The Intergenerational Transmission of Physical Punishment: Differing Mechanisms in Mothers’ and Fathers’ Endorsement?

We examined the intergenerational transmission of physical punishment (PP) and whether marital satisfaction moderated this transmission. Participants were 241 mothers and 107 fathers with a three year-old child who completed a semi-structured interview assessing their endorsement of disciplinary methods and the methods their parents used to discipline them. Marital satisfaction was assessed using the Conflicts and Problem Solving Scales. Different predictive models were obtained for mothers and fathers. For mothers, socioeconomic status (SES) and their own mother’s use of PP significantly predicted their current endorsement of PP. For fathers, SES and perceived harshness of childhood discipline predicted current endorsement of PP. Marital satisfaction moderated the intergenerational transmission of PP for fathers, but not mothers. Results indicated that PP by the same-sex parent and SES are important factors in its intergenerational transmission, and that the effects of childhood PP on current endorsement may be more direct for mothers and indirect for fathers.     

Parental Self-Efficacy and Bullying in Elementary School

This study investigated associations of general and specific parental self-efficacy factors with bullying and peer victimization behaviors among 142 fourth and fifth graders and their parents. Using structural equation modeling, exploratory factor analysis was used to examine one general parenting self-efficacy measure and a bullying-specific parent self-efficacy measure. The latter produced two unique factors: (a) self-efficacy to know when one’s child is bullied, and (b) self-efficacy to respond to one’s child being bullied. Child reports of bullying and peer victimization were simultaneously regressed on the three (i.e., one general and two specific) parent self-efficacy factors. Findings revealed that parental self-efficacy to know when one’s child is bullied was uniquely and negatively associated with both bullying and victimization. Additionally, and contrary to expectations, parental self-efficacy to respond when one’s child is being bullied was uniquely and positively associated with victimization.     

Using recursive partitioning to find and estimate heterogenous treatment effects in randomized clinical trials

Journal of Experimental Criminology - When for an RCT heterogeneous treatment effects are inductively obtained, significant complications are introduced. Special loss functions may be needed to...     

Automatic Encoding of Ambiguous Child Behavior in High and Low Risk for Child Physical Abuse Parents

Recent theory and research suggest that physically abusive parenting behavior might be understood as originating from: 1) greater accessibility of hostile/negative schema, and/or 2) lower accessibility of benign/positive schema. This study examined whether parents at high and low risk for child physical abuse (CPA) differed in the extent to which they spontaneously encoded ambiguous caregiving contexts in negative versus positive terms. Twenty-five high and forty-one low risk for CPA parents were asked to memorize a set of sentences that described ambiguous caregiving situations. After a brief delay, participants were asked to recall the sentences. During recall, cues were given (e.g., negative and positive words) to facilitate recall. According to the cued-recall paradigm, to the extent that recall was facilitated by negative/positive cues, it was inferred that negative/positive meaning was activated when the ambiguous sentences were encoded. Although all parents tended to recall more information in response to negative relative to positive cues, the influence of cue type on recall was greater for high CPA risk parents. That is, high, compared to low, CPA risk parents obtained significantly higher recall difference scores (M = 4.6 versus M = 2.3); with higher recall difference scores indicating greater recall in response to negative relative to positive cues. Present findings are consistent with the proposition that high and low CPA risk parents differ in how they spontaneously encode information in ambiguous caregiving contexts.     

Shared Services in Australian Local Government: Rationale, Alternative Models and Empirical Evidence

Widespread enthusiasm amongst Australian policy elites for structural reform in local government has evaporated as disappointing outcomes of council amalgamation programs became evident. As a consequence, emphasis has now shifted towards shared serviced models as a means of enhancing service provision and reducing costs. However, a disturbing feature of the current debate on shared services has been the absence of a well-articulated economic and political rationale for this form of service delivery, a lack of analysis of alternative models of shared service provision and a neglect of available empirical evidence. This article seeks to remedy these deficiencies by considering the analytical foundations of shared local services, conducting a review of alternative models as vehicles for shared services and evaluating available empirical evidence.     

The Elite Politics of Media Advocacy in Human Rights

ABSTRACT

Advocacy nongovernmental organizations based in the North adopt digital tools to bypass repressive regimes, raise awareness amongst global publics, sustain grassroots activists in the South, and engage in political action. Social media was expected to offer innovative platforms for mobilizing participants to act on behalf of “distant others.” But the practices of some organizations signal that something else is at play. Rather than empower individuals, digital campaigns reify elite politics, using outsider strategies to support insider lobbying. Through communicative processes of mediatization, organizations pay homage to the existence of a movement, but only afford thin forms of participation. Using the framework of media advocacy to explore Human Rights Watch and the Enough! Project, we argue that social media becomes a top-down platform that exacerbates the elite design of organizations, enabling them to assert legitimacy for political actions, while disingenuously marketing themselves as democratic with bottom-up credibility.     

Sexual orientation and gender identity in Nepal: Rights promotion through UN development assistance

United Nations (UN) development agencies have been actively working to protect lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex (LGBTI) rights in Nepal, despite having no official mandate to work on these rights. This presents an important example of how such agencies are able to act independently to set their own agenda and illustrates the “open system” approach to international bureaucracies. It also suggests that these agencies have the potential to be important instruments of LGBTI rights promotion outside the traditional human rights machinery such as the Human Rights Council and various committees. Based on extensive interview research as well as documentary evidence, this article traces the origins of the UN's engagement with LGBTI rights. It then discusses the work of UN agencies in South Asia, and Nepal in particular, focusing on the UN Development Programme, the UN Children's Fund, UNAIDS, and UN Women. Political changes in Nepal since 2006 have opened it up for change in its approach to these rights, and UN agencies have worked actively to change both legal norms and social attitudes. The conclusion considers whether these lessons are applicable to other states and whether the UN development machinery must be considered an important ally in pursuing LGBTI rights worldwide.     

Negotiating meaning through costume and social media in Bulgarian Muslims' communities of practice

This paper shows how contemporary believers are negotiating a new identity of Islamic piety in Bulgarian Muslim communities. Driven by communal memory of repression and contemporary Islamophobia, Bulgarian Muslims have created communities of practice (Wenger 1998 Wenger, Etienne. 1998. Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning, and Identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.[Crossref] , [Google Scholar]), participatory groups that share a common interest in learning more about their faith. Communities function on multiple levels: there are small pockets of Islamic activity at the local level, and at a broader level, an imagined community of Bulgarian-speaking Muslims connected to an imagined global Islamic community, the ummah. The practices examined here include face-to-face activities, such as learning to read the Qur’an and prayers in Arabic, learning Islamic principles and practice, and talking about faith in mosques and homes in Bulgaria. This paper also examines virtual practices, such as discussing faith on social media. The article focuses on women’s and girls’ Qur’an reading groups and discussions about wearing hijab, and it examines an online mixed-gender discussion of daily prayers. Such grassroots practice of Islam fosters a newly articulate and participatory version of religion, embracing and encouraging believers’ literacy and knowledge, activism, and agency. The mutual goals, repertoires, and activities of this community of practice create a sense of commonality and cohesiveness, while leaving room for some diversity of focus.