Predictors of Entry into Age-Discordant Relationships Among Adolescent Girls

Teenage girls in age-discordant relationships remain of concern for healthy development and well-being. We examine whether factors from several sociological frameworks—self-esteem, deviance, social ecology, family cohesion, and religious involvement—predict entry into such relationships. With longitudinal data on 1,537 adolescent girls, we use structural equation modeling to assess risk and protective factors by age group. Results indicate that few social factors predict entry to such relationships; only religious involvement for the youngest adolescents and self-esteem for middle adolescents predict entry. While adolescent girls who date older males are largely like their peers, any impact of social factors may vary by the developmental stage that adolescent girls occupy.     

The Clergy Occupational Distress Index (CODI): Background and Findings from Two Samples of Clergy

This study demonstrates the reliability and validity of the Clergy Occupational Distress Index (CODI). The five-item index allows researchers to measure the frequency that clergy, who traditionally have not been the subject of occupational health studies, experience occupational distress. We assess the reliability and validity of the index using two samples of clergy: a nationally representative sample of clergy and a sample of clergy from nine Protestant denominations. Exploratory factor analysis and Cronbach’s scores are generated. Construct validity is measured by examining the association between CODI scores and depressive symptoms while controlling for demographic, ministerial, and health variables. In both samples, the five items of the CODI load onto a single factor and the Cronbach’s alpha scores are robust. The regression model indicates that a high score on the CODI (i.e., more frequent occupational distress) is positively associated with having depressive symptoms within the last 4 weeks. The CODI can be used to identify clergy who frequently experience occupational distress and to understand how occupational distress affects clergy’s health, ministerial career, and the functioning of their congregation.     

Inferences about mechanisms that mediate pattern and flicker sensitivity

Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics - Visual sensitivity to a flickering, sinusoidal grating was assessed in multiple sclerosis patients and control observers. It was found that losses in...     

Accumulation of Risk and Promotive Factors Among Young Children in US Military Families

In the families of the new cohort of war veterans now entering the civilian population in the United States are over two million young children (Cozza, Haskins & Lerner, 2013; Institute of Medicine, 2013). Several noteworthy studies have shown that children exposed to separation from a parent due to combat‐related deployment are at elevated risk for a variety of negative consequences (Lester & Flake, 2013). Cozza et al. (2013) argue that existing studies of military children focus too much on the stresses or deficits they experience, failing to give sufficient attention to their strengths, the strengths of their families, or the supports around them. In the current study we focus on risk and promotive factors in the lives of children aged 0–10 in military families. We examine the likelihood of negative outcomes as functions of additive, cumulative, and interactive relationships between risk and promotive factors and children's outcomes. Risk factors, particularly parental depression, community poverty, and cumulative risk, were more strongly associated with children's outcomes than promotive factors. There was, however, a significant risk‐protective relationship between accumulations of risk and promotive factors, consistent with promotive conditions operating in a protective fashion under conditions of elevated risk.