Discrimination and Mexican-Origin Adolescents’ Adjustment: The Moderating Roles of Adolescents’, Mothers’, and Fathers’ Cultural Orientations and Values

Drawing on García Coll et al.’s integrative framework and the risk and resilience model, this study examined the relationships between adolescents’ perceived discrimination and psychosocial adjustment and the moderating roles of adolescents’, mothers’, and fathers’ cultural orientations and values, and adolescent gender in a sample of 246 Mexican-origin families. Using multilevel modeling with data from mothers, fathers, seventh graders (M _age = 12.8 years; SD = .57 year) and older siblings (M _age = 15.7 years; SD = 1.5 years), findings revealed that perceived discrimination was positively related to depression, risky behaviors, and deviant peer affiliations. In addition, parents’ cultural orientations and values and adolescent gender moderated the relationships between perceived discrimination and some indicators of adjustment. These findings suggest that parents’ cultural orientations and values can serve as protective and vulnerability factors in the associations between Mexican-origin adolescents’ perceived discrimination and their psychosocial adjustment.     

The "other diseases" of the Millennium Development Goals: rhetoric and reality of free drug distribution to cure the poor's parasites

The sixth MDG aims 'to combat HIV/AIDS, TB, malaria and other diseases'. The residual category of 'other diseases' has become the focus of intense interest, partly because it has provided an opportunity to increase resources for the control of the mostly parasitic 'neglected tropical diseases' (NTDs). Intense lobbying has secured large amounts of funding from donors, as well as generous donations of medicines from the major drug companies. A massive programme is now underway to treat the parasites of the poor in Africa via integrated vertical interventions of mass drug administration in endemic areas. The approach has been hailed as remarkably effective, with claims that there is now a real prospect of complete control and, for some NTDs, even elimination. However, a closer look at evaluation and research data reveals that much less is known about what is being achieved than is suggested. Competition between implementing organisations is leading to potentially counterproductive exaggerations about treatment coverage. Detailed local-level research in Uganda and Tanzania shows that actual rates of drug take-up among target populations are often lower than is necessary to effectively control the diseases, and that methods of drug distribution may even lead to active resistance to treatment. If current trends are not corrected, declining rates of NTD infection will not be sustained. Much more rigorous and effective monitoring is essential.     

Using law to fight a silent epidemic: the role of health literacy in health care access, quality, & cost

The dominant rhetoric in the health care policy debate about cost has assumed an inherent tension between access and quality on the one hand, and cost effectiveness on the other; but an emerging discourse has challenged this narrative by presenting a more nuanced relationship between access, quality, and cost. This is reflected in the discourse surrounding health literacy, which is viewed as an important tool for achieving all three goals. Health literacy refers to one's ability to obtain, understand and use health information to make appropriate health decisions. Research shows that improving patients' health literacy can help overcome access barriers and empower patients to be better health care partners, which should lead to better health outcomes. Promoting health literacy can also reduce expenditures for unnecessary or inappropriate treatment. This explains why, as a policy matter, improving health literacy is an objective that has been embraced by almost every sector of the health care system. As a legal matter, however, the role of health literacy in ensuring quality and access is not as prominent. Although the health literacy movement is relatively young, it has roots in longstanding bioethical principles of patient autonomy, beneficence, and justice as well as the corresponding legal principles of informed consent, the right to quality care, and antidiscrimination. Assumptions and concerns about health literacy seem to do important, yet subtle work in these legal doctrines--influencing conclusions about patient understanding in informed consent cases, animating decisions about patient responsibility in malpractice cases, and underlying regulatory guidance concerning the quality of language assistance services that are necessary for meaningful access to care. Nonetheless, health literacy is not explicitly treated as a legally relevant factor in these doctrines. Moreover, there is no coherent legal framework for incorporating health literacy research that challenges traditional assumptions about patient comprehension and decision-making, and that emphasizes the need for providers to improve communication and take affirmative steps to assess patient understanding. The absence of a clear and robust consideration of health literacy in these doctrines undermines core access and quality aims, and it means that such laws are of limited efficacy in promoting health literacy. Returning to the theme that the health literacy problem reflects a complementary view of access, quality and cost, it is likely that the cost implications of this problem (and not concerns about quality and access) will motivate the kind of health literacy reform that may ultimately strengthen existing quality and access standards. One recent example of this can be seen in reforms linked to government, insurer and provider attempts to reduce costly medication errors.     

