Intrafamilial conflict and emotional well-being: a population based study among Icelandic adolescents

Objectives

During intrafamilial conflicts children are often innocent bystanders, caught in the crossfire. In such situations, they are at increased risk to become directly involved in abusive verbal behavior of the perpetrator, and exposed to being shouted or yelled at, threatened, rejected and even physically abused. The present study has two main objectives: (1) ascertain a national base rate of intrafamilial conflicts and physical violence at home among Icelandic adolescents; and (2) to investigate the association of witnessing and/or having been a part of intrafamilial conflict or physical violence at home with variables that relate to mental health and well-being.

Methods

The participants were 3,515 students, 14- and 15-year-old, in the national compulsory school system in Iceland. As a part of the 2003 ESPAD survey, each pupil was asked about experiences of severe verbal arguments and physical violence at home as well as their background, behaviors, and mental health assessed with the use of tested measurement scales such as the Symptom Distress Checklist 90 (SCL-90) and the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale.

Results

About 22% of the participants stated that they had witnessed a severe verbal argument between parents and 34% stated that they had been involved in a severe verbal argument with parents. This rate was slightly higher for girls compared to boys. All together 7% of adolescents had witnessed physical violence at home where an adult was involved and 6% of the participants stated that they had experiences of being involved in physical violence at home where an adult was involved. Witnessing or being involved in severe verbal arguments at home and/or witnessing or being involved in physical violence with an adult was significantly associated with greater levels of depression, anger, and anxiety, and negatively related with self-esteem (p < 0.01).

Conclusions

Many adolescents in Iceland witness severe parental verbal arguments or physical violence between adults in their homes and some are directly involved in such acts. It affects their long-term emotional and behavioral development and well-being.

Practice implications

Preventive measures have to be implemented at an early age and should include, but not be limited to, information on disciplining and upbringing of children and the negative impact of intrafamilial conflicts on the long-term health of their children. Due attention should be given to the health and well-being of children where such violence is known to occur.     

Differential effects of psychological maltreatment on children of mothers exposed to intimate partner violence

Objective

Psychological maltreatment (PM) is the most prevalent form of child abuse, and is the core component of most of what is considered as child maltreatment. The aim of this work was to explore differential adverse outcomes of the different types of PM in the mental health and functioning of children living in homes in which they are exposed to intimate partner violence (IPV).

Method

Participants were 168 children, aged between 4 and 17, whose mothers experienced IPV. They were assessed using different measures of psychopathology and functioning: Diagnostic Interview for Children and Adolescents-IV, Child Behavior Checklists and Child and Adolescent Functioning Assessment Scale. Furthermore, IPV was assessed with the Schedule for Assessment of Intimate Partner Violence Exposure in Children and the Index of Spouse Abuse. Statistical analyses were carried out with regression models adjusted by means of Generalized Estimating Equations.

Results

Spurning was the PM subtype with the greatest global effect on the children, as it was significantly associated with internalizing and externalizing problems. Denying emotional responsiveness specifically increased the risk of internalizing psychopathology and impairment in the emotional area. Terrorizing was not significantly associated with a greater number of negative outcomes in children's psychopathology or functioning in this population.

Implications

The results suggest the importance of taking PM types into account in order to fully understand the problems of children exposed to IPV at home, and for the design of effective treatment and prevention programs.     

Evaluating research and researchers by the journal impact factor: Is it better than coin flipping?

The journal impact factor (JIF) is the average of the number of citations of the papers published in a journal, calculated according to a specific formula; it is extensively used for the evaluation of research and researchers. The method assumes that all papers in a journal have the same scientific merit, which is measured by the JIF of the publishing journal. This implies that the number of citations measures scientific merits but the JIF does not evaluate each individual paper by its own number of citations. Therefore, in the comparative evaluation of two papers, the use of the JIF implies a risk of failure, which occurs when a paper in the journal with the lower JIF is compared to another with fewer citations in the journal with the higher JIF. To quantify this risk of failure, this study calculates the failure probabilities, taking advantage of the lognormal distribution of citations. In two journals whose JIFs are ten-fold different, the failure probability is low. However, in most cases when two papers are compared, the JIFs of the journals are not so different. Then, the failure probability can be close to 0.5, which is equivalent to evaluating by coin flipping.     

