Culturally Sensitive Risk Behavior Prevention Programs for African American Adolescents: A Systematic Analysis

The current review conducted a systematic assessment of culturally sensitive risk prevention programs for African American adolescents. Prevention programs meeting the inclusion and exclusion criteria were evaluated across several domains: (1) theoretical orientation and foundation; (2) methodological rigor; (3) level of cultural integration; (4) program target or domain (e.g., schools, communities, families); (5) outcome change level assessed (e.g., addressing change in beliefs/values or behaviors); and (6) program effects on risk behaviors. Thirteen studies (N = 13) with adolescent participants ranging from 10 to 18 years were identified and evaluated. Analyses suggested that more effective culturally sensitive risk prevention programs included the following: (1) a clearly articulated theoretical orientation, which utilized both universal (e.g., behavioral theories) and culturally specific (e.g., Africultural theories) frameworks; (2) a rigorous methodological design (e.g., inclusion of control group, utilization of program manuals, valid and reliable study measures); (3) an integration of culture at multiple levels (e.g., accessibility, delivery, and content) of programming; (4) consideration of the influence of multiple contexts and domains (e.g., family, community, school); (5) multiple behavior change outcomes (e.g., behaviors, relationships, values); and (6) sustained program effects over time. Recommendations for increasing the effectiveness and efficacy of culturally sensitive prevention programs are discussed.     

Counting niqabs and burqas in Denmark: Methodological Aspects of Quantifying Rare and Elusive Religious Sub-cultures

Muslim women wearing face-covering clothing are the subject of politically heated debates in a number of European countries, but reliable data on the number of these women (niqabis) are generally lacking. At the request of the Danish government, the authors conducted a survey of niqabis in Denmark; this work is the first attempt to quantify niqabis in a European country by sampling new data from several different kinds of sources. Sociologically, niqabis represent a rare and elusive group, which presents particular methodological challenges. The methods discussed and used, such as stratified sampling, use of key informants, and location sampling, are relevant in the studies of many contemporary religious sub-cultures. Extensive triangulation of the different data provided an estimated number of niqabis of 150, with an uncertainty range of 100–200. This corresponds to 0.1–0.2% of Muslim women in Denmark. These figures tally with current rough estimates in other European countries.     

Youth gang affiliation,violence, and criminal activities: A review of motivational,risk, and protective factors

Youth gangs are a universal phenomenon attracting increasing attention; the criminal and antisocial behavior perpetuated by youth gangs has an adverse impact on local communities across the globe. Although there is an extensive body of research that has examined the problems posed by youth gangs in America (and more recently in other countries), there have been relatively fewer empirical studies that examined the factors and psychological processes that are related to youth joining and leaving gangs. This review compiles the international research on the nature of youth gangs and critically evaluates: (a) the factors that motivate engagement in and desistance from gang-related activities, (b) risk and protective factors that impact on youths' propensity for gang membership, delinquency, and violent behavior, and the adverse consequences associated with gang affiliation, and (c) the relationship between gang-affiliation, youth violence, and criminal behavior.     

Imagination and Will

1. Evoked potentials generated by cerebral self-stimulation were studied in white rats. Stimulus trains of 30 biphasic rectangular waves of various repetition rates (30, 50, 100, 150, 200 pps) were employed. The pulses were always 4 msec in width and of fixed intensity at all repetition rates for a given animal. Potential changes during a 2-second interval after the termination of a stimulus train were recorded from various points in the cerebral mass and averaged electronically.

2. The early portion of the 2-second interval was characterized by rhythmic oscillations in the alpha range whose number and amplitude were related to repetition rate of the rectangular waves within the stimulus train. The periodicity of the oscillations when they occurred was not so affected and remained practically constant over subjects, intensity of stimulus, and repetition rate.

3. The number of oscillations was greatest at 200 and 150 pps and diminished with diminishing stimulus repetition rates, the drop being greatest below 100 pps.

