Family Dysfunction and Social Isolation as Moderators Between Stress and Child Physical Abuse Risk

Stress is a significant contributor to child physical maltreatment risk. Family and social supports are expected, but less studied, risk factors. Little empirical support clarifies the interactive influence on abuse risk for non-abusive parents. This study examined whether the stress-abuse risk relation was moderated by family dysfunction and social isolation. Subjective appraisals of these factors were administered to 95 community mothers. After creating composite scores using factor loadings from a CFA, multiple regression analyses were conducted to predict abuse risk. As expected, stress predicted abuse risk, with social isolation and, to a lesser extent, family dysfunction serving as moderators. Perceived stress and dysfunctional supports are important, interactive predictors of abuse risk. Future directions consider interactions within other ecological levels.     

‘Hoisted with our own petard’: evidence and democratic deliberation on obesity

Key actors engaged in debate on obesity in Australia and the UK subscribe to radically different narratives about the nature, extent and even existence of this public health problem. Yet there is a common thread to these clashing narratives: evidence. All are emphatic that their story is ‘evidence-based’. In this paper, I seek to examine this state of affairs by looking at how actors think about, use and interpret evidence across a range of sites of policy debate on this issue. In doing so, I contribute to academic inquiry about the place of evidence in democratic deliberation. Firstly, I find that there is a high degree of consensus among actors who promote differing interpretations of the issue on what evidence means and entails in the abstract. Secondly, I find that the differing narratives on obesity are underpinned by different interpretations of the evidence, but that internal inconsistencies affect each of these competing narratives as well. As such, I argue that policy actors should not be seen just as strategically marshalling convenient evidence to support a preconceived cause. Overall, I suggest that these findings have mixed implications for democratic deliberation on the issue, enhancing the deliberative side of the equation but undermining the democratic. I then point to ways in which the goals of evidence-based and democratic policymaking on this issue may be further reconciled.