Community characteristics associated with child abuse in Iowa

PROBLEM: Various demographic and community characteristics are associated with child abuse rates in national and urban samples, but similar analyses have not been done within rural areas. This study analyzes the relationships between reported and substantiated rates of child abuse and county demographic, health care resource and social services factors in a predominantly rural state in the US. METHODS: County-level data from Iowa between 1984-1993 were analyzed for associations between county characteristics and rates of child abuse using univariate correlations and multivariate stagewise regression analysis. Population-adjusted rates of reported and substantiated child abuse were correlated with rates of children in poverty, single-parent families, marriage and divorce, unemployment, high-school dropouts, median family income, elder abuse, birth and death rates, numbers of physicians and other healthcare providers, hospital, social workers, and number of caseworkers in the Department of Human Services. RESULTS: Rates of single-parent families, divorce and elder abuse were significantly associated with reported and substantiated child abuse in multivariate analysis, while economic and most health care factors were not. Reporting and substantiation rates differed across districts after adjustment for multiple factors including caseworker workload. CONCLUSIONS: In this rural state, family structure is more significantly associated with child abuse report and substantiation rates than are socioeconomic factors. The level of health care resources in a county does not appear to affect these rates.     

Undergraduate education for the hearing-handicapped: The programme of research,adaptation and development of the Open University project for hearing-impaired students

Since January 1972, the Open University has been operating a project for the undergraduate education of the growing number of hearing-impaired students. These students face psychological, social and linguistic problems and other difficulties which arise from their isolation in the world, their limited ability to communicate and their educational background.So far, the project has been able to offer support in terms of education (special tutorials, discussions, etc.), communication (special equipment, interpreters, trained personnel) and what may be termed psycho-social therapy (counselling, technical help, general support). In many of the students, this has led to an increase of self-confidence and an improvement in the ability to communicate, as well as in educational achievements. This paper describes the work which has been done, and is being done, by the Open University project, for a very neglected sector of the disabled community.Open University     

Some reflections on the therapeutic power of poststructuralism

Social constructionism is fast gaining currency as a major theory of social and personal change. Although its origins are in philosophy and sociology, social constructionism has major implications for psychology, and in particular, for applied psychology. This paper looks at some of the poststructuralist assumptions which underpin social constructionism, contrasting these with some of the major beliefs upon which much of humanistic psychology is based. It argues that many of the practices of liberal humanistic psychology are fundamentally pessimistic, in that they essentialise aspects of the self and the personality, suggesting strategies of adaptation rather than personal transformation. Further, the absence of an adequate psychological theory of context renders applied psychology all but helpless in confronting issues of power and social control. Poststructuralist theory suggests ways of theorising human interactions without denying agency, or indeed, claiming too much. The paper suggests ways in which counsellors are well placed to take theoretical and practical advantage of these perspectives.A version of this paper was presented at the Conference of the International Round Table for the Advancement of Counselling, Auckland, New Zealand, August 1993.     

Dimensions influencing students' judgments of classroom test items

Sixty-eight graduate students made general and specific ratings of the quality of 12 classroom test items, which varied in difficulty and discrimination. Four treatment combinations defined two additional factors: group discussion/no group discussion of test items and exposure/no exposure to an instructional module on test item construction. The students rated the items differentially, depending not only on item difficulty level but also on item discriminative power. The group discussion and exposure to module factors had significant effects on the general item ratings only. Implications of the research were discussed.     

Sexual abuse in the national incidence study of child abuse and neglect: An appraisal

The National Incidence Study of Child Abuse and Neglect was a major, government sponsored effort to collect data on reported and unreported child abuse. It used a systematic representative sample methodology and very precisely developed definitions of child abuse. This paper reviews some of the main limitations of the study in regard to findings on sexual abuse. First, there is probably less “new” data in the study on sexual abuse than on other forms of abuse, since so many of the study cases of sexual abuse were “officially reported” cases. In addition, the study limited its definition of sexual abuse only to cases where a caretaker was the perpetrator, a definition that is much more restrictive than what is used in many treatment programs. Finally, the data on perpetrators has a number of problems that stem from the study's definitions of sexual abuse. The paper makes suggestions for future incidence type studies of sexual abuse.