4. There was a positive covariation between the rate of lever pressing for self-stimulation and the phenomenon of rhythmic after oscillations in the evoked potential. Animals who refused to press the lever for cerebral self-stimulation showed no rhythmic potentials when the stimulus was delivered by E; animals who had become pressers gave good after-discharges when so stimulated.     

On Silencing,Rape, and Responsibility

In a recent article in this journal, Nellie Wieland argues that silencing in the sense put forward by Rae Langton and Jennifer Hornsby has the unpalatable consequence of diminishing a rapist's responsibility for the rape. We argue both that Wieland misidentifies Langton and Hornsby's conception of silencing, and that neither Langton and Hornsby's actual conception, nor the one that Wieland attributes to them, in fact generates this consequence.     

Sex and Sociocultural Correlates of Urinary Incontinence in Israeli Preschool Children

Urinary incontinence in children aged 2 to 6 years whose mothers varied in ethnic descent, in level of education, and in immigration status was studied in Israel. Mothers of 302 children were interviewed in well-baby clinics regarding primary and secondary urinary incontinence of their children. A significant age trend was found for attaining primary urinary continence. However, various interactions between mothers' ethnic descent, mothers' level of education, and mothers' immigration status were associated with different rates of primary and secondary urinary incontinence in their children. Moreover, sex differences in rates of primary and secondary urinary incontinence were also associated with mothers' ethnic descent and level of education. It is suggested that different levels of maternal emotional availability to the child in the various subgroups can account for most of the findings.     

Unrealistic beliefs of clinical couples: Their relationship to expectations,goals and satisfaction

Abstract

Forty-seven marital therapy couples completed inventories measuring unrealistic beliefs about self and unrealistic beliefs about marital relationships. In addition, they completed questionnaire measures of their expectations and goals for therapy and their levels of marital satisfaction. As hypothesized, the clients' unrealistic beliefs, particularly those regarding relationships, were negatively associated with their estimated chance for improvement in therapy, desire to improve rather than terminate the relationship, preference for marital versus individually oriented treatment, and overall marital satisfaction. These results are consistent with the theoretical rationale for cognitive therapy with clinical couples and suggest specific targets for intervention in this process. Directions for future research are discussed.     

Teaching About Racism: Pernicious Implications of the Standard Portrayal

Resonating with understandings prevalent among White Americans, psychologists tend to portray racism as a problem of individual prejudice rather than a systemically embedded phenomenon. An unintended consequence of this portrayal is to reproduce a narrow construction of racism as something that does not require energetic measures to combat. We describe 2 studies that provide support for this idea. Tutorials presented the topic of racism either as individual prejudice (standard condition) or as a systemic phenomenon embedded in American society (sociocultural condition). Results confirmed that perception of racism and (in Study 2) endorsement of antiracist policy were greater among participants in the sociocultural tutorial condition than among participants in the both the standard tutorial and no-tutorial control conditions. An ironic consequence of standard pedagogy may be to promote a modern form of scientific racism that understates the ongoing significance of racist oppression.     

Bayesian estimates of autocorrelations in single-case designs

Researchers in the single-case design tradition have debated the size and importance of the observed autocorrelations in those designs. All of the past estimates of the autocorrelation in that literature have taken the observed autocorrelation estimates as the data to be used in the debate. However, estimates of the autocorrelation are subject to great sampling error when the design has a small number of time points, as is typically the situation in single-case designs. Thus, a given observed autocorrelation may greatly over- or underestimate the corresponding population parameter. This article presents Bayesian estimates of the autocorrelation that greatly reduce the role of sampling error, as compared to past estimators. Simpler empirical Bayes estimates are presented first, in order to illustrate the fundamental notions of autocorrelation sampling error and shrinkage, followed by fully Bayesian estimates, and the difference between the two is explained. Scripts to do the analyses are available as supplemental materials. The analyses are illustrated using two examples from the single-case design literature. Bayesian estimation warrants wider use, not only in debates about the size of autocorrelations, but also in statistical methods that require an independent estimate of the autocorrelation to analyze the data.