Prevalence of Child and Adolescent Exposure to Community Violence

Emerging as one of the most significant health issues facing American youth today, child and adolescent exposure to community violence has generated much interest across multiple disciplines. Most research to date has focused on documenting the prevalence of community violence and the emotional and behavioral ramifications. This paper provides an overview of the current literature regarding prevalence of youth exposure to community violence, and identifies those areas where further research is warranted. In addition to examining overall rates of community violence exposure, this paper reviews the prevalence of different types of community violence, such as weapon use, physical aggression, and crime-related events. Predictors of community violence exposure, including gender, age, race, socioeconomic status, behavior patterns, and geography, are discussed.     

Faith Development in the Lives of HIV-Positive Adults

Studies of religious faith consistently document the important role of religion in the lives of adults. Investigations of adult religious faith also suggest that a life crisis can stimulate faith development. However, these earlier studies do not explain how a life-threatening crisis changes adult religious faith. This study examines the impact of an HIV-positive diagnosis on adult religious faith development. Interviews were conducted with 18 HIV-positive men and women under 45 years of age. The researchers found that an HIV-positive diagnosis affects faith development in these ways: the perspective of faith shifts from a religious to a spiritual orientation for which the participants feel a stronger sense of ownership; the concept of God changes from an authoritarian to an empowering figure, and views of the self are transformed to include others.     

Does the Order of Face-to-Face and Computer-Mediated Communication Matter in Diverse Project Teams? An Investigation of Communication Order Effects on Minority Inclusion and Participation

Purpose  

This study investigated whether meeting electronically first using computer-mediated communication (CMC) before meeting face-to-face (FTF) increases the inclusion of a female group member in a predominantly male project team.     

Health worker attitudes toward peer workers in hepatitis C prevention

Attitudes toward people who inject drugs (PWID) and attitudes toward peer workers among a cross-section of 101 Australian hepatitis C health workers were assessed. A survey consisting of Likert-type questions and one open-ended question regarding training was used. Bivariate and regression analyses demonstrated that health workers' attitudes toward peer workers were associated with their attitudes toward PWID, independent of type of organization or time in the hepatitis C sector. Qualitative analysis revealed four training areas suggested by health workers for peer workers. Implications of these findings for staff and peer training are discussed and future research directions suggested.     

Development and Psychometric Evaluation of the Social Justice Scale (SJS)

The study describes the development of the Social Justice Scale (SJS). Practitioners, educators, students, and other members of the community differ on their attitudes and values regarding social justice. It is important to assess, not only individuals' attitudes and values around social values, but also other constructs that might be related to social justice behaviors. The implication of Ajzen in Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes 50:179-211, (1991) theory of planned behavior suggests that attitudes, perceived behavioral control, and social norms predict intentions, which then lead to behaviors. A scale was designed to measure social justice-related values, attitudes, perceived behavioral control, subjective norms, and intentions based on a four-factor conception of Ajzen's theory. Confirmatory factor analysis and analyses for reliability and validity were used to test the properties of the scale.     

Working Memory Effects of Gap-Predictions in Normal Adults: An Event-Related Potentials Study

The current study examined the relationship between verbal memory span and the latency with which a filler-gap dependency is constructed. A previous behavioral study found that low span listeners did not exhibit antecedent reactivation at gap sites in relative clauses, in comparison to high verbal memory span subjects (Roberts et?al. in J Psycholinguist Res 36(2):175-188, 2007), which suggests that low span subjects are delayed at gap filling. This possibility was examined in the current study. Using an event-related potentials paradigm, it was found that low span subjects have an onset latency delay of about 200?ms in brain responses to violations of syntactic expectancies after the gap site, thus providing a time course measure of the delay hypothesized by previous literature.     

Locus of control as a contributing factor in the relation between self-perception and adolescent aggression

Researchers continue to debate the role of self-esteem in aggression, but research has shown a consistent association between narcissism and aggression in adults and adolescents [e.g., Barry et al., 2007; Bushman and Baumeister, 1998; Stucke, 2007]. The primary aim of the current study was to examine whether locus of control (LOC) moderated the relation between self-perception variables (i.e., self-esteem and narcissism) and aggression in adolescents. Participants were 174 youth (145 males, 26 females) between the ages of 16 and 19 who were enrolled in a voluntary residential program for youth who have dropped out of school. The results showed that LOC moderated the association between self-esteem and aggression such that low self-esteem was associated with higher levels of aggression for individuals with an external LOC. Contrary to expectations, LOC failed to moderate the narcissism-aggression relation. The implications of this study for understanding how self-perception is related to adolescent aggression are discussed.     

Indiscriminate behavior observed in the strange situation among institutionalized toddlers: Relations to caregiver report and to early family risk

Socially disinhibited or indiscriminate behavior (IB) has traditionally been investigated using caregiver reports. More recently, an observational measure based on the Strange Situation Procedure (M. Ainsworth, M. Blehar, E. Waters, & S. Wall, 1978), the Rating of Infant and Stranger Engagement (RISE; C. Riley, A. Atlas‐Corbett, & K. Lyons‐Ruth, 2005), was validated in home‐reared at‐risk children. The present study aimed to validate the RISE in an institutionally reared sample using the caregiver report, to assess whether IB assessed with the RISE was elevated among the institutionalized children, and to explore potential risk factors associated with IB. The study was conducted among 74 institutionalized toddlers aged 11 to 30 months. Sociodemographic questionnaires were used to assess pre‐admission experiences, and aspects of institutional placement were coded from the children's files in the institution and staff's report. Institutionalized children displayed high frequencies of IB as assessed on the RISE, and this instrument was validated against caregiver report. Pre‐admission experiences of the institutionalized children in their biological families—namely, prenatal risk and maternal emotional neglect risk—predicted IB. Results suggest that the RISE is adequate to use among institutionally reared toddlers and point to aspects of the early familial environment that may be implicated in IB.