Correlates of Attitudes Toward Violence and Dating Violence Perpetration Among U.S. College Students

Objective: Dating violence is a serious and prevalent problem among college students. Research on dating violence has pinpointed early exposure to violence as a strong predictor of violence perpetration in later life. However, little is known about the particular correlates or mechanisms that facilitate college students’ attitudes supporting violence and dating violence perpetration after early exposure to violence. The goals of this three-manuscript dissertation were (1) Chapter 2: to examine the relationship between three forms of violent socialization during childhood and attitudes supporting interpersonal violence; (2) Chapter 3: to examine the moderating effect of pro-violence messages in the relationship between early exposure to violence and later attitudes supporting violence, as well as dating violence perpetration; (3) Chapter 4: to examine the possible mediating effect of attitudes supporting violence and substance use in the relationship between early exposure to violence and dating violence perpetration. Methods: This study utilized data from 4,533 U.S. college students in the International Dating Violence study (IDVS), based on cross-sectional design. Data from college students in the IDVS were collected through convenience sampling and consisted mostly of undergraduates enrolled in social sciences courses. Statistical analyses include ordinary least squares regression (Chapters 2 & 3), and path analysis (Chapter 4). Results: (1) Chapter 2: The findings showed that advised violence, witnessed violence, and victimized violence each contributed to college students’ acceptance of violence. Verbal endorsement of violence from family and community members had stronger associations with students’ acceptance of interpersonal violence than did childhood experiences of violent victimization and witnessed violence. (2) Chapter 3: The results showed that pro-violence messages moderated the relationship between exposure to violence and attitudes accepting violence among female students, but the messages moderated the effects of exposure to violence on dating violence perpetration among male students. These findings clearly show that pro-violence messages may have different effects on college students’ cognition (attitudes toward violence) and their actual behaviors (dating violence perpetration), and that the effects of pro-violence messages vary according to gender. (3) Chapter 4: The findings highlight the significance of attitudes toward violence as a common mediator in the effects of exposure to violence – whether physical or sexual – on physical and psychological violence perpetration. However, substance abuse was a significant mediator only in the relationship between exposure to sexual violence and psychological violence perpetration. Conclusion: Collectively, this dissertation indicates that early intervention is critical in preventing the effects of exposure to violence on attitudes supporting violence and actual dating violence perpetration in college students. Thus, the findings highlight necessary training interventions for community members to prevent pro-violence norms. In particular, parents and community elders should take responsibility for providing non-violent advice to solve relationship conflicts for children. Interventions for college students should target multiple risk factors for dating violence perpetration, including gender, pro-violence attitudes, substance abuse, and individuals’ histories of exposure to violence. Implications for future research and limitations are discussed

Ecological correlates contributing to reporting of school delinquency among Caribbean adolescents

Many studies have examined significant factors associated with school delinquency among adolescents, including relationship violence, property damage, and other serious threats to students’ safety. However, students’ coping behaviors after being victims of or witnesses to violence and other forms of delinquency have not been thoroughly examined. This study contributes to the existing body of knowledge by identifying significant factors at the individual, family, and school levels that affect 226 Caribbean students’ actual reporting of school delinquency to school personnel. The data for this study were obtained from the Caribbean Youth Violence Survey, which studied middle and high school students in five Caribbean countries. The findings of hierarchical multiple regression analyses indicated that female students were more likely than male students to report delinquent behaviors. Family cohesion and family disorganization significantly decreased students’ reporting behaviors after they experienced or witnessed school delinquency. On the other hand, school bonding significantly increased students’ reporting behaviors. This paper concludes with practical implications and future research agendas for developing a comprehensive mechanism to address the dynamics of multidimensional factors that influence students’ active coping behaviors for dealing with school delinquency

A scoping review of vicarious trauma interventions for service providers working with people who have experienced traumatic events

