behaviors among a representative sample of adolescents aged 11–14 Data derived from the Health Behavior in School Children: WHO Cross-National Survey were used to model the relationship between bullying and media effects, peer and family support systems, self-efficacy, and school environment. Overall, the results of this study suggest that bullying increases among children who watch television frequently, lack teacher support, have themselves been bullied, attend schools with unfavorable environments, have emotional support from their peers, and have teachers and parents who do not place high expectations on their school performance. In addition, we found an inverse relationship between being Asian or African American, feeling left out of school activities and bullying. Our results lend support to the contention that bullying arises out of deficits in social climate, but that social support systems mediate bullying behavior irrespective of the student’s racial/ethnic characteristics, parental income levels or media influences. Because the number of friends and the ability to talk to these friends increases the likelihood of bullying, we suggest that bullying is not simply an individual response to a particular environment but is a peer-group behavior. We conclude that limiting television viewing hours, improving student’s abilities to access family support systems and improving school atmospheres are potentially useful interventions to limit bullying behavior.