Resilience Among Children Exposed to Domestic Violence: The Role of Risk and Protective Factors

Individual and family characteristics that predict resilience among children exposed to domestic violence (DV) were examined. Mother–child dyads ( n  =   190) were assessed when the children were 2, 3, and 4 years of age. DV-exposed children were 3.7 times more likely than nonexposed children to develop internalizing or externalizing problems. However, 54% of DV-exposed children maintained positive adaptation and were characterized by easy temperament (odds ratio [OR] = .39, d  = .52) and nondepressed mothers (OR = 1.14, d  = .07), as compared to their nonresilient counterparts. Chronic DV was associated with maternal depression, difficult child temperament, and internalizing or externalizing symptoms. Results underscore heterogeneous outcomes among DV-exposed children and the influence of individual and family characteristics on children's adaptation.     

Controlled evaluation of a multimodal system to improve oral presentation skills in a real learning setting

Developing oral presentation skills requires both practice and expert feedback. Several systems have been developed during the last 20 years to provide ample practice opportunities and automated feedback for novice presenters. However, a comprehensive literature review discovered that none of those systems have been adequately evaluated in real learning settings. This work is the first randomised controlled evaluation of the impact that one of these systems has in developing oral presentation skills during a real semester-long learning activity with 180 students. The main findings are that (1) the development of different dimensions of the oral presentations are not affected equally by the automated feedback and (2) there is a small but statistically significant effect of the use of the tool when a subsequent presentation is evaluated by a human expert.     

A Unified Latent Growth Curve Model

Applying item response theory models to repeated observations has demonstrated great promise in developmental research. By allowing the researcher to take account of the characteristics of both item response and measurement error in longitudinal trajectory analysis, it improves the reliability and validity of latent growth curve analysis. This has enabled the study, to differentially weigh individual items and examine developmental stability and change over time, to propose a comprehensive modeling framework, combining a measurement model with a structural model. Despite a large number of components requiring attention, this study focuses on model formulation, evaluates the performance of the estimators of model parameters, incorporates prior knowledge from Bayesian analysis, and applies the model using an illustrative example. It is hoped that this fundamental study can demonstrate the breadth of this unified latent growth curve model.     

Living while being alive: education and learning in the Treatment Action Campaign

This paper is based on research into the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) in South Africa. The research investigated whether, through being active members of this social movement, HIV‐positive activists learn things they could not otherwise learn about their status and the epidemic, and how they put such knowledge to use. We show how activists develop a critical understanding of the underlying causes of their ill health and its link to economic poverty and global politics. The paper concludes by suggesting that adult educators can assume direct responsibility for poverty reduction by working in and with social movements.     

Many-Level Multilevel Structural Equation Modeling: An Efficient Evaluation Strategy

Structural equation models are increasingly used for clustered or multilevel data in cases where mixed regression is too inflexible. However, when there are many levels of nesting, these models can become difficult to estimate. We introduce a novel evaluation strategy, Rampart, that applies an orthogonal rotation to the parts of a model that conform to commonly met requirements. This rotation dramatically simplifies fit evaluation in a way that becomes more potent as the size of the data set increases. We validate and evaluate the implementation using a 3-level latent regression simulation study. Then we analyze data from a statewide child behavioral health measure administered by the Oklahoma Department of Human Services. We demonstrate the efficiency of Rampart compared to other similar software using a latent factor model with a 5-level decomposition of latent variance. Rampart is implemented in OpenMx, a free and open source software package.     

Art collections and taste in the Spanish <Emphasis Type="Italic">Siglo</Emphasis><Emphasis Type="Italic">de Oro</Emphasis>

We analyze art pricing in a unique dataset on Madrid inventories between 1600 and 1750. We estimate a price index for the Spanish art market that is used for a general historical analysis of art during this period, showing a large increase in the real price of paintings during the XVII century. Then we examine the price differential between domestic and foreign paintings: At the beginning of the century domestic production was priced substantially below imported paintings, but the price gap was gradually reduced during the century. We argue that such a price convergence was not the fruit of variations in real exchange rate, relative supply or home bias, but was associated with increasing prices for the new domestic painters of the XVII century. Increasing remuneration for painting may have induced artistic innovations by domestic producers and created the conditions for the development of the Siglo de Oro of Spanish art.     

When Corporate Social Responsibility Messages Enter the News: Examining the Effects of CSR-Framed News on Product Purchasing Intentions and the Mediating Role of Company and Product Attitudes

Journalists are frequently reporting about new and innovative products in news articles. Oftentimes, journalists use specific company and product information provided by enterprises that highlight a corporation’s social responsibility (CSR) activities. Based on framing theory and theory of reasoned action, an experiment was conducted to examine how types of CSR-framed news (either highlighting ethical, ecological, or philanthropic responsibilities of a company) affect news recipients’ product purchasing intentions. A mediation analysis showed that CSR-framed news indirectly and positively affected individuals’ purchasing intentions via company and product attitudes. No relevant differences could be detected for the specific type of CSR frame. Implications of the results are discussed.