DOMESTIC VIOLENCE AND WOMEN'S MENTAL HEALTH IN CHILE

Domestic violence against women is a pervasive, global health problem. This study investigates the correlates and psychological outcomes of domestic abuse among women in a semi-industrial country. The participants included 215 mothers residing in working-class communities located on the outskirts of Santiago, Chile. We utilized structural equation modeling to test the hypothesis that poverty and other structural inequalities would be related to incidents of domestic abuse in Chile, as they are in the United States. Our results suggest that lower socioeconomic status, even within poor communities, and stressful life events have a direct relationship to domestic conflict. Domestic abuse was, in turn, associated with women's mental health such that greater domestic conflict was related to higher reports of depressive affect and symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder. The importance of identifying similarities and differences in the occurrence of domestic violence in developing countries as compared to industrialized countries is discussed.     

ATTRIBUTIONS OF THE TERM FEMINIST: A FACTOR ANALYTIC DEVELOPMENT OF A MEASURING INSTRUMENT

This study attempts to develop a measure of the attributions of the term feminist . Seven hundred and sixty-eight undergraduate students (361 males and 407 females) completed a 91-item semantic differential test relevant to the label feminist . Principal components analysis with orthogonal rotation produced five factors indicating that when the term feminist is used, attributions of General Evaluation, Behavioral Characteristics, Political Orientation, Sexual Preference, and Gender Classification are likely to be made. Factor analysis of split halves of the sample shows an internal replication and consequently, a stability of the obtained factor structure. This study presents students' judgments on specific items defining these factors, thereby indicating the evaluative associations of the term.     

Prereading Deficits in Children in Foster Care

Reading skills are core competencies in children's readiness to learn and may be particularly important for children in foster care, who are at risk for academic difficulties and higher rates of special education placement. In this study, prereading skills (phonological awareness, alphabetic knowledge, and oral language ability) and kindergarten performance of 63 children in foster care were examined just prior to and during the fall of kindergarten. The children exhibited prereading deficits with average prereading scores that fell at the 30(th) to 40(th) percentile. Variations in prereading skills (particularly phonological awareness) predicted kindergarten teacher ratings of early literacy skills in a multivariate path analysis. These findings highlight the need for interventions focused on prereading skills for children in foster care.     

Some ideas for beginners on using a microcomputer in an introductory psychology class

This tutorial workshop presented several microcomputer applications for a large introductory psychology class with limited equipment. Applications demonstrated were word processing, gradebook management, and demonstrations.     

National Suicide Rates a Century after Durkheim: Do We Know Enough to Estimate Error?

Durkheim's nineteenth‐century analysis of national suicide rates dismissed prior concerns about mortality data fidelity. Over the intervening century, however, evidence documenting various types of error in suicide data has only mounted, and surprising levels of such error continue to be routinely uncovered. Yet the annual suicide rate remains the most widely used population‐level suicide metric today. After reviewing the unique sources of bias incurred during stages of suicide data collection and concatenation, we propose a model designed to uniformly estimate error in future studies. A standardized method of error estimation uniformly applied to mortality data could produce data capable of promoting high quality analyses of cross‐national research questions.