Behavioral and Attitudinal Factors Differentiating Male Intimate Partner Violence Perpetrators With and Without a History of Childhood Family Violence

This study utilized a sample of men (N?=?340) charged with assault against a female partner to assess differences among IPV perpetrators with and without a history of childhood family violence on factors such as angry, controlling and violent behaviors, substance use related behaviors, and attitudes towards women. Over two-thirds of the sample reported childhood exposure to maltreatment or witnessing IPV. Chi-square analyses and t-tests indicated significant differences between perpetrators with and without a history of family violence on eight of eleven measures. Findings suggest perpetrators with a family violence history more strongly endorse ideas that present women and feminine attributes in a negative light. This research demonstrates that while exposure to family violence during childhood is not necessary for IPV to occur, its presence may be a marker for more severe attitudinal and behavioral problems. Findings highlight the need for primary prevention efforts and can inform secondary prevention strategies.     

Maternal Attachment Trajectories and Criminal Offending By Race

Parental attachment is a key predictor of juvenile offending. Most prior research on the topic, however, assumes that parental attachment is stable throughout youth and adolescence. On the contrary, recent research has established that parenting is a dynamic factor for many youth during adolescence. In the current study, we assess the relationship between trajectories of maternal attachment and offending during adolescence and young adulthood. Following a cohort of 859 youth from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth data aged 10 or 11 over a period of 6 years, we find four distinctive trajectories of maternal attachment and two distinctive trajectories of offending. The results suggest that changes that occur in maternal closeness are linked to changes in offending across adolescence. However, when young adult offending is assessed when the youth are 18 or 19 years of age, we find that adolescent maternal attachment trajectories are not significant predictors of offending.     

Developmental trajectories of nonsocial reinforcement and offending in adolescence and young adulthood: An exploratory study of an understudied part of social learning theory

Purpose

Within social learning theory, nonsocial reinforcement has been hypothesized to have a link with offending. The purpose of the present study was to address two questions: (1) Does nonsocial reinforcement change or remain stable over time? And (2) does nonsocial reinforcement have a reciprocal link with offending, as Wood et al. (1997) would expect?

Methods

We used a subsample (N = 413) of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY) data and semi-parametric group-based modeling (SPGM).

Results and Conclusions

The SPGM suggested three distinct groups of nonsocial reinforcement (one trajectory group appeared to have a low but stable rate of nonsocial reinforcement, one trajectory appeared to be higher but stable, another trajectory higher but also stable). A cross-tabulation of the nonsocial reinforcement trajectories and offending trajectories indicated that offending increased as nonsocial reinforcement became greater. Study limitations and implications are also discussed.