Exploring the Functional Subtypes of Relational and Overt Aggression in a Sample of Detained Girls

In the current study, we investigated the association between relational aggression and measures of delinquency and overt aggression in a sample of detained adolescent girls. We also tested the validity of the distinction between reactive and proactive subtypes of relational aggression by testing their independent associations with important emotional, behavioral, personality, social, and cognitive variables that have been studied in past research and found to be important for distinguishing between reactive and proactive overt aggression. Our sample consisted of 58 predominantly African-American (78%) adolescent girls recruited from three juvenile detention centers in the southeastern United States. Participants ranged in age from 12 to 18 (Mn = 14.98; SD = 1.30). Relational aggression was measured using both self-report and observation, while overt aggression, delinquency, and social-psychological variables were measured using self-report only. As predicted, both self-reported and observed relational aggression were associated with higher rates of self-reported delinquency. Self-reported relational aggression was also associated with self-reported overt aggression, while observed relational aggression was not. On a self-report rating scale, we found evidence for four subscales that were moderately correlated and had good internal consistency. These subscales corresponded to the four aggressive subtypes (i.e., reactive overt, reactive relational, proactive overt, proactive relational). Further, we found evidence for divergence between reactive and proactive relational aggression on emotional dysregulation, CU traits, and positive outcome expectations for aggression, supporting the hypothesis that these are important subtypes that could involve distinct developmental processes, similar to reactive and proactive subtypes of overt aggression. Finally, this study found that relational aggression accounted for unique variance in callous and unemotional (CU) traits among detained girls, even after controlling for levels of overt aggression. The current findings highlight the importance of assessing relational aggression in detained girls and could have implications for designing more successful interventions for girls in the juvenile justice system

Integrating external costs into water utility asset management : an application of the threshold break rate method

The goal of an asset management program is to minimize the life-cycle cost of water utility assets, while continuing to provide the service levels expected by utility customers. The life-cycle cost of an asset includes both the utilitys internal costs to maintain the asset, and external costs borne by customers, the community, and the environment when the asset fails. This project demonstrates how to integrate external costs into asset management through an application of the threshold break rate model, a pipe-replacement decision-model that minimizes the life-cycle cost of water mains. The model is employed to determine which six-inch-diameter steel water pipes in the Albuquerque Bernalillo County Water Utility Authority (ABCWUA) distribution system should be scheduled for replacement. The external costs of water outages, estimated through a choice-experiment survey of ABCWUA residential customers, are included in the model, and model outputs with and without external costs are compared. Assuming a 5% discount rate, 6% percent more pipes in the distribution system are recommended for replacement when external costs are taken into consideration. The threshold break rate model is appealing because it does not require estimation of future pipe-break rates, and it can be used even when a full history of pipe breaks is not available. However, data from the ABCWUA may not satisfy an underlying assumption of the model that the function representing the present worth of a pipe over time is unimodal

Relational and Overt Aggression in Youth: Same Aggressive Tendency, Different Manifestations?

The goal of this research was to determine whether relational aggression in girls was similar to overt aggression in boys in terms of social-psychological adjustment. A total of 199 fifth through ninth grade children (86 boys, 113 girls) participated in this study. Relational and overt aggression scores were used to form groups of children who varied on the two types of aggression. Results indicated that overtly aggressive boys did not differ from relationally aggressive girls in terms of depression, anxiety, psychopathy, sensation seeking, ADHD, delinquency, and drug use. Further, boys in the aggressive groups scored consistently higher than boys in the nonaggressive groups on all indices of maladjustment. The results of the current study provide support for the hypothesis that relational aggression in girls is not different from overt aggression in boys in terms of social-psychological adjustment problems

Estimated daily phthalate exposures in a population of mothers of male infants exhibiting reduced anogenital distance.

Phthalate diesters have been shown to be developmental and reproductive toxicants in animal studies. A recent epidemiologic study showed certain phthalates to be significantly associated with reduced anogenital distance in human male infants, the first evidence of subtle developmental effects in human male infants exposed prenatally to phthalates. We used two previously published methods to estimate the daily phthalate exposures for the four phthalates whose urinary metabolites were statistically significantly associated with developmental effects in the 214 mother-infant pairs [di-n-butyl phthalate (DnBP) , diethyl phthalate (DEP) , butylbenzyl phthalate (BBzP) , diisobutyl phthalate (DiBP) ] and for another important phthalate [di-2-ethylhexyl phthalate (DEHP) ]. We estimated the median and 95th percentile of daily exposures to DBP to be 0.99 and 2.68 microg/kg/day, respectively ; for DEP, 6.64 and 112.3 microg/kg/day ; for BBzP, 0.50 and 2.47 microg/kg/day ; and for DEHP, 1.32 and 9.32 microg/kg/day. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) reference doses for these chemicals are 100 (DBP) , 800 (DEP) , 200 (BBzP) , and 20 (DEHP) microg/kg/day. The median and 95th percentile exposure estimates for the phthalates associated with reduced anogenital distance in the study population are substantially lower than current U.S. EPA reference doses for these chemicals and could be informative to any updates of the hazard assessments and risk assessments for these chemicals

Positive and Negative Parenting Strategies, Parental Psychopathology, and Relational Aggression in Youth

This study examined the mediating role of parental psychological control on the association between parental psychopathology and youth relational aggression in a community sample of 118 adolescents (aged 11-17) and their parents. Additionally, an analysis was conducted to examine the moderating role of positive parenting on the association between parental psychopathology and relational aggression. Further analyses controlled for overt aggression and examined effects of youth gender. Results suggest psychological control partially mediates the association between parental psychopathology and relational aggression. The overall mediation was not significant after controlling for overt aggression; however, the association between psychological control and relational aggression remained significant. The moderation was not significant. Parental psychopathology interacted with gender; specifically, psychopathology was significantly associated with relational aggression only for boys. Findings demonstrate the complexity of associations between different parenting variables and relational aggression, and the necessity of assessing the effects of overt aggression and gender