Becoming an Interpretive Community: Leading River Life Covenant Church through Narrative, Metaphor and Parable

The goal of this final project was to explore the role of narrative, metaphor and parable in order to lead River Life Covenant Church in East Sacramento, California. Through the examination of Scripture, it becomes acutely clear that Jesus chose to lead His disciples through the retelling of their history, illustrative word pictures, and stories with intent. By reaching back into their collective history, Jesus reinterprets it through metaphor and parable in order to build His church and return it to its original trajectory of being a “light to the nations.” Western pastoral leadership has typically been impacted by modernity and tends to utilize strategic thinking, goal setting, program implementation, and has used these tools to evaluate whether a church is “successful” or not. Finding the right model of church to follow dominates the thinking of leadership. Intellectual reasoning and scientific method have governed pastoral leadership primarily because it is measurable, easily communicated, and rational. Interpretative leadership is much more complex. Attempting to discern what God is doing, rather than what the church would like to see happen, requires a different skill set. This final project is an attempt to lead a small, community church through the tools of narration, metaphor, and parable. Confident that the Lord is still present and at work building His church, through the Holy Spirit, this project hopes to listen to the story that is being written through this church so that she will be able to be responsive to Jesus’ specific purpose for her in being a “light that shines in the darkness.” Content Reader: Kurt Fredrickson, Ph

Inside the Minds of Sex Offenders: Illuminating the Role of Implicit Rape Attitudes in Sexual Offending

Rape supportive attitudes may be important predictors of sexual assault perpetration; yet, past research has assessed rape supportive attitudes almost exclusively through self-report measures that are methodologically and theoretically limited. To address these limitations, the purpose of the current project was to extend a novel implicit rape attitude assessment procedure (Widman & Olson, 2009) by examining the implicit rape attitudes of convicted sex offenders and a matched community control sample while situating implicit rape attitudes within a broader theoretical framework of sexual assault. Participants were 36 convicted sex offenders (M age = 39, 86% Caucasian) and 48 demographically matched, low-income community men (29 with a history of sexual assault perpetration, 19 without a history of sexual assault perpetration; M age = 36, 83% Caucasian). Between group comparisons revealed that sex offenders who committed an offense against an adult woman (n = 3) held significantly more pro-rape implicit attitudes than nonoffending community men; yet these same convicted offenders reported less self-reported rapesupportive attitudes. Additionally, within the community sample, implicit attitudes predicted the frequency of sexual assault perpetration and accounted for significant variance in sexual offending above and beyond traditional self-reported rape-supportive attitudes (i.e., rape myth acceptance, hostility toward women, and sexual dominance). Further, implicit rape attitudes accounted for sexual assault perpetration when situated within the comprehensive confluence model of sexual assault (Malamuth, 2003). Finally, results revealed extremely high rates of sexual assault in this low-income community sample (60%) and provide unique descriptive data on the self-reported sexual assaults of convicted sex offenders. Findings from this study suggest valuable avenues for future research and have important implications for rape prevention and treatment aimed at reducing the burden of sexual assault. These implications are thoroughly discussed

Sexual Communication and Contraceptive Use in Adolescent Dating Couples

This study had two aims: first, to examine the relationship between general sexual communication and contraceptive use in sexually active adolescent romantic couples, and second, to explore predictors of open communication from characteristics of adolescent couples and individual adolescents. Data were drawn from 209 male-female couples dating a minimum of four weeks who participated in the Study of Tennessee Adolescent Romantic Relationships. Seventy-three adolescent dating couples (ages 14-21) that engaged in sexual intercourse and completed a sexual communication questionnaire were included in current analyses. Results indicated that nearly 30% of couples failed to use contraception at first intercourse and almost half of couples did not use contraception every time they had sex. Increased sexual communication from both male and female partners was associated with increased contraceptive use. Additionally, adolescents who were more satisfied in their relationships reported more open communication about sex, and adolescent females who self-silenced reported less open communication about sex. Finally, mediation analyses revealed that boys’ and girls’ relationship satisfaction and girls’ self-silencing indirectly predicted contraceptive use through their effects on sexual communication. This is the first known study to address individual and dyadic components of sexual communication using reports from both members of established adolescent dating couples. Findings suggest that open sexual communication between intimate partners is important to sexual decision-making. The clinical implications of these findings are discussed

Quantification of depth of anesthesia by nonlinear time series analysis of brain electrical activity

