Procedural justice perceptions,legitimacy beliefs,and compliance with the law: a meta-analysis

Journal of Experimental Criminology - The purpose of this study was to compare procedural justice and legitimacy as correlates and predictors of compliance with the law. A literature review...     

The onset of suicidal ideation in childhood and adolescence

Event history analysis is used to address questions about the timing of first suicidal ideation during preadolescence and adolescence. Are suicidal thoughts atypical during development? Does the age trajectory of suicidal thoughts parallel that of suicidal actions? Do factors that moderate the risk of suicidal actions also moderate the risk of suicidal thoughts, and does their influence vary by developmental stage? Based on life history data from 364 college students, results indicate that suicidal thoughts in childhood are typical and that the risk of such thoughts begins to increase by age nine. Risk rates are affected by demographic factors (gender, race) and by the experience of parental absence. However, the influence of these factors depends on developmental stage, with whites being at increased risk only during adolescence, and parental absence having its strongest effect during preadolescence. In sum, this study suggests that many children and adolescents contemplate suicide, that the risk of doing so begins to increase at an early age, and that clear similarities exist between those groups at heightened risk for suicidal thought and those at heightened risk for suicidal action. Moreover, this study illustrates the power of employing an analytic technique suitable for modeling transitions. Finally, it highlights the need to model differential influences on suicidal ideation at different stages in development.     

Coping with Maternal Depressed Affect and Depression: Adolescent Children of Depressed and Well Mothers

This study examined the strategies adolescents use to cope with their mothers' depressive symptoms and/or episodes. An open-ended semistructured interview and a closed-ended coping scale, the Maternal Affectivity Coping Scale derived from the Self-Report Coping Scale (D. L. Causey and E. F. Dubow [1992] Development of a Self-Report Measure for Elementary School Children, Journal of Clinical Child Psychology, Vol. 21, pp. 47–59), was administered to pairs of adolescent siblings (N = 179) from families (N = 94) in which the mother was either depressed or well. With a few important exceptions, the results reveal similar coping styles in the offspring of depressed and well mothers. One difference was that mothers' current psychological distress was weakly related to young adolescents' coping patterns (e.g., problem solving, externalizing). Also, adolescents' coping styles (e.g., provide support) were related to the type of depressive symptoms the mother exhibited (e.g., anger, irritability). Second, greater sibling differences were found for emotion-focused coping strategies (e.g., distancing) in children of depressed mothers than in children of well mothers. Third, the results suggest that the sex of the adolescent may be important in attempting to understand individual differences in coping. Females were more likely than males to engage in interpersonally focused coping strategies (e.g., provide support to their mother, seek support from others). The feelings of responsibility for contributing to their mother's depression that were more evident in females than males may offer some insight into gender differences and may also have implications for placing females at higher risk for internalizing disorders.