Suicide attempts and stressful life events among female victims of intimate partner violence living in poverty in Nicaragua

This article describes a study of 136 female intimate partner violence victims living in poverty in Nicaragua. The paper aimed to analyze the relationship between experiencing stressful life events (SLE) and perceived social support with suicide attempts, and to evaluate the differences in the SLE experienced by female suicide attempters versus non‐attempters. The results showed the existence of a high level of SLE among the interviewees, and that women who have attempted suicide have experienced substantially more of these events. Experiences of violence and less social support were especially related to suicide attempts among the interviewees.     

Construction and interpretation by kindergarten and primary school children of a calendar organized in tabular form / Construcción e interpretación de la organización tabular de un calendario en niños de infantil y primaria

Abstract

This study focuses on the performance of children managing double-entries in a weekly calendar. One hundred and four kindergarten and primary school children were interviewed and asked to solve weekly calendar construction and interpretation tasks using cards. The results show a difference between school year levels in the adequate management of a double-entry table when children construct and interpret a calendar; the interpretation process is less complex than the construction process. The results demonstrated that a deep understanding of a calendar requires using cognitive processes of varying degrees of difficulty and complexity. Therefore, there is a need to emphasize educational tasks which not only involve reading the calendar but which also explain its structure (double-entry) through construction tasks.     

The World at 7:00: Comparing the Experience of Situations Across 20 Countries

The purpose of this research is to quantitatively compare everyday situational experience around the world. Local collaborators recruited 5,447 members of college communities in 20 countries, who provided data via a Web site in 14 languages. Using the 89 items of the Riverside Situational Q‐sort (RSQ), participants described the situation they experienced the previous evening at 7:00 p.m. Correlations among the average situational profiles of each country ranged from r = .73 to r = .95; the typical situation was described as largely pleasant. Most similar were the United States/Canada; least similar were South Korea/Denmark. Japan had the most homogenous situational experience; South Korea, the least. The 15 RSQ items varying the most across countries described relatively negative aspects of situational experience; the 15 least varying items were more positive. Further analyses correlated RSQ items with national scores on six value dimensions, the Big Five traits, economic output, and population. Individualism, Neuroticism, Openness, and Gross Domestic Product yielded more significant correlations than expected by chance. Psychological research traditionally has paid more attention to the assessment of persons than of situations, a discrepancy that extends to cross‐cultural psychology. The present study demonstrates how cultures vary in situational experience in psychologically meaningful ways.     

Reversible phase transition in vanadium oxide films sputtered on metal substrates

Vanadium oxide films, deposited on aluminium (Al), titanium (Ti) and tantalum (Ta) metal substrates by pulsed RF magnetron sputtering at a working pressure of 1.5 x10^?2 mbar at room temperature are found to display mixed crystalline vanadium oxide phases viz., VO₂, V₂O₃, V₂O₅. The films have been characterized by field-emission scanning electron microscopy, X-ray diffraction, differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, and their thermo-optical and electrical properties have been investigated. Studies of the deposited films by DSC have revealed a reversible-phase transition found in the temperature range of 45–49 °C.     

Reluctance to Use Host Social Services by Ethnic Minorities: The Role of Consensual Separation,Threat to Heritage Culture and Misunderstanding of the Host Society Language

The main goal of this study was to examine the relationships between two types of separation orientations, namely forced and consensual separation, and the use of French social service community centers. Participants were two groups of young women, both members of ethnic minorities: Turkish (n?=?42) and North African (n?=?41). The results showed that young Turkish women were more oriented towards consensual separation than young North African women. Preference for a separation strategy was positively associated with both the perception of a threat to heritage culture and difficulties in understanding the language of the social workers. The more participants perceived social workers as a source of threat to their heritage culture and as speaking a language they had difficulty understanding, the less frequently they made use of the services offered at the community centers. Socio-demographic variables such as education level and marital status were found to play a significant role in these findings.     

Using Autonomous Teams to Improve Quality of Life of People with Intellectual Disabilities

Applied Research in Quality of Life - This research study tested an intervention, based on autonomous teams and the service co-creation approach, to improve the social inclusion and...