Detecting intimate partner violence in family and divorce mediation: A randomized trial of intimate partner violence screening.

Handling mediation cases with a history of intimate partner violence (IPV) is one of the most controversial issues in the field of divorce mediation. Before deciding whether and how to mediate cases with IPV, mediators must first detect violence. Using random assignment of cases to an enhanced screening condition (n = 30) and to a standard screening control condition (n = 31), we compared information gathered from a brief, behaviorally specific IPV screening questionnaire to mediators' independent determination of the presence or absence of violence using standard mediation clinic screening procedures. Mediators did not label as violent about half of the cases reporting IPV on the screening questionnaire. Mediators were more likely to report IPV when fathers were reported (by mothers) to have engaged in a greater number of differing violent behaviors, but a score reflecting severity and frequency of party reported violence did not predict mediator detection of violence. In cases with two mediators, mediators did not always agree on whether or not the case involved IPV. Possible reasons for the differences in mediator and party reports of IPV are considered, and we emphasize the potential importance of using systematic methods to screen for violence in divorce mediation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Defining a threshold for client competence to participate in divorce mediation.

The ultimate aim of court-ordered divorce mediation is to produce settlement agreements. Once ratified by the court, these agreements are legally binding and extremely difficult to modify. Courts assume that everyone is adequately equipped to mediate and, with increasing frequency, order litigants into mediation. Nonetheless, commentators have acknowledged that at least occasionally, a party may be unable to proceed. Currently, no standard exists for determining when a party lacks sufficient understanding and ability to participate in mediation, yet the legally binding outcomes of mediation are too important to leave a determination of competence up to chance. In this article, the authors propose a new legal standard, with a basis in current law and policy, for competence to participate in mediation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Family mediation handbook.

Reviews the book, Family Mediation Handbook by Barbara Landau, Lorne Wolfson, Niki Landau, Mario Bartoletti, and Ruth Mesbur (2000). Family mediation has become increasingly important in recent years as the court system has hied to move away from a litigation-based system of resolving disputes arising from divorce and separation. This volume represents a very important advance in the process of setting standards for this relatively new and complex area of endeavour. This book tries to address the needs of a diverse group of practitioners, ranging from professional who have their roots mainly in legal practice to those whose experience stems mainly from practice with families and family therapy. This book does a good job of attending to an audience made up of professionals from disparate backgrounds. It is a very comprehensive attempt to provide "one-stop shopping" for those interested in or practicing in this area, and does this job well. The price of $85 is probably a bit high for some practitioners, but the book is a good value nonetheless. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Psychology research for environmental policy.

As Environment Minister, I have had the unique opportunity to travel across the country, meeting individual Canadians who are working for the environment in their own communities. As a government, it is our responsibility to ensure that the policies and programs are in place to support their work. It is also our responsibility to try to spur others on to similar action, and to build public support for a sustainable environment. We cannot do this if we do not adequately understand the links between attitude, behaviour, and preservation of our environment. I commend the Canadian Journal of Behavioural Science for focussing on the behavioural origins of environmental solutions. I hope that the issues raised in the articles contained herein spur many of you to consider how research can help us answer some of the questions I have raised. The participation of the behavioural sciences is essential, not only to the success of environment protection, but to its very feasibility. Well-conceived research is essential in order to engage and retain public support and thus devise responses that are both environmentally sound and economically possible. Here is a challenge worthy of your expertise. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Bayesian mediation analysis.

In this article, we propose Bayesian analysis of mediation effects. Compared with conventional frequentist mediation analysis, the Bayesian approach has several advantages. First, it allows researchers to incorporate prior information into the mediation analysis, thus potentially improving the efficiency of estimates. Second, under the Bayesian mediation analysis, inference is straightforward and exact, which makes it appealing for studies with small samples. Third, the Bayesian approach is conceptually simpler for multilevel mediation analysis. Simulation studies and analysis of 2 data sets are used to illustrate the proposed methods. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Deeper into divorce: Using actor-partner analyses to explore systemic differences in coparenting conflict following custody dispute resolution.

Divorce is an inherently interpersonal experience, yet too often adults' reactions to marital dissolution are investigated as intrapersonal experiences that unfold outside of the relational context in which they exist. This article examines systemic patterns of interpersonal influence between divorced parents who were randomly assigned to either mediate or litigate a child custody dispute in the mid-1980s. Reports of coparenting conflict and nonacceptance of the divorce were assessed 5 weeks after the dispute settlement, 13 months after the settlement, and then again 12 years later. One hundred nine (N = 109) parents provided data over this 12-year period. Fathers reported the highest initial levels of conflict when their ex-partners were more accepting of the divorce. Mediation parents reported decreases in coparenting conflict in the year after dispute settlement, whereas litigation parents reported increases in conflict. Litigation parents evidenced the greatest long-term increases and decreases in coparenting conflict. Mediation is a potent force for reducing postdivorce conflict, and this article highlights the usefulness of adopting a systemic lens for understanding the long-term correlates of marital dissolution. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Psychological research, practice, and social policy: Potential pathways of influence.

