The Role of Character Strengths and Importance of Family on Mexican American College Students' Career Decision Self‐Efficacy

This study examined how character strengths and the importance of family influenced Mexican American college students' (N = 129) career decision self‐efficacy. Findings from a multiple regression analysis indicated that psychological grit and curiosity were significant predictors of career decision self‐efficacy. The authors discuss the importance of these findings and provide recommendations for future research.     

When family and research clash: The role of autobiographical emotion in the production of stories of the Italian civil war, 1943–1945

This paper engages the emotional side of Second World War storytelling practices and research. Specifically, it explores how a politics of trust and togetherness animates communities of remembrance concerning the anti-Fascist Resistance experience in northern Italy. I reflect on my encounter with memories of wartime violence through the lens of autobiographical emotion. In a region torn asunder by conflicting stories of loss and violence during the anti-Nazi resistance and civil war, I possess a dual identity of researcher and Partisan's grandchild. This carries a powerful emotional bond of ethical obligations that cannot be ignored in the research process. Drawing on affect theory, I contextualize my oral history fieldwork experience in relation to that emotional bond.     

The Effects of Social Support on Self‐Esteem,Self‐Efficacy,and Job Search Efficacy in the Unemployed

This study attempted to determine the effects of family and social support on the self‐esteem, self‐efficacy, and job search self‐efficacy of the unemployed. A total of 117 surveys were collected in Nevada, Idaho, and Oregon measuring self‐esteem, general self‐efficacy, and job search self‐efficacy and social support. Pearson correlation coefficients demonstrated moderately strong positive relationships between social support and self‐esteem, general self‐efficacy, and job search self‐efficacy. Social and family support had a stronger influence on the self‐perceptions of men than women.     

Longitudinal Impact of a Family Critical Time Intervention on Children in High-Risk Families Experiencing Homelessness: A Randomized Trial

A randomized trial compared effects of a Family Critical Time Intervention (FCTI) to usual care for children in 200 newly homeless families in which mothers had diagnosable mental illness or substance problems. Adapted from an evidence‐based practice to prevent chronic homelessness for adults with mental illnesses, FCTI combines housing and structured, time‐limited case management to connect families leaving shelter with community services. Families were followed at five time points over 24 months. Data on 311 children—99 ages 1.5–5 years, 113 ages 6–10 years, and 99 ages 11–16 years—included mother‐, teacher‐, and child‐reports of mental health, school experiences, and psychosocial well‐being. Analyses used hierarchical linear modeling to investigate intervention effects and changes in child functioning over time. Referral to FCTI reduced internalizing and externalizing problems in preschool‐aged children and externalizing for adolescents 11–16. The intervention led to declines in self‐reported school troubles for children 6–10 and 11–16. Both experimental and control children in all age groups showed reductions in symptoms over time. Although experimental results were scattered, they suggest that FCTI has the potential to improve mental health and school outcomes for children experiencing homelessness.     

Making Probabilistic Relational Categories Learnable

Theories of relational concept acquisition (e.g., schema induction) based on structured intersection discovery predict that relational concepts with a probabilistic (i.e., family resemblance) structure ought to be extremely difficult to learn. We report four experiments testing this prediction by investigating conditions hypothesized to facilitate the learning of such categories. Experiment 1 showed that changing the task from a category‐learning task to choosing the “winning” object in each stimulus greatly facilitated participants' ability to learn probabilistic relational categories. Experiments 2 and 3 further investigated the mechanisms underlying this “who's winning” effect. Experiment 4 replicated and generalized the “who's winning” effect with more natural stimuli. Together, our findings suggest that people learn relational concepts by a process of intersection discovery akin to schema induction, and that any task that encourages people to discover a higher order relation that remains invariant over members of a category will facilitate the learning of putatively probabilistic relational concepts.     