Health and human service providers who aid traumatized individuals frequently experience vicarious trauma (VT). Although VT plays a critical role in service providers’ mental health and well-being, as well as in the quality of their service provision, little information is available concerning the development and implementation of VT interventions for service providers. To advance the development of evidence in this area, we undertook a scoping review in which we reviewed existing interventions intended to address VT among service providers working with traumatized clients. Searches of electronic databases were conducted to identify studies published in peer-reviewed journals, with no date restrictions. Over 1,315 citations were reviewed, and a total of 27 studies were included in the final review. The findings show that VT interventions in the literature can be divided broadly into four categories: psychoeducation, mindfulness intervention, art and recreational programs, and alternative medicine therapy. The VT interventions reviewed generally showed promise in their key outcomes, including reductions in secondary trauma stress, compassion fatigue, burnout, and other mental health outcomes. However, the current body of research is lacking both in rigor and in specificity regarding the definition of VT. Furthermore, existing VT interventions are generally self-care based and tend to focus on general stress management rather than addressing the specific effects of VT. Therefore, we call for an increase in efforts to tailor VT interventions to different service settings and participant characteristics, as well as greater attention to developing primary VT interventions at the organizational level

PREVENTING SUBSTANCE ABUSE AMONG ADOLESCENTS: EVALUATION OF AN INTEGRATED MODEL COMBINING LIFE SKILLS TRANING AND PARENT TRANING

This study examines the effectiveness of an integrated model combining Life Skills Training (LST) for students and Love and Logic Training (LLT) for parents. 310 middle school students and 49 parents were participated in the study. A paired sample t-test was computed to compare pre and post-test scores for each participant. An independent sample t-test was used to determine if statistical differences exist between the treatment and control groups. Alcohol use and resistance to alcohol use among both treatment and control groups were significantly changed after the intervention in a positive way. No significant change in substance use was found in both groups. When it comes to comparison between treatment and control groups, a significant difference was found only in resistance to alcohol use, meaning participants in treatment group showed significantly higher level of resistance to alcohol use than control group after the intervention. Implications of these results for practice and training were discussed

Characteristics of child fatalities that occur in the context of current or past intimate partner violence:A scoping review

PurposeChildhood exposure to intimate partner violence (IPV) is a pervasive problem worldwide. In addition to directly observing or indirectly experiencing IPV, children may be killed because of IPV. To date, research on child IPV-related deaths exists in various, disconnected areas of scholarship, making it difficult to understand how IPV contributes to child fatalities. As such, this scoping review located and synthesized research on child fatalities that resulted from IPV, seeking to understand the state of global research concerning the prevalence and circumstances of IPV-related child fatalities.MethodsUsing a combination of keywords and subject terms, we systematically searched PsycINFO, CINAHL Plus, PubMed, and seven research repositories. We located empirical studies published in English in peer-reviewed journals that reported findings concerning children (aged 0–17) who were killed because of IPV and/or people who killed children due to IPV. Among 9,502 de-duplicated records, we identified 60 articles that met review inclusion criteria. We extracted and synthesized information concerning research methods, circumstances and consequences of the fatalities, characteristics of people who committed IPV-related homicide of a child, and characteristics of children who died because of IPV.ResultsStudies were published from 1986–2022 and analyzed data from 23 countries. Most studies did not focus exclusively on IPV-related child homicides, and overall, studies reported sparse information concerning the contexts and circumstances of such fatalities. There were two predominant and distinct groups of children killed due to IPV: children killed by a parent or other adult caregiver and adolescents killed by an intimate partner. It was often difficult to ascertain whether the demographic characteristics of individuals who kill a child in the context of IPV and other contextual details might be similar to or different from child fatalities that occur under different circumstances or for other motivations.ConclusionsThis review highlighted that children die because of IPV. Findings indicated that such fatalities, while maybe difficult to predict, are often preventable if earlier intervention is made available and professionals are alert to key circumstances in which fatality risk is high. Future research and practice efforts should attend to understanding child fatalities resulting from IPV to identify critical intervention points and strategies that will save children’s lives

Literature, visual culture and domestic spheres, 1799-1870

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AN APPROACH FOR ACTIVE SEGMENTATION OF UNCONSTRAINED HANDWRITTEN KOREAN STRINGS USING RUN-LENGTH CODE

Microsoft, Motorola, Siemens, Hitachi, IAPR, NICI, IUF We propose an active handwritten Hangul segmentation method. A manageable structure based on Run-length code is defined in order to apply to preprocessing and segmentation. Also three fundamental candidate estimation functions are in- troduced to detect the clues on touching points, and the classification of touching types is attempted depending on the structural peculiarity of Hangul. Our experiments show segmentation performance of 88.2% on touching characters with minimal over-segmentation.