Greater use of psychological research and practice knowledge in the formulation of social policy is necessary to enhance the well-being of U.S. citizens and communities. Although historically there are instances in which psychological and social science research and practice have had a substantial influence on federal policy, for the most part the relationships among research, practice, and policy have been tenuous. Three cases in which research has substantively influenced policy over the past 80 years are reviewed: Keynesian economics, Head Start legislation, and the activities of conservative think tanks. Several recommendations are made for ways in which psychologists can enhance their influence in the policy arena, including communicating directly with policymakers regarding relevant policy findings and knowledge gleaned from practice; conducting interdisciplinary, multilevel research as well as evaluation research (including qualitative data drawn from practice settings); and networking among researchers, practitioners, policy advocates, and social action groups. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Estimating and testing mediation and moderation in within-subject designs.

Analyses designed to detect mediation and moderation of treatment effects are increasingly prevalent in research in psychology. The mediation question concerns the processes that produce a treatment effect. The moderation question concerns factors that affect the magnitude of that effect. Although analytic procedures have been reasonably well worked out in the case in which the treatment varies between participants, no systematic procedures for examining mediation and moderation have been developed in the case in which the treatment varies within participants. The authors present an analytic approach to these issues using ordinary least squares estimation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

When moderation is mediated and mediation is moderated.

Procedures for examining whether treatment effects on an outcome are mediated and/or moderated have been well developed and are routinely applied. The mediation question focuses on the intervening mechanism that produces the treatment effect. The moderation question focuses on factors that affect the magnitude of the treatment effect. It is important to note that these two processes may be combined in informative ways, such that moderation is mediated or mediation is moderated. Although some prior literature has discussed these possibilities, their exact definitions and analytic procedures have not been completely articulated. The purpose of this article is to define precisely both mediated moderation and moderated mediation and provide analytic strategies for assessing each. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Ethical and professional considerations in divorce and child custody cases.

The provision of psychological (e.g., psychotherapy, coparenting, mediation, collaborative divorce, child custody evaluation) services for families of divorce are growing specialties for many clinical and forensic psychologists. However, practice in domestic relations psychology, such as divorce and custody assessment and testimony, is a high-risk venture for incurring ethics complaints and law suits. The lead article and the three commentaries that follow enumerate the various roles practitioners might play, clarify how each role requires specific skill sets that may be outside one’s particular competence and necessitate additional training, describe how countertransferential issues arise, urge meticulous record keeping, discuss some of the subtleties of confidentiality and the releasing of information, describe how transparency in clarifying expectations leads to a lowering of contentiousness, and provide tips for divorce and forensic practice. The special challenges associated with psychologists being tempted to move beyond their role on a case and those of particularly high-risk situations (e.g., complaints of child abuse or domestic violence) are also discussed. Suggestions are offered to help psychologists better serve the public while taking steps to better inoculate themselves from complaints. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Children and social policy: Section introduction.

This article introduces this special section in the current issue of the American Psychologist. The present section serves as an introduction and exemplar of the interface between child development research and social policy. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Children of alcoholics: A critical appraisal of theory and research.

Review of book, Kenneth J. Sher (Au.) Children of Alcoholics: A Critical Appraisal of Theory and Research. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991, 256 pp., ISBN 0-87630-604-0. Reviewed by Ken C. Winters. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A general multilevel SEM framework for assessing multilevel mediation.

Several methods for testing mediation hypotheses with 2-level nested data have been proposed by researchers using a multilevel modeling (MLM) paradigm. However, these MLM approaches do not accommodate mediation pathways with Level-2 outcomes and may produce conflated estimates of between- and within-level components of indirect effects. Moreover, these methods have each appeared in isolation, so a unified framework that integrates the existing methods, as well as new multilevel mediation models, is lacking. Here we show that a multilevel structural equation modeling (MSEM) paradigm can overcome these 2 limitations of mediation analysis with MLM. We present an integrative 2-level MSEM mathematical framework that subsumes new and existing multilevel mediation approaches as special cases. We use several applied examples and accompanying software code to illustrate the flexibility of this framework and to show that different substantive conclusions can be drawn using MSEM versus MLM. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Evaluation of mediation as an alternative to divorce litigation.

A review of the variables that most influence family members' postdivorce adjustment, such as parental coping abilities and the existence of continuing conflict, raises questions about the potentially damaging structure for dispute resolution imposed by the courts. Arguments are presented in support of mediation as a constructive alternative for resolving parents' disagreements on issues of custody and childcare. Mediation provides the opportunity to address the needs of both parents, increases feelings of parental competence, helps the couple develop the postdivorce skills for communication and negotiation of conflicts, and reduces postdivorce litigation. Suggestions are offered for the integration of psychotherapy and mediation in psychological practice. (54 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The role of overall justice judgments in organizational justice research: A test of mediation.

