Mapping Developmental Precursors of Cyber-Aggression: Trajectories of Risk Predict Perpetration and Victimization

Technologically mediated contexts are social arenas in which adolescents can be both perpetrators and victims of aggression. Yet, there remains little understanding of the developmental etiology of cyber aggression, itself, as experienced by either perpetrators or victims. The current study examines 3-year latent within-person trajectories of known correlates of cyber-aggression: problem behavior, (low) self-esteem, and depressed mood, in a large and diverse sample of youth (N = 1,364; 54.6 % female; 12–14 years old at T1). Findings demonstrate that developmental increases in problem behavior across grades 8–10 predict both cyber-perpetration and victimization in grade 11. Developmental decreases in self-esteem also predicted both grade 11 perpetration and victimization. Finally, early depressed mood predicted both perpetration and victimization later on, regardless of developmental change in depressed mood in the interim. Our results reveal a clear link between risky developmental trajectories across the early high school years and later cyber-aggression and imply that mitigating trajectories of risk early on may lead to decreases in cyber-aggression at a later date.     

Afterschool Youth Program Design and Structural Quality: Implications for Quality Improvement

This study examined quality and afterschool program designs with a focus on conditions of persistent low quality. Using an action science case study method, data from a quality-improvement project were examined to explore circumstances and reasons for low quality. Four identified program designs varied by emphasis on academics, school alignment, physical space, resources, and grouping strategies, as well as by the operationalization of youth choice. These program design features were found to be dynamically interrelated and key elements of structural quality yet were not found to be targets of state, funder, or agency quality improvement interventions guided by the current broad theory of change for quality initiatives. Structural quality, conceptualized as dynamic and interdependent, may be a prerequisite condition for self-directed quality improvement or a focus of targeted quality interventions.     

Gender and Change: agency,chronology and periodisation ALEXANDRA SHEPARD & GARTHINE WALKER

The following books are reviewed.

Unequal Sisters: a multicultural reader in US women's history ELLEN CAROL DUBOIS &; VICKI L. RUIZ (Eds∥, 1990 New York: Routledge. xvi + 473pp, paperback £12.99, hardback £40.00

The Bluestocking Circle: women, friendship, and the life of the mind in eighteenth-century England SYLVIA HARCSTARK MYERS, 1990 Oxford: Clarendon Press. xvi + 342 pp., £35.00

Slave Women in Caribbean Society, 1650-1838 BARBARA BUSH, 1990 James Currey (London), in conjunction with Heinemann (Kingston) and Indiana University Press (Bloomington). v + 190pp., paperback £8.95, hardback £25.00.

The Muses of Resistance: labouring-class women's poetry in Britain, 1739-96 DONNA LANDRY, 1990 Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. x + 325 pp., £30.00.

Theorizing Patriarchy SYLVIA WALBY, 1990 Oxford: Basil Blackwell. 229 pp., £10.95

Women in an Industrialising Society, 1750-1880 JANE RENDALL, 1990 Oxford: Basil Blackwell. 112 pp., £4.95

Women and Industrialisation: gender at work in nineteenth century England JUDY LOWN, 1990 Cambridge: Polity Press. xi + 260pp., £27.50

Women and Revolution in Yugoslavia, 1941-45 BARBARA JANCAR-WEBSTER, 1990 Denver: Arden Press. xvi + 227 pp., hardback $26.50, paperback $16.95

Getting Smart: feminist research and pedagogy within the postmodern world PATTI LATHER, 1991 London: Routledge. xv + 212 pp., £30.00

Not a Passing Phase: reclaiming lesbians in history, 1840-1985 LESBIAN HISTORY GROUP, 1989 London: The Women's Press. 264 pp., £7.95

Women in Early Modern Ireland MARGARET MACCURTAIN &; MARY O. DOWD, 1991 Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. x + 340pp., £35.00

The Best Type of Girl: a history of girls. independent schools GILLIAN AVERY, 1991 London: André Deutsch. xiii + 410 pp., £20.00

Women of the New Mexico Frontier, 1846-1912 CHERYL J. FOOTE, 1990 Niwot: University Press of Colorado. xviii £ 198 pp., $19.95

Feminism and the Family in England, 1880-1939 CAROL DYHOUSE, 1989 Oxford: Basil Blackwell. 204 pp., hardback £29.50, paperback £7.50