The influence of rape myth acceptance,sexual attitudes,and belief in a just world on attributions of responsibility in a date rape scenario

Purpose. The purpose of this study was to examine the influence of rape myth acceptance, belief in a just world, and sexual attitudes on attributions of responsibility in a date rape scenario. We predicted that people higher in rape myth acceptance and those who more strongly believed in a just world, as well as those who held more conservative sexual attitudes, would attribute greater blame to the accuser than to the accused. Methods. One hundred seventy‐two undergraduates from a medium‐sized, Catholic university in the USA read a hypothetical date rape scenario and completed the Rape Myth Acceptance Scale, the Just World Scale, the Sexual Attitudes Scale, and a Judgment Questionnaire constructed for the current study. Results. Rape myth acceptance mediated the relationship between gender and judgments of responsibility for the accused and the accuser. Men were more likely to endorse rape myths and, consequently, assign less responsibility to the accused and more responsibility to the accuser than women. Conclusions. Pre‐existing beliefs regarding the nature of rape and the circumstances surrounding it may bias attributions of responsibility in date rape cases. There may be utility in addressing whether jurors hold such beliefs prior to the start of a trial.     

Influence of confidence inflation and explanations for changes in confidence on evaluations of eyewitness identification accuracy

Guidelines for conducting police line‐ups typically recommend immediate assessment of eyewitness confidence following identification. This confidence level can presumably be used to estimate accuracy even in the presence of subsequently inflated confidence. In this experiment, we examined students' perceptions of immediate and inflated confidence and whether their reliance on confidence varies as a function of the explanations given by the eyewitness for her inflated confidence. Each of 126 university students viewed one of five versions of a videotaped officer–eyewitness interaction depicting an eyewitness identification and follow‐up interview in which the eyewitness gave a (1) high or (2) moderate level of confidence or inflated her confidence and gave a (3) confidence epiphany, (4) memory contamination, or (5) no explanation for the inflation. The memory contamination and confidence epiphany explanations led to lower ratings of identification accuracy as compared to the high‐confidence control condition, supporting the immediate confidence recommendation but in some ways contradicting previous research on this issue. The results suggest the need for further research to understand the conditions under which confidence inflation influences juror evaluations of eyewitness identification.     

The decision to lobby bureaucrats

Despite a good deal of interest in lobbyists?? tactics, virtually no research has been published examining the conditions under which interest groups lobby the bureaucracy rather than or in addition to the legislature. Using two comprehensive datasets, I show that lobbying increases in both branches when conflict is higher and when the lobbyist has professional or political connections to that venue. In addition, certain conditions cause lobbyists to specialize in one branch or a particular branch only, depending on the issue area being lobbied, the interest group type being represented, the lobbyist??s resources, and other factors.     

Grizzly Bear conservation in the Foothills Model Forest: appraisal of a collaborative ecosystem management effort

In west-central Alberta, Canada, an ambitious collaborative conservation program for grizzly bears began in 1999, after extensive controversy over the Cheviot coal mine project and successful negotiation of a unique federal–provincial strategic framework for grizzly bear conservation. Unfortunately that program was effectively terminated without any substantive implementation of its research findings. The regional ecosystem approach for conserving grizzlies in the Foothills Model Forest originated in federal and provincial legislative processes but proved vulnerable to shifting goals and containment by a single powerful participant. This case study’s results demonstrate vulnerabilities of the ecosystem management approach to conserving large carnivores. To enable other such conservation efforts to achieve their goals, we recommend supporting emergent small-scale initiatives and designing collaborative institutions that limit the potential for containment of decision processes.     

The Mental Health of 13–17 Year-Olds in Australia: Findings from the National Survey of Mental Health and Well-Being

The prevalence of 3 mental disorders (Depressive Disorder, Conduct Disorder and Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder), the prevalence of mental health problems, and rates of health-risk behaviours among those with problems, along with patterns of service utilisation, are reported for 1490 adolescents aged 13–17 years in Australia. Mental disorders were assessed using the Diagnostic Interview Schedule for Children Version IV completed by parents. Parents and adolescents also completed standard questionnaires designed to assess mental health problems, health-risk behaviours and service use. On the basis of parent reports, 13% of adolescents were identified as having mental health problems, while 19% were identified as having problems on the basis of adolescent reports. Many of the adolescents with mental health problems also had problems in other areas of their lives. Only 31% of those identified by parents as having mental health problems and 20% of adolescents who identified themselves as having problems, had attended a professional service during the 6 months prior to the survey. School counselling was the service most frequently attended. Clinical and population health interventions must take into account the presence of co-morbid problems and low rates of health service usage reported amongst adolescents with mental health problems.

Internal Consistency and Factor Structure of the Revised Conflict Tactics Scales in a Sample of Deaf Female College Students

The Revised Conflict Tactics Scales (CTS2) is currently the most widely used measure for identifying cases of intimate partner violence within the hearing population. The CTS2 has been used successfully with individuals from various countries and cultural backgrounds. However, the CTS2 had not yet been used with Deaf individuals. The goal of the present study was to investigate the internal consistency reliability and the factor structure of the CTS2 within a sample of Deaf female college students. Psychometric analyses indicated that subscales measuring Victimization of Negotiation, Psychological Aggression, Physical Assault, and Injury proved both reliable and valid in the current sample. Three subscales did not evidence reliability and the factor structure was not valid for Perpetration items.