Abstract Purpose To evaluate the impact of the Second Step: Student Success Through Prevention (SS-SSTP) Middle School Program on reducing youth violence including peer aggression, peer ...victimization, homophobic name calling, and sexual violence perpetration and victimization among middle school sixth-grade students. Methods The study design was a nested cohort (sixth graders) longitudinal study. We randomly assigned 18 matched pairs of 36 middle schools to the SS-SSTP or control condition. Teachers implemented 15 weekly lessons of the sixth-grade curriculum that focused on social emotional learning skills, including empathy, communication, bully prevention, and problem-solving skills. All sixth graders (n = 3,616) in intervention and control conditions completed self-report measures assessing verbal/relational bullying, physical aggression, homophobic name calling, and sexual violence victimization and perpetration before and after the implementation of the sixth-grade curriculum. Results Multilevel analyses revealed significant intervention effects with regard to physical aggression. The adjusted odds ratio indicated that the intervention effect was substantial; individuals in intervention schools were 42% less likely to self-report physical aggression than students in control schools. We found no significant intervention effects for verbal/relational bully perpetration, peer victimization, homophobic teasing, and sexual violence. Conclusions Within a 1-year period, we noted significant reductions in self-reported physical aggression in the intervention schools. Results suggest that SS-SSTP holds promise as an efficacious prevention program to reduce physical aggression in adolescent youth.
Community violence exposure results in heightened risk for engaging in and being a victim of interpersonal violence. Despite this robust literature, few studies have specifically examined how the ...relation between community violence exposure, peer aggression, and victimization is modified by individual, peer, and familial influences (considered jointly). In the current study, we used risk and resiliency theory to examine links between community violence exposure and peer aggression and victimization. Impulsivity and parental monitoring were examined as potential moderators of the link between community violence exposure and outcomes, both directly and indirectly via deviant behavior. Survey data on bullying involvement, fighting, deviancy, parental monitoring, and impulsivity were collected on 3 occasions over an 18-month period among a large cohort of adolescents (N = 1,232) in 5th-7th grades. Structural equation modeling suggests that for both male and female adolescents, impulsivity exacerbates the effects of community violence exposure by increasing involvement in deviant behavior. Parental monitoring buffered the effects of community violence exposure on perpetration and victimization (for males and female adolescents) via reduced involvement in deviant behavior. Findings suggest that impulsivity and parental monitoring are implicated in modifying the effects of community violence exposure on both victimization and perpetration through deviancy, although deviancy is not as potent of a predictor for victimization. Thus, prevention efforts would seem to be optimally targeted at multiple ecological levels, including parental involvement and peer networks.
Objective: To identify subgroups of youth who experience multiple forms of victimization at school and to evaluate how these subgroups vary in their experiences of family violence, depression, and ...alcohol and drug use. Method: Cluster analysis of verbal/physical aggression victimization, relational aggression victimization, sexual harassment victimization, and homophobic name-calling victimization scales among 992 early adolescents (5th to 8th grades). Results: As hypothesized, 4 distinct clusters emerged: non- or minimal-victims, relational victims, homophobic name-calling victims, and peer polyvictims. Relational and polyvictim clusters were more likely to endorse witnessing domestic violence and being physically or sexually abused at home; depression, alcohol, and drug use, when compared to non- or minimal-victims or homophobic name-calling victims. Conclusions: Findings validate the importance of distinguishing among forms of peer victimization given the heterogeneity among youths' experience of violence, and the relations with familial victimization and psychological consequences. Data from the current study advance our understanding of shared and nonshared correlates and consequences across different forms of peer victimization among a relatively young middle school sample. These findings ultimately inform more precise targets for intervention, such as victimization directed at damaging one's relationship or victimization directed at one's gender.
Relations between parents' depressed mood, marital conflict, parent-child hostility, and children's adjustment were examined in a community sample of 136 ten-year-olds and their parents. Videotaped ...observational and self-report data were used to examine these relations in path analyses. A proposed model was tested in which mothers' and fathers' depressed mood and marital hostility were associated with children's adjustment problems through disruptions in parent-child relationships. Results showed that both mothers' and fathers' marital hostility were linked to parent-child hostility, which in turn was linked to children's internalizing problems. Fathers' depressed mood was linked to children's internalizing problems indirectly through father-child hostility. Fathers' depressed mood was directly linked to children's externalizing problems and indirectly linked through father-child hostility. For mothers, marital hostility was directly linked to children's externalizing problems, and marital hostility in fathers was indirectly linked to children's externalizing problems through father-child hostility.
Limited research attention has been devoted to disparate vulnerabilities to social-ecological risk factors and how these may explain group differences in bullying by race. To address this gap, the ...present study used data of early adolescent respondents (Mage = 11.2 years) from 36 public middle schools (N = 2701) to assess the nexus of race, social-ecological risk factors, and bullying perpetration. Multilevel modeling was employed to quantify the racial gap in bullying as well as the race-specific effects of social-ecological risk factors. Data revealed that Black students engaged in the highest levels of bullying perpetration, relative to all other racial/ethnic subgroups. School belonging exerted an amplified protective effect on Black and Hispanic youth, relative to White youth, and diminished the Black-White bullying perpetration gap. The link between exposure to family conflict and bullying perpetration was also race-specific. Findings yielded significant implications for bullying intervention and prevention.
