"Hay que ponerse en los zapatos del joven": adaptive parenting of adolescent children among Mexican-American parents residing in a dangerous neighborhood

We examined parenting of adolescents with Consensual Qualitative Research analyses of five 90-minute focus groups with 45 Mexican immigrant parents residing in a high-crime and low-income neighborhood. Parents identified gangs as their major challenge in parenting. Relatedly, they endorsed control-oriented practices to ensure the safety of their adolescents. In addition, parents used practices that aimed to build strong, trusting relationships with their adolescents. The co-occurrence of parenting strategies that promote strong parent-adolescent bonds along with strict monitoring highlights the need to conceptualize parenting with both controlling as well as supportive dimensions. Moreover, the parents' narratives pertaining to the dangers in their neighborhood suggest that interventions for Latino families should be not only consistent with their cultural heritage, but also grounded in the families' local neighborhood contexts.     

Being bicultural: a mixed-methods study of adolescents' implicitly and explicitly measured multiethnic identities

Understanding how ethnic identities develop in adolescence is currently limited by a reliance on self-report paper-and-pencil measures. This mixed-methods study presents a novel response time measure, the Multiethnic Identities Processing Task (MIPT), to quantify bicultural adolescents' implicit identifications with ethnic and racial identity labels. Eighty-four adolescents (age 14-21 years) of diverse ethnic and racial backgrounds self-identified as bicultural or not bicultural and described their ethnic identities, pride, and ethnic centrality during a brief interview. Participants were assigned to complete either the interview (self-prime) or the MIPT (no prime) first. Results indicate that bicultural adolescents readily endorsed a variety of ethnic and racial labels in the MIPT, reflecting their multifaceted identities. Younger bicultural adolescents showed a large inhibited response to the label "White," indicating some hesitation in deciding whether the label was "like me" or "not like me." Heart rate monitoring and qualitative analyses of interviews provide some insight into this pattern of results. Findings are discussed with respect to developmental theory, and the strengths of using both implicit and explicit measures to understand multiethnic identity development in adolescence.     

Comparative Study Between the Theory of Planned Behavior and the Value–Belief–Norm Model Regarding the Environment,on Spanish Housewives' Recycling Behavior

Environmental behaviors have been analyzed from different theoretical models. The theory of planned behavior emphasizes the attitudinal aspects associated with behavior, while the value–belief–norm model regarding the environment focuses on the importance of moral components when setting environmental behaviors in motion. The objective of this study was to analyze both models, comparing both their degree of fit and their predictive power regarding recycling behavior. To do so, we used a sample made up of 154 Spanish housewives. The results indicated that despite the fact that the theory of planned behavior is a general model for predicting and explaining behavior, it has a greater degree of fit and greater capacity to predict recycling behavior than the value–belief–norm model regarding the environment.     

Loneliness and mental health in a representative sample of community-dwelling Spanish older adults

Research seems to support loneliness as a risk factor for mental health problems in the elderly. Most studies analyzing the effects of loneliness on older adults' mental health have relied on convenience samples. In this study, the prevalence and predictors of feelings of loneliness were studied in a representative sample of 272 community-dwelling Spanish older adults. The potential of feelings of loneliness to significantly contribute to the explanation of mental health of the elderly was also explored. The percentage of people reporting feelings of loneliness was 23.1%. Being a woman, being older, living alone, having fewer economic resources, having lower perceived health, and being dissatisfied with the frequency of contact with relatives and friends were found to be significant predictors of feelings of loneliness. Loneliness contributed significantly to the explanation of mental health, even when other significant variables were statistically controlled. The results of this study suggest that loneliness is a relevant factor for the analysis and understanding of mental health in the elderly.     

A Case Study of Liberation Among Latino Immigrant Families Who Have Children with Disabilities

Latino immigrant families with children with disabilities experience multiple sources of oppression during their settlement process in the United States. Unfair social structures and dominant cultural values and norms and the way they influence the immigrants' personal life stories generate a cycle of oppression very difficult to break. This paper presents a case study of how a group of Latino parents carried out a process of liberation fueled by the generation of empowering community narratives (critical awareness leading to transformative action) that resulted from a community-university partnership. Participants initiated a process that led them to discover their own stories of oppression and create new stories; to deconstruct the dominant cultural narratives and modify existing ones; and to understand contexts for power sharing. This joint reflection and increased awareness propelled group members to take action by founding a grassroots organization to redress some of the injustices that were partly responsible for their oppression, thus generating shifts at the personal, relational, and collective levels. In light of the theory of liberation, we discuss the participants' development of critical awareness that led them to take action to address their unmet needs.     

Validation of the Spanish version of the Frankfurt Emotion Work Scales

This study presents the validity and reliability analysis of a questionnaire that assesses emotion work in the service sector. Emotion work is a term introduced by Hochschild (1983) and it refers to the expression of organizationally desirable emotions to influence the interactions with clients at work. The results show a 6-factor structure: Requirement to display Positive, Negative and Neutral Emotions, Sensitivity Requirements, Interaction Control and Emotional Dissonance. The analysis of the sub-scale scores reveals that the most frequently expressed emotions are positive, whereas negative emotions are expressed less frequently.     

Expressive prosodic patterns in individuals with Alzheimer's disease

This paper describes a useful technique for quantifying the degree of speech deficits in dementia of GDS 4 Alzheimer's type (DAT). Production of prosodic speech in DAT patients and healthy older controls was analysed using variation in fundamental frequency (F0) measures on a reading task. The prosogram computational model was used to analyze the prosodic contours of the speech samples, using melodic styling of F0 based on perceptual principles and prominence detection of spectral and amplitude fluctuations in the speech signal. Results revealed significant differences in most of these prosodic parameters among the DAT group. Normal pitch variation in speech and variations in syllable timing were reduced in the DAT group, these features cause "flat" speech prosody in these patients. These speech parameters may have diagnostic and prognostic value for Alzheimer's disease and therefore could be a useful aid in clinical trials.     

Psychosocial predictors of relapse in cocaine-dependent patients in treatment

Relapses in cocaine abusers in treatment are an important problem. The majority of patients are incapable of sustaining abstinence over any length of time. To identify the factors associated to relapses risk in the cocaine use can be an optimal choice to improve the treatment strategies. The aim of this study was to analyze relapse-risk factors in cocaine-dependent patients on treatment. Participants were 102 patients who had begun outpatient treatment at a public health center in Spain. Some functional areas and cocaine use are evaluated for a period of six months. A structural equations model was used to identify possible predictive variables. The results show that social-family environment and economic-employment situation were associated with greater risk of relapse. Likewise, the social-family environment was related to severity of addiction. It is concluded that the incorporation of family intervention strategies and vocational/employment counseling may help to reduce relapse rates in cocaine addicts receiving treatment.