Maternal Acceptance as a Moderator of the Relation Between Threat to Self Appraisals and Mental Health Problems in Adolescents from Divorced Families

Appraisals about the implications of stressful events that are evaluated as involving a threat to self (negative self-evaluation, negative evaluation from others, rejection by others) have been shown to place youth at risk for the development of mental health problems. This longitudinal study tested a protective-stabilizing interactive model, in which high maternal acceptance was predicted to mitigate the prospective relation between threat to self appraisals and change in adolescents’ mental health problems six months later. Participants were 89 adolescents from divorced families ages 10–12 and residential mothers. Adolescents reported on threat to self appraisals from the most stressful event experienced in the past month. Mothers and youth reported on maternal acceptance and mental health problems. Multiple regression analyses provided support for the protective effects of maternal acceptance on adolescents’ mental health problems. Intervention implications are discussed. Ana Brown is a pre-doctoral fellow in prevention research (NIMH 2 T32 MH18387–19) and doctoral student in the Department of Psychology at Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ. Research interests include the study of children’s appraisals and responses to stressful events in the prevention of mental health problems. Sharlene Wolchik is a clinical psychologist and professor in the Department of Psychology at Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ. Her research focuses on identifying risk and protective factors for children whose parents have divorced. She also has designed and evaluated the efficacy of preventive interventions for children from divorced families and children who have experienced parental bereavement. Jenn-Yun Tein is a research associate professor and Co-Director of the Research Methodology Core of the Prevention Research Center at Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ. Her research interests include analyses of mediation and moderation of preventive interventions as well as applications of methodology and statistics in prevention research. Irwin Sandler is a Regents’ Professor in the Department of Psychology and Director of the Prevention Research Center at Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ. His research interests focus on understanding resilience for children exposed to stress and on the development, evaluation and dissemination of programs to promote resilience and prevent mental health problems for children in stress.     

Understanding the development of fundamentalism

We use economic theory to examine the intensity of fundamentalist sects in which leaders work to enhance their followers’ observance level. We model three stylized situations under which fundamentalist groups function, examining the intensity of observance in each. We find that, under reasonable conditions, rivalry among fundamentalists makes them more extreme.     

Political representation and ethnic conflict in new democracies

Abstract.  This article is an exploratory analysis of the efficacy of parliamentary representation as a means to moderate ethnic conflict in new democracies. The authors agree with many others that the interests of a minority ethnic group are better protected when the group has access to decision makers, can block harmful government policies and veto potentially damaging decisions. Parliamentary representation, however, does not always allow for an effective representation of those who are not in government. Seats in the legislature may be of little use in a parliament where the executive dominates the policy process at all stages. This article focuses on the new democracies of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union between 1990 and 2000. The authors use the number of parliamentary seats obtained by minority ethnic parties as their main independent variable and the MAR ethnic protest and rebellion scores as their dependent variables. In addition, they employ the system of government (i.e., parliamentary versus presidential) as a proxy indicator of the degree of influence that parliamentary parties have over decision making. A cross-section-time-series regression analysis shows that the ameliorative effect of parliamentary representation over ethnic conflict is stronger in those legislatures where the ethnic group has effective influence over decision making. It is also shown that representation within national parliaments has no ameliorative effects over violent secessionist conflicts. When the ethnic minority's demands are too radical, parliamentary representation is simply an inadequate instrument.     

On the value of formal assessment of uncertainty in regulatory analysis

The US Office of Management and Budget introduced in 2003 a new requirement for the treatment of uncertainty in Regulatory Impact Analyses (RIAs) of proposed regulations, requiring agencies to carry out a formal quantitative uncertainty assessment regarding a regulation’s benefits and costs if either is expected to reach $1 billion annually. Despite previous use in other contexts, such formal assessments of uncertainty have rarely been employed in RIAs or other regulatory analyses. We describe how formal quantitative assessments of uncertainty – in particular, Monte Carlo analyses – can be conducted, we examine the challenges and limitations of such analyses in the context of RIAs, and we assess how the resulting information can affect the evaluation of regulations. For illustrative purposes, we compare Monte Carlo analysis with methods typically used in RIAs to evaluate uncertainty in the context of economic analyses carried out for the US Environmental Protection Agency’s Nonroad Diesel Rule, which became effective in 2004.     

European Community politics and electoral representation: Evidence from the 1989 European Elections Study

Abstract: In spite of the fact that the European elections were, in most countries, not fought over the issue of Community building and European integration, this article shows that only a few parties take positions towards the Community which are clearly out of line with the average position of their voters. The parties involved are the orthodox-Protestant combination in the Netherlands, the Workers Party in Ireland, the Italian MSI, and the greens in Germany, the Netherlands, Ireland and, to a somewhat lesser extent, Luxembourg. The discrepancies between these parties'positions and the attitudes of their electorates - in combination with their generally successful electoral performance - underscores what is known from other analyses: Parties do not acquire votes on the basis of European issue concerns, but on the basis of national political concerns. The result of the European elections may still, however, be considered as an ex post facto , endorsement and legitimation of parties'policies towards European integration.