Attitude Towards Premarital Sex among Rural College Youth in Maharashtra,India

Little is known about the risky sexual behaviour, misconceptions and attitudes regarding sexuality and sexual health among rural youth in India. In order to understand these aspects, quantitative data were collected among 1,500 rural college students (800 male and 700 female) in the age group 15–24 years in the Thane district of Maharashtra, India, during 2004. Analysis of variance and regression analysis were performed using the total mean score of attitude towards sexuality as the dependent variable to determine the association and relationship, respectively, with background and familial characteristics. The results clearly showed that the majority of the students in the study expressed conservative attitudes towards premarital sexuality. Many students not only disagreed with casual sex but also considered it immoral. Gender bias i.e. permitting premarital sex for males and not for females, was reflected in their attitudes to some extent. Mean score indicated that male students had higher mean scores compared with their female counterparts and senior students compared with junior students, indicating more liberal attitudes towards sexuality. Bivariate analysis showed positive association between age; peer interaction; erotic exposure; habits of gutaka, tobacco, smoking and alcohol consumption; and knowledge about reproductive health issues with attitudes towards various sexuality issues. Multivariate analysis showed that female students studying in the commerce and science faculties were more liberal in attitude towards sexuality when compared with female students from the arts faculty. Male students with high erotic exposure (odds ratio 2.3); habits of gutaka, tobacco, smoking and alcohol consumption (odds ratio 2.7); and high peer interaction (odds ratio 2.3) had higher attitudinal scores indicated more liberal attitudes. Overall, the majority of the students expressed conservative attitudes towards premarital sex. The programme on sexuality education and responsibility for in-school adolescents should be launched early in secondary schools/college at an early stage of the perception process and formulation of attitudes towards sexuality. This would provide students with more scientific information and deter them from gathering incomplete information through sources such as pornography and peers.     

Privacy Rights,Crime Prevention,CCTV, and the Life of Mrs Aremac

Over the past decade the use of closed circuit television (CCTV) as a means of crime prevention has reached unprecedented levels. Though critics of this development do not speak with one voice and have pointed to a number of different problems in the use of CCTV, one argument has played a dominant role in the debate, namely, that CCTV constitutes an unacceptable violation of people’s right to privacy. The purpose of this paper is to examine this argument critically. It is suggested that the argument is hard to sustain.     

Specificity of Information Processing Styles to Depressive Symptoms in Youth Psychiatric Inpatients

Although information processing has been widely studied with depressed adults, little emphasis has been placed on the specificity of resultant findings to depression, as opposed to other psychological disorders. Analogously, even less effort has been directed toward examining the information processing styles of depressed children and adolescents. The present study investigated the specificity of information processing styles to depression and anxiety among 58 youth psychiatric inpatients. To assess information processing, we used a self-referent encoding task, in which participants were presented with positive and negative adjectives; participants were asked whether these adjectives described them or not, and were then tested on recall of the adjectives. After controlling for age and gender, lower rates of positive adjective endorsement and lower rates of positive adjective recall were found to be associated with depression, but not anxiety. Additionally, negative adjective endorsement was associated with anxiety symptoms. These results suggest specific cognitive features of depressive symptoms.     

Enrollment in an Established System of Care: A Replication and Extension of Clinical Profiles at Service Intake

We replicated Rosenblatt et al.'s (1998) cluster analysis of intake profiles of youth enrolled in a system of care program. The characteristics of a unique sample of 275 children and adolescents with emotional and behavioral disorders (E/BD) who participated in the Santa Barbara County Multiagency Integrated System of Care (MISC) program were examined. A two-step clustering procedure (hierarchical and K-means) was used to evaluate subtypes of youth who were opened to MISC after it had become a stable youth-service program. The results of the Rosenblatt et al. (1998) study were replicated with four identical clusters emerging: Troubled, Troubled and Troubling, Troubling, and At-Risk. Two additional clusters were differentiated: Moderate Troubled, and Moderate Troubled and Troubling. Comparisons across these six clusters show distinct profiles of youth with E/BD. Implications of these findings for developing appropriate service plans and for evaluating systems of care outcomes are discussed.     

