Empowerment and Advocacy for Domestic Violence Victims

Empowering women victims of domestic violence has been a goal of advocacy since its inception. The concept of empowerment is also widely shared in social science disciplines where the goal of applied research is to address the lived effects of social injustice. While in some fields, such as community psychology, there has been a long history of engaging theoretically with the concept of empowerment, elsewhere theory has received less attention. In the case of addressing domestic violence, victim advocacy has often been assumed to be empowering. Advocates worked to establish support services for individual women and participate in coordinating community responses to domestic violence that included the criminal justice system so as to improve women's safety. The question of whether this kind of social action is empowering domestic violence victims has been discussed in the literature for almost a decade. In this paper, we consider a proposed theory of empowerment and recommendations of advocacy practices by Kasturirangan (2008) to consider how her conceptualisation of empowerment processes has influenced the field and whether it provides a scaffold for bridging the theoretical gaps that have been identified.     

Effects of Instructor Attractiveness on Learning

Although a considerable body of research has examined the impact of student attractiveness on instructors, little attention has been given to the influence of instructor attractiveness on students. This study tested the hypothesis that persons would perform significantly better on a learning task when they perceived their instructor to be high in physical attractiveness. To test the hypothesis, participants listened to an audio lecture while viewing a photograph of instructor. The photograph depicted either a physically attractive instructor or a less attractive instructor. Following the lecture, participants completed a forced choice recognition task covering material from the lecture. Consistent with the predictions; attractive instructors were associated with more learning. Finally, we replicated previous findings demonstrating the role attractiveness plays in person perception.     

The relation of parenting,child temperament,and attachment security in early childhood to social competence at school entry

A wealth of research demonstrates the importance of early parent–child interactions on children's social functioning. However, less is known about the interrelations between child and parent characteristics and parent–child interactions in early childhood. Moreover, few studies have broadly examined the longitudinal relations between these constructs and social competence. This study is an examination of the relations between parent responsiveness, negativity, and emotional supportiveness, attachment security, and child temperament, and their impact on children's social competence from infancy to kindergarten entry. The sample was derived from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study – Birth Cohort and included 6850 parent–child dyads. Observational and rating scale data were used. The proposed model was nearly fully supported by path analysis, and it provides insight into the complex relations between early parenting behaviors, child characteristics, and parent–child interactions in the development of social competence.     

Purpose in Life and Prayer Among Catholic and Protestant Adolescents in Northern Ireland

Data are provided from a sample of 2,670 young people aged between 13 and 15 years from Northern Ireland. This article compares the replies of 1,206 young people who attend a Catholic school and 1,464 young people who attend a Protestant school. The data examine the relationship between frequency of personal prayer, perceived purpose in life, sex, age, church attendance, and personality (extraversion, neuroticism, and psychoticism). These data demonstrate a clear relationship between frequency of prayer and perceived purpose in life among the young people from the Protestant and Catholic communities.     

Shaping Teachers' Interpretation of Spirituality: The Contribution of Anglican and Free Church Colleges in England and Wales

A sample of 298 primary-school teachers working within the state-maintained sector in England completed a 150-item questionnaire to assess their understanding of the term “spirituality.” The data demonstrate that after controlling for sex, age, personality, and current religiosity, teachers trained in an Anglican or Free Church College were more likely than teachers trained in secular institutions to interpret the educational construct of spirituality in terms of traditional features of Christianity. There is some evidence for the distinctive religious contribution of Church Colleges to teacher education.     

The Greensboro Child Response Initiative: A Trauma-Informed,Mental Health–Law Enforcement Model for Children Exposed to Violence

This article evaluates a trauma-informed, mental health–law enforcement intervention model called the Greensboro Child Response Initiative (CRI). CRI is a community-coordinated response to mitigate the development of traumatic stress symptoms in children exposed to violence, with the goals of decreasing mental health symptoms and other negative outcomes. Results from a quasi-experimental study indicated that caregivers appreciate the quick follow-up and support by CRI advocates and police reported seeing CRI as a critical component of their responses to calls for service related to families and children. Police line-ups and training provided by CRI increased levels of empathy and awareness of child trauma. Monthly stakeholder meetings promoted an informed victim response and increased communication and networking opportunities among community providers and law enforcement. Results suggest that CRI is a promising community-based early intervention, and implications and suggestions are provided for replicability.     

Religion and mental health among Hindu young people in England

The aim of this study was to explore the relationship between mental health and attitude toward their religious tradition among a sample of 330 young people attending the Hindu Youth Festival in London. The participants completed the Santosh–Francis Scale of Attitude toward Hinduism together with the abbreviated form of the Revised Eysenck Personality Questionnaire which provides measures of neuroticism and psychoticism. The data indicated that a more positive attitude toward Hinduism was associated with lower psychoticism scores but unrelated to neuroticism scores. There is no evidence, therefore, to associate higher levels of religiosity with poorer mental health among young people within the Hindu community.     

Effects of Language of Instruction on Response Accuracy and Challenging Behavior in a Child with Autism

Discrete trial training was delivered using English and Spanish languages to a student with autism from a Spanish-speaking family. An alternating treatments design was used to examine the effects of language of instruction on the child’s response accuracy and challenging behavior. More correct responses and fewer challenging behaviors occurred when instruction was delivered in Spanish compared to English. Results suggest that the language of instruction may be an important variable even when a student initially presents with very little spoken language and comparable scores on English and Spanish standardized language assessments.     

Effects of Language of Implementation on Functional Analysis Outcomes

This study evaluated the influence of language of implementation on functional analysis outcomes for a child with a severe intellectual disability from a Spanish-speaking home. Challenging behavior was assessed during 5-min sessions under 4 conditions; attention, play-verbal, play-nonverbal, and demand and across 2 phases; implementation in English versus Spanish. The highest levels of challenging behavior occurred during the attention and demand conditions of the English phases. These results suggest that the language of implementation may influence the overall levels of challenging behavior within functional analysis conditions.