Objective: We are surprisingly limited in our understanding of mechanisms specific to cyber-bullying perpetration, and how these might be modified by subgroup differences such as race. Social ...learning theory was used to assess the role of maladaptive family social dynamics on cyber-bullying and nonphysical bullying (i.e., verbal and relational) involvement through individual risk and protective factors. Method: Moderated mediation models were analyzed using multiple regression analysis across three time points (each six months apart) to examine predictors of bullying perpetration among 1,023 early adolescents (5th through 7th grades). Students completed questionnaires assessing bullying perpetration, family conflict, parental monitoring, hostility, depressive symptoms, empathy, and alcohol and drug use (AOD). Two- and three-way interactions assessed moderation by race and gender. Results: At the simple bivariate level, cyber-bullying appears to have significant overlap with nonphysical bullying. Longitudinal analyses, however, reveal less overlap. Specifically, parental monitoring was associated with higher levels of cyber-bullying at wave 3, via AOD use (only for White females). Nonphysical bullying levels were associated with both higher family violence and lower parental monitoring, which were explained by hostility (for White males) and depressive symptoms (for African American males). Conclusions: Findings validate the importance of familial socialization but suggest that cultural context and gender modify the specific patterns. Further study is needed to determine the necessity of separate prevention strategies for cyber-bullying, as current findings suggest that comprehensive (universal) prevention programs that target self-regulation and social competencies would impact both forms of bullying, and are more feasible than family targets.
A multimethod approach was used to examine relations between marital violence, co-parenting, and family-level processes and children's adjustment in a community-based sample of marital violence. Two ...hypotheses were tested, one in which family-level and co-parenting processes mediate relations between marital violence and child functioning and one in which marital violence and family-level/co-parenting processes function relatively independently in influencing children's adjustment. Observations of family processes were made within a triadic parent-child interaction, and several dimensions of children's socioemotional adjustment (i.e., peer relations, behavior problems) were examined. Results indicated that hostile-withdrawn co-parenting mediated the relations between marital violence and children's anxiety and depression. Marital violence, co-parenting, and family-level processes also functioned independently in predicting child outcome. Findings are discussed in terms of the family dynamics present in maritally violent homes.
Reports an error in "Family Functioning and Children's Adjustment: Associations Among Parents' Depressed Mood, Marital Hostility, Parent-Child Hostility, and Children's Adjustment" by Sabina M. Low ...and Clare Stocker ( Journal of Family Psychology, 2005Sep, Vol 193, 394-403). Figure 5 (p.401) contains an error. This error is addressed in the correction. (The following abstract of the original article appeared in record 2005-12090-007.) Relations between parents' depressed mood, marital conflict, parent-child hostility, and children's adjustment were examined in a community sample of 136 ten-year-olds and their parents. Videotaped observational and self-report data were used to examine these relations in path analyses. A proposed model was tested in which mothers' and fathers' depressed mood and marital hostility were associated with children's adjustment problems through disruptions in parent-child relationships. Results showed that both mothers' and fathers' marital hostility were linked to parent-child hostility, which in turn was linked to children's internalizing problems. Fathers' depressed mood was linked to children's internalizing problems indirectly through father-child hostility. Fathers' depressed mood was directly linked to children's externalizing problems and indirectly linked through father-child hostility. For mothers, marital hostility was directly linked to children's externalizing problems, and marital hostility in fathers was indirectly linked to children's externalizing problems through father-child hostility. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved) (Source: journal abstract)
Sacrifice as a Predictor of Marital Outcomes STANLEY, SCOTT M.; WHITTON, SARAH W.; SADBERRY, SABINA LOW ...
Family process,
September 2006, Volume:
45, Issue:
3
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
We investigated the prospective associations between attitudes about sacrifice and marital outcomes in 38 married couples. Specifically, a measure of satisfaction with sacrifice was proposed to be a ...potent longitudinal predictor of marital adjustment and distress based on existing cross‐sectional studies and also to mediate the association between commitment and marital adjustment. Results demonstrated that attitudes about sacrifice discriminated between couples who would become distressed versus nondistressed over time. Sacrifice attitudes also predicted the maintenance of relationship adjustment over time even better than earlier relationship adjustment. Finally, sacrifice attitudes mediated the link between commitment and relationship adjustment for husbands, but not wives. Implications for intervention are discussed.
Few studies in the U.S. have simultaneously examined general and race-based bullying with consideration of school-level racial composition. The current study examined victimization as a function of ...school racial composition, in minority-majority and diverse schools (
N
= 1911,
M
age = 13.7 years) enrolled in 7th grade in 24 public schools (42.3% Hispanics, 9.0% non-Hispanic White, 28.9% non-Hispanic Black, and 19.7% non-Hispanic Asian). Multilevel regression analyses suggest student-level protective factors related to both forms of victimization, but, school racial composition was only significant in explaining race-based bullying. Specifically, minority-majority schools had lower levels of race-based victimization compared to racially diverse schools. Findings suggest that consideration of school contextual factors offers a more nuanced understanding of the relation between race and victimization.