创造力有其“阴暗面”

创造力有其“阴暗面”。从产品角度而言,创造力可产出伤害性或消极的产品;从个体角度而言,高创造力者可能具有一些消极特征,如精神疾病易感性强、宜人性差、说谎、不诚信等;从情境角度而言,高创造力表现可能与不信任感、生存危机感、社会拒绝等消极因素有关。未来研究应开发高生态效度的恶意创造力测评工具,改进计算恶意创造力水平的算法,探索消极个体特征和消极情境因素作用于创造性思维的认知与神经机制。     

The Anomaly Among Sexually Abusive Youth: The Juvenile Sex Trafficker

A hypothesized sketch of the atypical juvenile sex offender who engages in human sex trafficking is extrapolated from empirical data from the findings of victims of sex traffickers, juvenile sex offenders, and from one of the largest (N = 1056) cross-validation studies of a risk assessment tool in the field for sexually abusive youth. The tool, MEGA^?, assesses risk level of sexually abusive youth (4–19 years, males and females, adjudicated and non-adjudicated, including youth with low intellectual functioning). The compiled empirical data supports a paradigm describing one of the least known, or studied type of sexually abusive youth: the sexually abusive juvenile who engages in sex trafficking.     

Youth sports and physical activity: The relationship between perceptions of childhood sport experience and adult exercise behavior

ObjectiveParticipation in organized youth sports has been shown to positively correlate with increased levels of exercise in adulthood. However, there is limited research to suggest why youth sports participation is related to increased physical activity as an adult. One possible explanation is that positive youth sport experiences lead youth to be more positively inclined to engage in physical activity as adults. Research into the positive youth development aspect of organized sports provides the framework for the current investigation.MethodsAdult participants (N = 234, M_age = 35.35) were asked to retrospectively assess their youth sports experiences using the “Four C's” (i.e., competence, confidence, connectedness, character) framework of positive youth development in sport. These assessments were then compared to current physical activity levels and related variables found in the Health Action Process Approach model (HAPA; Schwarzer, 2008).ResultsBivariate correlations revealed statistically significant and moderate correlations among competence, confidence, and connectedness and all of the HAPA variables including physical activity levels. Further, a MANCOVA analysis revealed that when participants were sub-divided into “non-intenders,” “intenders,” and “actors” using a validated staging algorithm, a general linear trend emerged for competence, confidence, and connectedness such that “non-intenders” rated these constructs the lowest and “actors” rated them the highest.ConclusionThese findings provide preliminary evidence that the relationship between participation in organized youth sports and adulthood levels of exercise could be contingent on how positively that experience is perceived.     

After-School Youth Development Programs: A Developmental-Ecological Model of Current Research

Although there has been a rapid increase in funding and attention to after-school programs, there is little understanding of how after-school programs impact children's developmental trajectories. The heterogeneity of American children makes it very unlikely that all children need after-school programming or that there is but one brand of after-school programming suitable for all youth. We discuss the numerous developmental and contextual factors that may influence which children benefit most from after-school programs as well as the nature of the after-school programs most beneficial to children's needs. The value of utilizing an ecological and developmental perspective to after-school program evaluation are presented, including the need for improved research designs and more detailed analyses of program type and services as well as a more complete determination of which children benefit the most from after-school participation.     

Listening to Diversity Stories: Principles for Practice in Community Research and Action

Through a telling of key events in the history of the “Teen Action Center” (TAC), a drop-in youth center located in downtown “Unionville,” this story demonstrates how ‘youth’ is an important diversity category. The community conflict highlighted in this story centers around the 1997 arrest of TAC's Executive Director and two youth leaders (all Puerto Rican) because a small group of Latino and African-American youth was smoking cigarettes on the sidewalk in front of the Center. This conflict brings into focus divergent views on where Unionville's youth of color belong in the city, both physically and figuratively. The lessons learned in this story have wide application as Unionville, and other cities undergoing demographic transformation and economic decline, are likely to continue to experience these types of clashes, where the dominant paradigm of economic development overrides the realities, rights, and interests of marginalized groups.This article has been adapted from a chapter in my dissertation (Ross, 2002) Rebuilding Communities, Shaping Identities: The Impact of a Participatory Neighborhood Planning Process on Young, Low-Income Adolescents of Color, completed at the University of Massachusetts-Boston Public Policy Program. I am a White, female middle class faculty member at a small private university. I remain connected to “TAC” as a Board member. Names have been changed to protect the identity of the participants. Names of data sources (newspapers) have been modified to protect the identity of the study location.     

Accuracy of a Rationally Derived Method for Identifying Treatment Failure in Children and Adolescents

Psychotherapy outcome can be enhanced by early identification of potential treatment failures before they leave treatment. In adults, compelling data are emerging that provide evidence that an early warning system that identifies potential treatment failures can be developed and applied to enhance outcome. The present study reports an analysis of early warning algorithms to identify treatment failures among child/adolescent patients (ages 3–18). The progress of 300 patients who had completed treatment was analyzed to see if algorithms could identify those children who ultimately had a negative outcome. Results indicated that the rationally derived method had a 77% success rate for identifying child/adolescent patients who were reliably worse or had deteriorated by the time that therapy was terminated.