Adolescents' experience of a life-framing decision

High school students participating in a year-long longitudinal study of the college decision-making process described their experiences in open-ended essays, and rated their reactions to the process on several different Likert scales. Students' certainty in the decision and readiness to make a decision rose over time. As the process continued, students reported increasing satisfaction with the information they had obtained, and more comfort with the process itself. However, overall levels of reported enjoyment of the process were low to moderate, and overall ratings of the stressfulness of the decision remained high. Students gave evidence of seeing this decision as a life-framing one.This project was funded by The Spencer Foundation and by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (HD-28177-R15), both to Kathleen M. Galotti. We gratefully acknowledge the assistance of Stephanie Aubry, Jessica Bresler, Laura Gibson, Julie Greene, Ruby Hou, Perrin Klumpp, Jodi Matthes, Jennifer McGregor, Nancy Michelsen, Terrance Overby, Amy Prullage, Melissa Schneider, Katherine Seiden, Daniel Simons, and Meghan Wilhelm for gathering and coding data. We also thank the principals, guidance counselors, and teachers at the cooperating schools for helping us recruits students and schedule surveys.Received a Ph.D. in psychology and an M.S.E. in computer and information sciences from the University of Pennsylvania. Current research interests include everyday reasoning and decision making, and the development of these skills.Received a Ph.D. in counseling and guidance from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Research interests are in adolescent development and adolescent psychopathology.     

On-line processing in candidate evaluation: The effects of issue order,issue importance,and sophistication

This article reports the results of a study that replicates and extends the impression-driven model of candidate evaluation reported in Lodge, McGraw, and Stroh (1989). This model holds that evaluations are formed and updated on-line as information is encountered, and that as a result, citizens need not rely on specific information available from memory to form their candidate evaluations. In the present work we explore whether the order in which information is encountered, as well as whether information that is personally important, influences the weight accorded to evidence in on-line processing. In addition, differences in information-processing strategies due to political sophistication are examined. The results indicate that important information receives more weight than unimportant information. In addition, the evidence suggests that political sophisticates are more efficient on-line processors than are less sophisticated individuals. The implications of these results for models of candidate evaluation are discussed.     

Immigrant and Refugee Workers in the Midwestern Meatpacking Industry: Industrial Restructuring and the Transformation of Rural Labor Markets

This paper examines the process of incorporation of immigrant and refugee workers into the meatpacking industry of the Midwest during a period of rapid restructuring. Immigrant and refugee workers have provided low-cost labor to meatpacking firms under pressure from both increased competition and a declining market for red meat. The search for new supplies of labor reflects fundamental changes within the industry. The dynamics of labor force recomposition in the meatpacking industry are the result of the interplay of such factors as the nature of industrial restructuring, the locally available labor supply, and programs designed to move immigrants, refugees, and the unemployed into full-time employment. This process has had differential effects on the industry, workers, the unions, and rural communities.     

“Soul Murder”: Investigating Spiritual Trauma at the Royal Commission

ABSTRACT

During its five-year tenure, the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse established that faith organisations, with inadequate practices of organisational transparency and accountability, hierarchical structures of power, and patriarchal cultures, have poor track records in child protection and high levels of child abuse. Evidence from the Royal Commission hearings identified spiritual trauma as an outcome of child sexual abuse across several religious organisations including the Catholic Church, the Anglican Church, the Salvation Army, the Yeshiva Jewish School in Melbourne and Sydney and the Satyananda Ashram in NSW. The Catholic Church had the highest levels of institutional child sexual assault and was the site of most of the narratives of spiritual suffering. This article examines existing research on spiritual trauma with regard to child sexual abuse, applies a five-point classification model developed by Kenneth Pargament and colleagues for identifying and analysing spiritual damage, and examines the evidence from both survivors and expert witnesses that was heard during relevant public hearings involving the Catholic Church at the Royal Commission. Institutional responses to spiritual injury will be considered and it will be argued that the Catholic Church is a distinctive institution that has produced a powerful culture of spiritual identity and belonging, where the impact of child sexual abuse has resulted in a loss of faith for many survivors, families and communities.     

Inequalities of Redress: Australia’s National Redress Scheme for Institutional Abuse of Children

ABSTRACT

The national redress scheme proposed by the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse is unique and unusual in the world of government redress. It is unique with its inclusion of both care leavers and non-care leavers (it is the only government scheme to do so), and it is unusual in focusing on sexual abuse alone (18% of government schemes do). These unique and unusual qualities come at a price for justice. Care leavers and non-care leavers are different groups with respect to their experiences of abuse and social status as child victims. Unless these group differences are explicitly recognised in guidelines for the monetary payment, care leavers will be disadvantaged. Two corrective measures are proposed: adopting an inclusive understanding of sexual abuse in closed and open settings, and addressing the negative bias that may result from care leavers’ lower social status as children compared to that of non-care leavers. Their lower status is likely to affect (that is, devalue) judgements of the severity and impact of abuse.     

Transitions through Out-of-Keeping Acts

Within a negotiation, when an act by one party is out-of-keeping with the previous moves and underlying logic of the interaction, the act and those that follow hold the potential for creating a transition to a new logic of interaction. In this paper, we investigate the presence and role of seven distinct types of transitions resulting from out-of-keeping acts across ten complex legal negotiations. The data reveal that a critical feature differentiating across the types is the abruptness/gradualness of the transition. We explore the combination of relational, informational, and procedural acts comprising the transitions and find that all three components are present across transitions, but in different proportions and orders. Understanding the role of out-of-keeping acts in negotiations facilitates a more complete picture of the microprocesses involved in the creation of critical moments in negotiations.