Organizational justice research traditionally focuses on the unique predictability of different types of justice (distributive, procedural, and interactional) and the relative importance of these types of justice on outcome variables. Recently, researchers have suggested shifting from this focus on specific types of justice to a consideration of overall justice. The authors hypothesize that overall justice judgments mediate the relationship between specific justice facets and outcomes. They present 2 studies to test this hypothesis. Study 1 demonstrates that overall justice judgments mediate the relationship between specific justice judgments and employee attitudes. Study 2 demonstrates the mediating relationship holds for supervisor ratings of employee behavior. Implications for research on organizational justice are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The doom and gloom of divorce research. Comment on Wallerstein and Lewis (2004).

J. S. Wallerstein and J. M. Lewis (2004; see record 2004-17367-002) concluded from their correlational research of 45 divorced families that divorce causes lasting damage to children. The authors attribute the subsequent psychological problems in the children to the divorce itself as opposed to the psychopathology of the parents, the trauma of their parenting, and their conflicted marriage. Other researchers have found that just after divorce, children have more symptoms than those in high-conflict nondivorced families but that as the children adapt to the new situation, the pattern of differences reverses. When divorce is associated with children moving into a less stressful situation, children from divorced families have similar adjustment to those from normal intact families. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of parental divorce on marital commitment and confidence.

Research on the intergenerational transmission of divorce has demonstrated that compared with offspring of nondivorced parents, those of divorced parents generally have more negative attitudes toward marriage as an institution and are less optimistic about the feasibility of a long-lasting, healthy marriage. It is also possible that when entering marriage themselves, adults whose parents divorced have less personal relationship commitment to their own marriages and less confidence in their own ability to maintain a happy marriage with their spouse. However, this prediction has not been tested. In the current study, we assessed relationship commitment and relationship confidence, as well as parental divorce and retrospectively reported interparental conflict, in a sample of 265 engaged couples prior to their first marriage. Results demonstrated that women's, but not men's, parental divorce was associated with lower relationship commitment and lower relationship confidence. These effects persisted when controlling for the influence of recalled interparental conflict and premarital relationship adjustment. The current findings suggest that women whose parents divorced are more likely to enter marriage with relatively lower commitment to, and confidence in, the future of those marriages, potentially raising their risk for divorce. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Lay judgments about child custody after divorce.

In a pair of studies, we examine lay people's judgments about how hypothetical cases involving child custody after divorce should be resolved. The respondents were citizens called to jury service in Pima County, AZ. Study 1 found that both male and female respondents, if they were the judge, would most commonly award equally shared custody arrangements, as advocated by most fathers' groups. However, if the predivorce child care had been divided disproportionately between the parents, this preference shifted, slightly but significantly, toward giving more time to the parent who had provided most of that care, consistent with the Approximation Rule advocated by the American Law Institute. Moreover, respondents judged that the arrangements prevailing in today's court and legal environment would award equal custody considerably less often, and would thereby provide much less parenting time to fathers, than the respondents themselves would award. Study 2 found that respondents maintained their strong preference for equally shared custody even when there are very high levels of parental conflict for which the parents were equally to blame, but awarded substantially less time to the culpable parent when only one was the primary instigator of the parental conflict. The striking degree to which the public favors equal custody combined with their view that the current court system under-awards parenting time to fathers could account for past findings that the system is seriously slanted toward mothers, and suggests that family law may have a public relations problem. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Videotherapy in the context of group therapy for late-latency children of divorce.

Although videotape has been used for a variety of clinical and research purposes, it is now being used in a unique fashion as a therapeutic tool in group treatment of late-latency children of divorce. The videotherapy takes the form of videotaped dramas staged by children, with the intent of making a "movie." The timing of its use is crucial, the child's stage of development is relevant, and its effectiveness is dependent on other therapeutic activities. Several differences appear to exist between videotherapy and usual role playing in therapy, chief of which is that the children invest their activity with more enthusiasm than is usually observed in therapy. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effect of childhood age in foster care on the incidence of divorce in adulthood.

This retrospective study examines the long-term effect of the age at which British children were fostered in World War II on their divorce rate. A total of 859 respondents, aged 62 to 72 years, were recruited who had childhood homes in the county of Kent in southeast England during the war. Of these, 770 had been evacuated and fostered, and the remainder stayed at home. Reflecting the wartime concerns of Bowlby, Miller, and Winnicott (1939) regarding the wisdom of separating young children from their parents for a potentially long period, male and female respondents evacuated between the ages of 4 to 6 years had a significantly higher incidence of divorce compared with those in the 13- to 15-year age group. This association was found to be mediated by attachment style in which the fearful category was predominant. The relevance of these results in the broader developmental context, and to family counseling, are briefly discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)