We investigate several quantifiers of the electroencephalogram (EEG) signal with respect to their ability to indicate depth of anesthesia. For 17 patients anesthetized with Sevoflurane, three established measures (two spectral and one based on the bispectrum), as well as a phase space based nonlinear correlation index were computed from consecutive EEG epochs. In absence of an independent way to determine anesthesia depth, the standard was derived from measured blood plasma concentrations of the anesthetic via a pharmacokinetic/pharmacodynamic model for the estimated effective brain concentration of Sevoflurane. In most patients, the highest correlation is observed for the nonlinear correlation index D*. In contrast to spectral measures, D* is found to decrease monotonically with increasing (estimated) depth of anesthesia, even when a "burst-suppression" pattern occurs in the EEG. The findings show the potential for applications of concepts derived from the theory of nonlinear dynamics, even if little can be assumed about the process under investigation.Comment: 7 pages, 5 figure

Parent-Adolescent Sexual Communication and Adolescent Safer Sex Behavior: A Meta-Analysis

Parent-adolescent sexual communication has received considerable attention as one factor that can positively impact safer sex among youth; however, the evidence linking communication to youth contraceptive and condom use has not been empirically synthesized

An Online Growth Mindset Intervention in a Sample of Rural Adolescent Girls

Background. Students living in rural areas of the United States exhibit lower levels of educational attainment than their suburban counterparts. Innovative interventions are needed to close this educational gap. Aims. We investigated whether an online growth mindset intervention could be leveraged to promote academic outcomes. Sample. We tested the mindset intervention in a sample of 222 10th-grade adolescent girls (M age=15.2; 38% White, 25% Black, 29% Hispanic) from four rural, low-income high schools in Southeastern United States. Methods. We conducted a randomized controlled trial to test the efficacy of the growth mindset intervention, relative to a sexual health programme. We used random sampling and allocation procedures to assign girls to either the mindset intervention (n-115) or an attention-matched control programme (n-107). We assessed participants at pre-test, immediate post-test, and 4-month follow up. Results. Relative to the control condition, students assigned to the mindset intervention reported stronger growth mindsets at immediate post-test and 4-month follow up. Although the intervention did not have a total effect on academic attitudes or grades, it indirectly increased motivation to learn, learning efficacy and grades via the shifts in growth mindsets. Conclusions. Results indicate that this intervention is a promising method to encourage growth mindsets in rural adolescent girls

The Right to a Safe and Healthy Birth

The right to a safe and healthy birth is included in the declaration of human rights- the intrinsic allowances that humans are obligated to be protected by on a global scale. These rights, however, for some pregnant women have been submersed by lack of transportation, education and skilled birth attendants. Financial constraints and difficulty in obtaining adequate healthcare are also issues of concern. A review of literature pertaining to three different countries, the United States, China and India will be examined in light of safe and healthy birthing techniques for women worldwide. These countries were chosen due to their diverse injustice issues as it pertains to birthing rights. Education and advocacy efforts in relation to reproductive rights on a global scale will be discussed. Review of the literature not only reveals grave injustices for women and children but it also illuminates ways in which individuals can get involved to help promote the right to a safe and healthy birth. Several movements will be highlighted in order to provide the audience with practical advocacy, education, and relief effort implementations

Self-Reported Sexual Assault in Convicted Sex Offenders and Community Men

Although self-reported sexual assault perpetrated by men against women has been well documented among college men, less is known about self-reported perpetration among convicted sex offenders and community men. This study provides unique descriptive and comparative information on sexual assaults in these understudied populations. Participants were 40 convicted sex offenders and 49 demographically-comparable community men who completed the Sexual Experiences Survey (SES; Abbey, Parkhill, & Koss, 2005; Koss, Gidycz, & Wisniewski, 1987) and other surveys to capture the promiscous sex and hostile masculinity pathways posited by the confluence model (Malamuth, 2003). We found notably few differences between sex offenders and community men in the rate and severity of sexual assault perpetration and the tactics used to obtain unwanted sexual contact. Specifically, 68% of sex offenders and 59% of community men acknowledged they had perpetrated sexual assault. Both groups used guilt and anger as the most frequent tactics to obtain unwanted sexual activity from their female victims. Consistent with the confluence model, an impersonal orientation towards sexual relationships was associated with sexual assault for both sex offenders and community men. Future directions for research on sexual assault perpetration and violence prevention efforts are discussed in light of these findings