The Effects of Gender and Family,Friend, and Media Influences on Eating Behaviors and Body Image During Adolescence

The current study expands upon body image research to examine how gender, self-esteem, social support, teasing, and family, friend, and media pressures relate to body image and eating-related attitudes and behaviors among male and female adolescents (N = 177). Results indicated that adolescents were dissatisfied with their current bodies: males were concerned with increasing their upper body, whereas females wanted to decrease the overall size of their body. Low self-esteem and social support, weight-related teasing, and greater pressures to lose weight were associated with adolescents’ negative body esteem, body image, and eating attitudes. Females displayed more high risk eating behaviors—which were associated with more psychosocial risk factors—than males, whose high risk attitudes and behaviors were only associated with low parental support and greater pressure to be muscular. Reducing adolescents’ perceptions of appearance-related pressure from family and friends may be key for enhancing body image and decreasing links between low self-esteem and negative eating behaviors and weight-related perceptions. Rheanna N. Ata is currently a research assistant at the Weight Control and Diabetes Research Center, Miriam Hospital/Brown University. She is interested in body image and eating disorders and completed this research during her undergraduate studies at the College of the Holy Cross. Alison Bryant Ludden is a developmental psychologist whose research focuses on social relationships and problem behaviors during adolescence, with a special interest in school as a developmental context. She is an assistant professor of psychology at the College of the Holy Cross. Megan M. Lally is currently a graduate student in psychology at Pepperdine University. She completed this research during her undergraduate studies at the College of the Holy Cross.     

Democratic Survival, Peace, and War in the International System

Post-World War II Western foreign policies are often based on the claim that the spread of democracy will result in global peace. Our understanding of how this propagation can bring about peace is limited, and we have little reason to believe that the causal arrow points only in one direction. We tackle these issues by modeling the linkages between states' regime types, interstate conflict, and the strength of the democratic community relative to the autocratic community. Analysis of our model suggests initial increases in the strength of the democratic community increase the level of conflict in a system. Beyond a threshold of democratic strength, however, conflict wanes as the democratic community waxes. Our model also suggests that the survival rate of democracies increases as the material strength of the democratic community increases and decreases as systemic conflict rises. Empirical analyses offer support for the survival propositions.     

Intimate Partner Violence in Cohabiting Families: Reports by Multiple Informants and Associations with Adolescent Outcomes

Intimate partner violence (IPV) is common, particularly in families with children. Observing such verbal and physical aggression has consistently been linked to unfavorable outcomes for affected children. Although cohabiting families are becoming increasingly prevalent and preliminary data suggest that rates of IPV may be high in these families, little is currently known about IPV and its impact as experienced by adolescents living in cohabiting families. This study used data from low-income urban Black cohabiting families (N = 92) to (1) examine agreement of reports of verbal and physical IPV between the adolescent and the mother and between the adolescent and the male cohabiting partner (MCP) and (2) test associations between IPV and youth mental health. A higher percentage of adolescents reported the occurrence of IPV, particularly physical violence, than did mothers and MCPs. Relative to those living in minimally violent or verbally violent homes, adolescents living in verbally and physically violent homes reported higher rates of internalizing and externalizing problem behaviors. These youth also reported higher levels of self-blame for the conflict and a worse relationship with the MCP but not the mother.     

Networking in the Shadow of the Law: Informal Access to Legal Expertise through Personal Network Ties

Civil legal problems are common in everyday life, but the costs of obtaining legal representation create barriers to legal action and contribute to disparities in access to justice. Some individuals, however, may have informal access to legal assistance through personal network ties with lawyers, enhancing their responses to justiciable problems. In this study, we draw from theories of social capital and network formation to examine the distribution and mobilization of network‐based legal expertise. Using nationally representative survey data, we find that network‐based access to lawyers is widespread, and most people who have ties to lawyers expect to informally mobilize legal assistance when facing a problem. But people who are most likely to afford formal legal representation are also most likely to have informal access to lawyers. Thus, while informal access to lawyers may shape responses to legal problems, it may also exacerbate inequalities in experiences with civil justice events.     

Race and Gender Recidivism Differences Among Juvenile Mental Health Court Graduates

Grounded in the theory of therapeutic jurisprudence, this research explores whether recidivism differs by race, ethnicity, or gender among juvenile mental health court graduates (N = 63). Mean number of pre‐program offenses were compared to the mean number of offenses committed by program completion. Results showed statistically significant reductions in recidivism by both males (p < .001) and females (p < .003). Racial and ethnic minorities demonstrated larger reductions when compared to Whites (p < .001 for Hispanics and p < .01 for combined ethnicities). These results contribute to the literature on effective intervention models for diverse juvenile offender populations.     

The Relationship Between Interpersonal Victimization and Women’s Criminal Sentencing: A Latent Class Analysis

Latent class analysis was used to identify subgroups of incarcerated women differentiated by experiences of child abuse and intimate partner violence victimization. The abuse subscales of the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire and the Abuse Behavior Inventory were used as indicators. Data were drawn from a probability sample of 217 incarcerated women housed in two state-level prisons in North Carolina. Four classes were extracted—Low Victimization, Child Abuse, Lifetime Physical and Psychological Abuse, and Lifetime Sexual Abuse; classes were then related to current sentence length, holding criminological predictors constant. Women in the Child Abuse and Lifetime Sexual Abuse classes had significantly longer sentences, despite the lack of significant between-class differences on criminological predictors. Results suggest that certain victimization patterns, notably experiences of sexual violence, were associated with sentencing disparities despite the use of structured sentencing grids. Recommendations for trauma-informed sentencing are provided.     

Health workforce redesign in Australia: implications for health care professional liability and the provision of professional indemnity insurance

The Productivity Commission's research report entitled Australia's Health Workforce, which was commissioned by the Commonwealth Government and released in January 2006, has been key to recent health workforce policy development. Many of the Productivity Commission's proposals have been endorsed by the Council of Australian Governments and a National Health Workforce Taskforce established to drive change. Surprisingly, the report gave little attention to medico-legal factors that may impact upon workforce supply and consequently may represent a barrier to workforce redesign. This column examines the implications of health workforce redesign and in particular the potential impact of task substitution and task delegation on professional liability and the provision of professional indemnity insurance for private sector health care professionals in Australia. It also identifies and addresses some other medico-legal issues not considered in the report.