The purpose of this preliminary and exploratory research project was to identify possible links between insecure male attachment patterns and wife assault. Attachment theory suggests that the quality of early interpersonal relationships has a profound effect on the psychological, emotional and social development of the individual. Insecure attachment has been found to be associated with a number of relationship problems and these interpersonal problems have also been identified with men who assault their wives. Based on this similarity, the insecure attachment paradigm may offer a useful theoretical orientation for understanding the conflict behaviours of men who assault their wives. The sample of fifty adult men who had assaulted their female partners was drawn from two therapy groups. In this preliminary and exploratory study, a number of measures were used to assess each man's mental representation of childhood attachment and his adult intimate attachment patterns, intimate conflict tactics and interpersonal jealousy and anger problems. The associations between insecure preoccupied, dismissing, and fearful attachment pattern ratings and male conflict tactic and relationship problems were then analyzed. The findings indicated that men who assault their wives had a high proportion of insecure adult intimate attachment patterns. These assaultive men were also found to be predominantly insecure in both their mental representations of childhood attachment and adult intimate attachment pattern ratings, with the greatest continuity occurring with the insecure preoccupied and fearful pattern ratings. Three patterns of relationship problems corresponding to the three insecure adult intimate attachment pattern rating were found. Preoccupied attachment pattern ratings were positively correlated with interpersonal jealousy scores and the reported use of the reasoning, verbal/symbolic abuse, physical abuse and severe physical abuse conflict tactics. Dismissing attachment pattern ratings were positively correlated with interpersonal anger scores and negatively correlated with the reasoning, verbal, physical and severe physical abuse conflict tactics. Fearful attachment pattern ratings were similar to the dismissing pattern in the positive correlation with interpersonal anger scores. The importance of considering insecure adult intimate attachment pattern ratings when providing group therapy to men who assault their wives was considered. Men with high insecure dismissing adult intimate attachment pattern ratings seem to require a distinctly different therapeutic approach than those with high insecure preoccupied adult intimate attachment pattern ratings and ideas in this regard are discussed. / Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies / Graduate

Philosophiae Doctor - PhD / The main goal of this study was to develop assessment and intervention guidelines that will provide practitioners with a framework to develop and implement batterer intervention programmes. The development of batterer intervention programmes must be informed by risk-based assessment and the study has identified this as a priority. This priority was informed by the popular notions that batterer intervention by itself, is futile and that intervention efforts were misdirected and useless. The author was of the opinion that if specific risk markers were identified, the batterer intervention efforts could be a tool to influence the values, beliefs and dangerous behaviours of abusive men. This study attempted to formally identify those risk factors that should be considered with batterers so that appropriate guidelines for assessment and intervention could result. / South Africa

Kränkande behandling är ett samhällsproblem som för unga ofta tar sin plats i skolan. Skolan ska vara en plats för kunskapsberikande och inte kränkande behandling. Skolor har ett ansvar att säkra elevernas rätt till en trygg skolgång, huvudmannen i kommunen har även ett ansvar att upprätta en plan för att förebygga och förhindra kränkande behandling. Denna kvalitativa studie jämför handlingsplaner mot kränkande behandling mellan gymnasieskolor som befinner sig i utsatta respektive icke utsatta områden. Syftet med jämförelsen är att se om det finns märkbara skillnader i hur skolor definierar och arbetar mot kränkande behandling i skolan baserat på deras geografiska läge. Vidare är syftet att se om det arbete som beskrivs i handlingsplanerna är tillräckligt i arbetet mot psykisk ohälsa. Metoden som används vid analysen är Norman Faircloughs kritiska diskursanalys. Socialkonstruktivism och intersektionalitet används som teoretiskt ramverk i analysen av resultatet. Studien visar att det inte finns några skillnader som direkt kan härledas till skolornas geografiska läge. Studien fann dock smärre skillnader som eventuellt kan förstås utifrån det geografiska läget. Dessa skillnader fanns bland annat i skolornas beskrivning av kränkande behandling samt i deras arbete mot detta och ansvarsfördelningen bland personal och elever.

Ostracism is among vastly researched and discussed psychological phenomena that have been discussed in the workplace context vastly for three decades. As the severity of the issue, employees usually let the discrimination go unnoticed and therefore the cases are not reported. To understand the underlying factors that can result in its initiation, the study examines the factors that cause ostracism. The study explores the contextual environment and the factors that influence or stop the effects of ostracism in the working environment. Moreover, the study argues on the personal outcomes factors which can be the result of stressful working culture and additional workload. The study also explores how different working environment, such as employment opportunity and power distance have a role to play in this scenario. To test the study, the data was collected from the employees and supervisors of the departmental stores in Pakistan and Sweden. The number of respondents for the data was 480 (in total after data screening). As the study had multi structural model, therefore the data was testes with Confirmatory factor analysis and Structural Equation Modelling to measure the effect of different variables on the respondents. The study reveals that the factors reveal the significant effect on the employees of service industries and it results in having negative effects on psychological and health factors of an employee. It also reveals that when these issues are not resolved, employees often intend to leave the organization voluntarily not to be ostracised. Furthermore, the study also discovered insignificant results within the context of employment opportunity due to the spread of the Corona Virus Pandemic (COVID-19). The employees could not be certain about the employment opportunity in the service industry. The study suggests that it is important for services firms especially departmental stores to develop a supportive environment for the employees and allow them to fulfil their need for belongingness by performing better at the workplace.