Keeping It Going: Evidence of Long-Term Improvements After Implementation of the 1-2-3 Magic Parenting Program

This study builds upon a pilot evaluation of the 1-2-3 Magic Program (Bailey, van der Zwan, Phelan, &; Brooks, 2012 Bailey, E. L., van der Zwan, R., Phelan, T. W., &; Brooks, A. (2012). The 1–2-3 Magic Program: Implementation outcomes of an Australian pilot evaluation with school-aged children. Child &; Family Behavior Therapy, 34(1), 53–69. doi:10.1080/07317107.2012.654455[Taylor &; Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]), by investigating its long-term efficacy as a brief parenting intervention for families with a school-aged child. Twelve Australian families participated in a randomized controlled trial, assigned either to a wait-listed control group or to one that received immediate training. Consistent with the pilot evaluation, only families who had received training reported significant improvement in child and parenting behavior at an 8-week follow-up assessment. These improvements were maintained for 12-month posttraining, supporting the long-term efficacy of the 1-2-3 Magic Program for Australian families.     

Links between family gender socialization experiences in childhood and gendered occupational attainment in young adulthood

Gendered occupational segregation remains prevalent across the world. Although research has examined factors contributing to the low number of women in male-typed occupations – namely science, technology, engineering, and math – little longitudinal research has examined the role of childhood experiences in both young women's and men's later gendered occupational attainment. This study addressed this gap in the literature by examining family gender socialization experiences in middle childhood – namely parents' attitudes and work and family life – as contributors to the gender typicality of occupational attainment in young adulthood. Using data collected from mothers, fathers, and children over approximately 15 years, the results revealed that the associations between childhood socialization experiences (~ 10 years old) and occupational attainment (~ 26 years old) depended on the sex of the child. For sons but not daughters, mothers' more traditional attitudes toward women's roles predicted attaining more gender-typed occupations. In addition, spending more time with fathers in childhood predicted daughters attaining less and sons acquiring more gender-typed occupations in young adulthood. Overall, evidence supports the idea that childhood socialization experiences help to shape individuals' career attainment and thus contribute to gender segregation in the labor market.     

Psychometric Properties and Responsiveness to Change of 15‐ and 28‐Item Versions of the SCORE: A Family Assessment Questionnaire

The SCORE (Systemic Clinical Outcome and Routine Evaluation) is a 40‐item questionnaire for completion by family members 12 years and older to assess outcome in systemic therapy. This study aimed to investigate psychometric properties of two short versions of the SCORE and their responsiveness to therapeutic change. Data were collected at 19 centers from 701 families at baseline and from 433 of these 3–5 months later. Results confirmed the three‐factor structure (strengths, difficulties, and communication) of the 15‐ and 28‐item versions of the SCORE. Both instruments had good internal consistency and test–retest reliability. They also showed construct and criterion validity, correlating with measures of parent, child, and family adjustment, and discriminating between clinical and nonclinical cases. Total and factor scales of the SCORE‐15 and ‐28 were responsive to change over 3–5 months of therapy. The SCORE‐15 and SCORE‐28 are brief psychometrically robust family assessment instruments which may be used to evaluate systemic therapy.     

Queer Youth in Family Therapy

Trends in popular belief about same‐sex relationships have undergone noteworthy change in the United States over the last decade. Yet this change has been marked by stark polarizations and has occurred at varying rates depending upon regional, community, racial, religious, and individual family context. For queer youth and their families, this cultural transformation has broadened opportunities and created a new set of risks and vulnerabilities. At the same time, youth's increasingly open and playful gender fluidity and sexual identity is complicated by unique intersections of class, race, religion, and immigration. Effective family therapy with queer youth requires practitioner's and treatment models that are sensitive to those who bear the burden of multiple oppressions and the hidden resilience embedded in their layered identities. We present case examples of our model of family therapy which addresses refuge, supports difficult dialogs, and nurtures queerness by looking for hidden resilience in the unique intersections of queer youths' lives. These intersections provide transformational potential for youth, their families and even for family therapists as we are all nurtured and challenged to think more complexly about intersectionality, sexuality, and gender.