Flocking motion in swarms with limited sensing radius and heterogeneous input constraints

This paper addresses the flocking motion problem for swarms of agents with two restrictions: limited communication/detection ranges and different input constraints. In this problem, the distance between pairs of agents determines if a communication/detection link exists among them, while each agent has a different control action bound. We use the notion of proximity graph to model communication/detection between agents and provide distributed controllers designed for leaderless and leader-followers flocking motion scenarios. Our proposed designs preserve the connectivity of the proximity graph while the control effort satisfies the bound of each particular agent. Unlike previous results, our protocols take advantage of the group’s input heterogeneity to use agents with a greater capacity to compensate for neighbors that are less capable of meeting the group’s requirements. Additionally, our designs are based only on local state errors and are robust to non-modeled edge failures. To illustrate the effectiveness of our proposal, we use numerical simulations of different flocking scenarios.     

Optimal design for manipulation of random consensus over discrete information in networked systems

In distributed and cooperative systems, the network structure is determinant to the success of the strategy adopted to solve complex tasks. Those systems are primarily governed by consensus protocols whose convergence is intrinsically dependent on the network topology. Most of the consensus algorithms deal with continuous values and perform average-based strategies to reach cohesion over the exchanged information. However, many problems demand distributed consensus over countable values, that cannot be handled by traditional protocols. In such a context, this work presents an approach based on semidefinite programming to design the optimal weights of a network adjacency matrix, in order to control the convergence of a distributed random consensus protocol for variables at the discrete-space domain, based on the voter model. As a second contribution, this work uses Markov theory and the biological inspiration of epidemics to find out a dynamical spreading model that can predict the information diffusion over this discrete consensus protocol. Also, convergence properties and equilibrium points of the proposed model are presented regarding the network topology. Finally, extensive numerical simulations evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed consensus algorithm, its spreading model, and the approach for optimal weight design.     

Articles vs. proceedings papers: Do they differ in research relevance and impact? A case study in the Library and Information Science field

In 2008, the type of document “proceedings paper” (PP) was assigned in the WoS database to journal articles which were initially presented at a conference and later adapted for publication in a journal. Since the use of two different labels (“article” and “proceedings paper”) might lead to infer differences in their relevance and/or quality, this paper presents a comparative study of standard journal articles and PP in journals to explore potential differences between them. The study focuses on the Library and Information Science field in the Web of Science database and covers the 1990–2008 period. PP approximately account for 9% of the total number of articles in this field, two-thirds of which are published in monographic issues devoted to conferences, which tend to be concentrated in specific journals. Proceedings papers emerge as an heterogeneous set comprising PP in ordinary issues, similar to standard articles in structure and impact of research; and PP in monographic issues, which seem to be less comprehensive and tend to receive less citations. Faster publication of PP in monographic than in ordinary issues may conceal differences in the review process undergone by either type of paper. The main implications of these results for authors, bibliometricians, journal editors and research evaluators are pointed out.     

Adolescents’ future wishes and fears in their acculturation process

In this study we aim at learning about adolescents’ future fears and wishes from different cultural origins with a view to finding implications for intervention in the furthering of their satisfaction and social integration in their acculturation process. The study sample comprised 938 secondary school students—64.4% Spanish, 19.7% South American and 12.8% African. Wishes and fears were evaluated by means of two open questions and the answers were categorized following traditional content analysis methodology. Results show that the adolescents wish for a satisfactory job, family and economic situation, and that they are concerned about aspects such as their own health and that of their family, the possibility of having a precarious job, isolation from their family of origin, and not forming a family. The findings also allow us to give differential profiles according to the cultural origin of the adolescents.     

机械类实训室设备管理中存在的问题与对策

高等职业技术教育是一种以职业能力为基础的教育,既具有职业技术的属性,又具有高等教育的属性,其目标是培养适应生产、建设、管理、服务第一线需要的高等技术应用性专门人才。高职院校越来越重视实践教学,为了满足社会的人才需要,提高实训室设备管理对实践教学,培养技能型、实用型人才起着至关重要的作用。文章针对高职院校机械类实训室教学设备的运行管理中所存在的普遍问题,从有利于学生更高掌握实践技能;有利于健全规范管理机构,加强改进制度建设,规范设备管理;有利于培养专业化懂管理、懂设备、懂维修队伍几方面来阐述实训设备管理的对策。     

Implementation of the flipped classroom and its longitudinal impact on improving academic performance

Educational technology research and development - The objective has been to know the impact of the flipped classroom methodology on the academic performance of students during their training...