MALE INTIMATE PARTNER ABUSE: DRAWING UPON THREE THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVES

This study addresses controversies in the literature of risk factors of abuse perpetrated by men against female intimate partners. Drawing upon the three theoretical perspectives dominant in the literature (family violence, mainstream feminist, and life-course perspectives), I approach the analysis from two directions. First, each perspective suggests risk factors in a particular category of influence; the family violence perspective suggests a focus on family influences, mainstream feminism suggests socio-cultural influences, and life-course theorists suggest a focus on individual/personal factors. Second, the family violence perspective and the life-course also suggested investigating influences organized by age group. I use a sample of 506 boys from the Pittsburgh Youth Study, a longitudinal study consisting of male individuals from public schools of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. More specifically, I focus on the 329 participants in the sample who reported being involved in a romantic relationship by age 23-25, age at which intimate partner abuse was investigated. The findings of the descriptive analysis show that intimate partner abuse is strongly correlated to the variables experience of corporal punishment in the family of origin, attitudes toward women, and delinquency (especially age 19-22). The multivariate analysis confirms that minority males, those who entered the relationship at younger age, those who experienced frequent corporal punishment in the family of origin (age 13-15), and those who had been antisocial during pre-adulthood (age 19-22) were more likely to abuse an intimate female partner during adulthood (age 23-25). The findings on race, age at entering the relationship, and delinquency add new evidence to existing controversies in the empirical literature. In the case of corporal punishment, the results address a gap in the literature

Service Learning in a Regional Urban Midwest University: An Overview of Five Projects

The use of service-learning courses has evolved in the United States in the past three decades. While the most traditional approach to service learning focuses on what universities and colleges can do for the community (Speck and Hoppe 2004), a more contemporary approach has transformed service learning into a holistic experience that engages educators, students, and community partners in a dynamic process of mutual exchange. Drawing upon the examples of other universities (Chupp and Joseph 2010; Freire 2004; Pompa 2002), our department has recently created five new opportunities for service learning in which service learning is viewed as a system of interactions and exchanges among all agencies and partners involved. This paper provides an overview of these five projects. Each project employs service learning in a unique way and provides us with the opportunity to reflect on the numerous aspects of learning (in both undergraduate and graduate programs) that are often neglected in traditional classroom courses