PACT: A Collaborative Team Model for Treating High Conflict Families in Family Court

This article describes a court‐community model program for high conflict divorced families that is designed to reduce the level of inter‐parental conflict including: a) child exposure to inter‐parental conflict; and b) the frequency of re‐litigation over residential arrangements and parenting plans. The six‐session (16‐hour) program combines conflict resolution and group/community support. The program provides a “Personal Support Team” and “Personal Plan of Action” to help each parent control emotions and maintain agreement. The results of research conducted to explore the effect of the program on level of triangulation and inter‐parental conflict, as well as the frequency of re‐litigation over parenting plans, residential arrangements, and parenting time are reported.     

The Timeline Followback Interview to Assess Children’s Exposure to Partner Violence: Reliability and Validity

This study evaluated psychometric properties of the Timeline Followback interview—Children’s Exposure to Partner Violence (TLFB-CEPV), an event history calendar interview designed to assess children’s exposure to daily patterns of intimate partner violence. Participants were men (N = 107) entering batterer’s treatment, their female partners, and a custodial child (6–16 years). The TLFB-CEPV asked about days of partner physical aggression and children’s exposure to these episodes, and was administered to partners at pretreatment, posttreatment, 6 and 12 months. At each assessment, the percentage of days of any child exposure (PAE) and of children’s direct exposure (PDE) to violence were calculated. Parents completed measures of partner aggression and social desirability; parents, teachers, and children completed measures of children’s adjustment. TLFB-CEPV scores had excellent temporal stability and strong evidence of concurrent, discriminant, and criterion validity. Interrater agreement for TLFB-CEPV scores was moderate at initial assessment, but high at subsequent follow-up interviews. This project was supported, in part, by grants from the National Institute on Drug Abuse (R01DA12189, Fals-Stewart), the Alpha Foundation, and Old Dominion University.     

Substance use and PTSD symptoms impact the likelihood of rape and revictimization in college women

The present study utilized a mixed retrospective and prospective design with an 8-month follow-up period to test a model of revictimization that included multiple childhood (i.e., child sexual, physical, and emotional abuse) and situational variables (i.e., substance use, sexual behavior) for predicting rape among 276 college women. It was of particular interest to determine whether traumatic responses (e.g., posttraumatic symptomatology or risky behavior) increased vulnerability for revictimization. During the 8-month follow-up period, 9% of participants were raped; 88% of assaults involved substance use by the victim. Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptomatology predicted rape, substance use, and sexual behavior. Substance use, but not sexual behavior, mediated the relation between PTSD symptomatology and rape during the follow-up period. Sexual behavior indirectly impacted risk for rape via substance use. Results suggest that college women with PTSD symptomatology may be at greater risk for rape if they use substances to reduce distress.     

Active living as an institutional challenge: lessons from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's "Celebrate Fitness" program

Native American youth suffer disproportionately from a range of adverse health conditions. Empowering youth leaders to work on community-based solutions has proved effective in reducing tobacco use and gun violence and is now emerging as a promising approach to improving fitness and health. This article, based on direct observation and interviews with key informants, examines the implementation of a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation-funded project that gave tribal youth councils minigrants to design and run diverse projects that encourage physical activity in their communities. The article highlights the institutional challenges that confront health-promotion strategies for disadvantaged populations. Unless they take proper account of organizational, political, environmental, and cultural forces, funders' interventions have limited chances for success and sustainability.     

From early Confucian texts to aged care in China and abroad today： The evolution of filial piety and its implications

Filial piety has remained a cornerstone of aged care in Chinese communities for at least 2,000 years. This paper reviews understandings and practices of filial piety in China and among Chinese migrants to western countries. Five dimensions of filial piety are considered： living arrangements, support, respect, ancestral worship and gender norms. Although the meaning of and practices associated with filial piety may have changed over time, the ideal of filial piety is still highly relevant to aged care in Chinese communities today.     

Rough Terrain: Spatial Variation in Campaign Contributing and Volunteerism

We examine spatial patterns of mass political participation in the form of volunteering and donating to a major statewide election campaign. While these forms of participation are predictably associated with the political and socioeconomic characteristics of the precincts in which the participants reside, we find that these statistical relationships are spatially nonstationary. High-income neighborhoods, for example, are associated with stronger effects on participation at some locations more than at others. By using geographically weighted regression (GWR) to specify local regression parameters, we are able to capture the heterogeneity of contextual processes that generate the geographically uneven flow of volunteers and contributors into a political campaign. Since spatial nonstationarity may well be a rule rather than an exception in the study of many political phenomena, social scientific analyses should be mindful that relationships may vary by location.     

Vladimir Putin and the Reaffirmation of Central State Power

Using post-Soviet Kazakhstan as a conceptual point of departure, this article considers the role that proactive framing and persuasion play in ensuring regime survival in soft authoritarian contexts. Drawing on interviews, opinion polls, news media, and the scholarly literature, the authors use three examples—Kazakhstan's OSCE bid, the global financial crisis, and "Rakhatgate"—that highlight the regime's varying proportions of persuasive and coercive efforts. The ways a soft authoritarian leader responds to potentially threatening events are examined. Non-material sources of regime durability are analyzed as essentials for understanding authoritarian regime dynamics and, by implication, for developing a full theory of regime change.     

Democracy and Social Policy in Brazil: Advancing Basic Needs, Preserving Privileged Interests

Has democracy promoted poverty alleviation and equity‐enhancing reforms in Brazil, a country of striking inequality and destitution? The effects of an open, competitive political system have not been straightforward. Factors that would seem to work toward this goal include the voting power of poor people, the progressive 1988 Constitution, the activism of social movements, and governance since 1995 by presidents affiliated with center‐left and left parties. Yet these factors have been counterbalanced by the strong political influence and lobbying power of organized interests with a stake in preexisting arrangements of social protection and human capital formation. An analysis of four key federal sectors, social security, education, health care, and public assistance, illustrates the challenges for social sector reforms that go beyond raising basic living standards to enhancing socioeconomic inequality.     

Procedural Justice in Family Conflict Resolution and Deviant Peer Group Involvement Among Adolescents: The Mediating Influence of Peer Conflict

The involvement of adolescents with deviant peer groups is one of the strongest proximal correlates to juvenile delinquency and stems from a variety of causes. Past research has linked ineffective parenting with peer variables, including deviant peer group involvement and peer conflict during adolescence. In this study, adolescents’ appraisals of procedural justice within the family (adolescents’ appraisals of how fairly they are treated by parents in the process of resolving family conflict) were examined as one aspect of effective parenting that may relate to deviant peer group involvement in early adolescence. Data from 1660 middle school students (ages 11–14, mean = 12.6) indicated that higher appraisals by adolescents of procedural justice during family conflict resolution were related to lower levels of both peer conflict and deviant peer group involvement. A structural model was tested in which the relationship between adolescents’ appraisals of procedural justice in the family and deviant peer group involvement was partially mediated by measures of peer conflict. This model was found to have adequate fit to the data, indicating that part of the relationship between procedural justice appraisals and deviant peer group involvement can be explained by levels of peer conflict. Implications of these findings are discussed.