Paternal Caregivers’ Parenting Practices and Psychological Functioning among African American Youth Living in Urban Public Housing

Structural factors associated with public housing contribute to living environments that expose families to adverse life events that may in turn directly impact parenting and youth outcomes. However, despite the growth in research on fathers, research on families in public housing has practically excluded fathers and the role fathers play in the well‐being of their adolescents. Using a sample of 660 African American adolescents recruited from public housing, we examined the relationship between paternal caregivers’ (i.e., fathers’ and father figures’) parenting practices and adolescents’ depressive symptoms, attitudes toward deviance, and self‐efficacy. Using a latent profile analysis (LPA), we confirmed a four‐class model of paternal parenting practices ranging from high to low levels of monitoring and encouragement. Results from a one‐way ANOVA indicated that paternal caregivers with high (compared to moderate) levels of encouragement and monitoring were associated with youth who reported less depressive symptoms, higher levels of self‐efficacy, and less favorable attitudes toward deviance. Discriminant analysis results indicated that approximately half of the sample were correctly classified into two paternal caregiver classes. The findings provide evidence that some of these caregivers engage in parenting practices that support youths’ psychological functioning. More research is needed to determine what accounts for the variability in levels of paternal encouragement and supervision, including environmental influences, particularly for paternal caregivers exhibiting moderate‐to‐low levels of paternal encouragement and monitoring.     

Tests of Objectification Theory in Gay, Lesbian, and Heterosexual Community Samples: Mixed Evidence for Proposed Pathways

Objectification theory (Fredrickson and Roberts 1997) proposes that women are especially vulnerable to eating disordered behavior when they live in cultures in which their bodies are a constant focus of evaluation. The current study examined whether predictions of objectification theory involving the associations among sexual objectification, body surveillance, body shame, and eating disordered behavior were supported in groups that varied by both gender and sexual orientation. Adults from a U.S. community sample in the Chicago area (92 heterosexual women; 102 heterosexual men; 87 gay men; and 99 lesbian women) completed self-report measures of these constructs. Results suggest that group differences in experiences of sexual objectification and body surveillance may partially explain gender and sexual orientation-based differences in eating disordered behavior.     

Research Ethics in a Business School Context: The Establishment of a Review Committee and the Primary Issues of Concern

This paper describes the establishment of and the issues experienced by the Research Ethics Committee (REC) of a Business School within a University in Ireland. It identifies the issue of voluntarily given informed consent as a key challenge for RECs operating in a Business School context. The paper argues that whilst the typology of ethical issues in business research are similar to the wider social sciences, the fact that much research is carried out in the workplace adds to the complexity of the REC deliberations. The use of deception in the design of research studies, pestering the local community and the potential for harm to the researcher are also discussed briefly in the context of business research. The experiences of the authors’, two of whom have served as respective chairpersons of the business school REC since its inception in addition to being members of the university level REC, inform the discussion.     

Dressed for the Occasion: Font‐Product Congruity in the Perception of Logotype

Styles of lettering (i.e., fonts) can differ in their appropriateness for describing certain types of brands and products. We use the Osgood dimensions of evaluation, potency, and activity to measure the connotative meaning of fonts and product categories. Judgments of the appropriateness of a font for a product partly depend on the consistency between the connotative meaning of the font and that of the product along dimensions of potency and activity. However, its perceived appropriateness also depends on the connotative meaning of the font per se, indeendent of the type of product being described. These differences are also evident when participants choose a company to call on the basis of ads similar to those found in the Yellow Pages. Finally, the effect of the meaning that people assign to a font is similar to the effect of the meaning they assign to the product's name itself.     

Clericalism,Religious Duress and its Psychological Impact on Victims of Clergy Sexual Abuse

Religious duress is a unique kind of threat and constraint involuntarily experienced by some members of the Roman Catholic Church as a result of religious indoctrination and training. Fear, awe and respect for the clergy foster the development and actualization of religious duress. This phenomenon can seriously impede a person’s capacity to accurately perceive and evaluate abusive actions perpetrated on them by clergy. This constraint poses an impediment to emotional and spiritual development. Internalized religious duress confuses and psychologically overwhelms such individuals and renders them incapable of absorbing their sexual trauma. The consequent feelings of numbness and immobility distort the perception of reality. It then becomes impossible for the individual to act in a manner that would protect and promote emotional growth and spiritual well being.     

The New Interventionism

This paper focuses on the boundaries of political sovereignty, one key aspect of global political justice and an important background condition to the issues of global economic justice treated in the other papers of this volume. I first present an interpretive summary of the traditional arguments against and for intervention, stressing, to a greater extent than is usual, the consequentialist character of the ethics of intervention. It makes a difference whether we think that an intervention will do more good than harm, and some of the factors that determine the outcome are matters of strategy and institutional choice. I then explore the significance of a key factor that makes for much of what is new in the new interventionism: the role of multilateral and particularly U.N. authorization and implementation. I argue that the more salient role of the United Nations should lead us to a more expansive tolerance of international intervention and that global standards of justice, both political and economic, can therefore be more widely enforced against claims to national autonomy.