Women Engravers PATRICIA JAFFE, 1990 London: Virago Press. 128 pp., many illustrations, £9.99     

‘I get together with my friends and try to change it’. Young feminist students resist ‘laddism’, ‘rape culture’ and ‘everyday sexism’

Abstract

Contemporary alarm about ‘laddism’ reveals what feminist research and activism has long-recognised; universities, like other social institutions, can be dangerous places for women. Research in the US and, more recently, the UK reveals alarming rates of violence, against women, the cultural and institutional norms which support violence and gaps in institutional responses. In the midst of this contemporary alarm about the university as a hotbed of laddism, there is a risk that the university – a site of potential empowerment and liberation for women (and men) – becomes re-positioned as a danger zone. The limited focus on danger and safety belies the potential of universities to enhance human freedoms through intellectual endeavour. We argue this progressive potential should remain centre-stage, as should university-based resistance to everyday sexism and laddism. This paper analyses accounts of young women feminists (n = 33) in UK and US universities. It explores their use of feminism and features of the university environment to resist and challenge oppressive cultures and practices. It argues that, despite encroaching neoliberalism and enduring sexism, universities continue to provide environments for engagements with feminism, enabling young women students to use feminism to resist and challenge sexism and to envision their feminist futures.     

Claiming Fatherhood: Race and the Dynamics of Paternal Involvement among Unmarried Men

In 1965, Daniel Patrick Moynihan argued that the black family was nearing "complete breakdown" due to high rates of out-of-wedlock childbearing. In subsequent decades, nonmarital childbearing rose dramatically for all racial groups and unwed fathers were often portrayed as being absent from their children's lives. The authors examine contemporary nonmarital father involvement using quantitative evidence from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study and qualitative evidence from in-depth interviews with 150 unmarried fathers. The authors find that father involvement drops sharply after parents' relationships end, especially when they enter subsequent relationships and have children with new partners. These declines are less dramatic for African American fathers, suggesting that fathers' roles outside of conjugal relationships may be more strongly institutionalized in the black community. The challenges Moynihan described among black families some forty years ago now extend to a significant minority of all American children.     

Getting Performance from Performance Management: A Framework for Strategic Management Choices

The choices for optimal performance management depend upon the circumstances – there is no single ideal management approach. The principals have three basic tools available to encourage high performance from subordinate entities: they can delegate authority, impose rewards or sanctions, and/or develop (or enhance) a performance measurement system. These tools allow the principals to motivate, delegate, educate, reevaluate, and/or reassign the agent in order to generate increased learning and improved outcomes from the program. Thus, depending on the nature of the agency culture and the quality of the performance measures, different managerial responses will have different results.     

Public–Private Partnerships and the Public Accountability Question

Public–private partnerships (PPPs) are growing in popularity as a governing model for delivery of public goods and services. PPPs have existed since the Roman Empire, but their expansion into traditional public projects today raises serious questions about public accountability. This article examines public accountability and its application to government and private firms involved in PPPs. An analytical framework is proposed for assessing the extent to which PPPs provide (or will provide) goods and services consistent with public sector goals of effectiveness, efficiency, and equity. Six dimensions—risk, costs and benefits, political and social impacts, expertise, collaboration, and performance measurement—are incorporated into a model that assists public managers in improving partnerships’ public accountability.     

Locus of peer influence: Social crowd and best friend

This study examined the relative influence of the best friends and social crowds of older adolescents on cigarette smoking. The data were examined to determine if there were differences in influence as a function of sex, conformity, or the mutuality of the friendship. This study used a longitudinal design that enabled the separation of the effects of peer influence from those of selective association. The results showed that social crowds differed in mean level of cigarette smoking, with burnouts smoking the most and jock/preps smoking the least. The majority of best friendships were homogeneous for social crowd. Best friend influence predicted change in cigarette smoking over a one-year period, while social crowd influence appeared to be minimal. Conformity was positively related to susceptibility to peer influence, although mutuality of the friendship and sex of the subject were not.This research was supported by NIH grant HD18425 awarded to Kathryn Urberg.Obtained Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin in the Department of Educational Psychology. A developmental psychologist, her major area of interest is adolescent social development.