abstract: Traumatic injuries are the leading cause of death in children under 18, with head trauma being the leading cause of death in children below 5. A large but unknown number of traumatic injuries are non-accidental, i.e. inflicted. The lack of sensitivity and specificity required to diagnose Abusive Head Trauma (AHT) from radiological studies results in putting the children at risk of re-injury and death. Modern Deep Learning techniques can be utilized to detect Abusive Head Trauma using Computer Tomography (CT) scans. Training models using these techniques are only a part of building AI-driven Computer-Aided Diagnostic systems. There are challenges in deploying the models to make them highly available and scalable. The thesis models the domain of Abusive Head Trauma using Deep Learning techniques and builds an AI-driven System at scale using best Software Engineering Practices. It has been done in collaboration with Phoenix Children Hospital (PCH). The thesis breaks down AHT into sub-domains of Medical Knowledge, Data Collection, Data Pre-processing, Image Generation, Image Classification, Building APIs, Containers and Kubernetes. Data Collection and Pre-processing were done at PCH with the help of trauma researchers and radiologists. Experiments are run using Deep Learning models such as DCGAN (for Image Generation), Pretrained 2D and custom 3D CNN classifiers for the classification tasks. The trained models are exposed as APIs using the Flask web framework, contained using Docker and deployed on a Kubernetes cluster. The results are analyzed based on the accuracy of the models, the feasibility of their implementation as APIs and load testing the Kubernetes cluster. They suggest the need for Data Annotation at the Slice level for CT scans and an increase in the Data Collection process. Load Testing reveals the auto-scalability feature of the cluster to serve a high number of requests. / Dissertation/Thesis / Masters Thesis Software Engineering 2020

This quantitative research is on the efficacy of Minnesota Statute 144.574 enacted in 2005 in response to the growing awareness of behavior leading to inflicted Traumatic Brain Injuries (iTBI) in infants and children. The model for this research is grounded in the Theory of Reasoned Action wherein the education of new parents which graphically explains the physiologic changes to the structural architecture of the brain post-trauma, paired with their signature on a social contract (SC), demonstrated a reduction in incidence. Because the enacted statute does not include the signing of a SC, nor does it require face-to-face education as in the model, Statute 144.574 cannot claim to be completely grounded in medical science. The result is that neither legislators nor the medical and public health community know whether the statute is effective in lowering incidence. This research was designed to explore the difference in the incidence pre-and post-enactment, in rural vs. urban communities, the proportion of incidence and ethnicity, and an ordinal shift in the distribution of severity. All births in Minnesota from 1998 through 2017 were included. Cases defined using International Classification of Disease were extracted from secondary data from the brain and spinal cord injury, hospital discharge, and vital statistics databases. A Z-test was employed to compare the incidence in a control cohort of infants and children born prior to enactment to the incidence of same in an interventional cohort born post-enactment. Results suggest the statute has not resulted in lowering incidence, have uncovered an unanticipated statistically significant increase in rural vs. urban incidence, yet point to a trend in favor of less severe iTBI. These results represent a positive social change which is grounded in the society's imperative and social justice of protecting children by informing public health officials, caregivers, and legislators of the need for meaningful reform and strengthening of programs leading to lowering the incidence of iTBI in children in Minnesota.

The domestic violence movement has had remarkable success illuminating the scope, prevalence and consequences of battering, but has been more limited in its ability to successfully intervene and prevent abuse of women by their intimate male partners. Surprisingly, there has been little research directed at understanding why intervention strategies with perpetrators are only minimally effective. Studies have focused on assessing the degree to which and for whom individual components such as arrest, prosecution and psycho-educational programs for abusive men are successful, but few explorations have attempted to describe limitations and challenges to the domestic violence intervention 'system as a whole'. Employing a systems approach, a process-oriented evaluation of the domestic violence intervention system in Portland, Oregon was conducted. Ten focus groups were facilitated with key stakeholders in the coordinated community response. Participants included police and probation officers, victim advocates, victim/survivors, batterer intervention program providers, and batterer intervention program participants. The focus group discussions were analyzed using constructivist grounded theory and emergent themes were identified. Based on stakeholder testimony, it appears as though seven interacting features may limit the effectiveness of domestic violence intervention strategies with abusive men: 1) attempting to simultaneously punish and rehabilitate perpetrators, 2) dominance of a "one size fits all" approach, 3) insufficient accountability within the system for abusive men, 4) rampant victim blaming, 5) barriers to effective collaboration, 6) confusion created by complex domestic violence dynamics, and 7) reactivity instead of activism and prevention. These and other findings are discussed in light of their capacity to illuminate fundamental tensions associated with relying so heavily on the criminal justice system to intervene in domestic violence (e.g., the contradictions that surface when attempting to protect and empower victims, the difficulty of balancing consistency with an individually tailored response when sanctioning perpetrators). Despite these and other challenges, complete dismissal of the criminal justice system's role in holding abusive men accountable seems unwise. Instead, it will be important for movement activists, practitioners, and researchers to critically reflect upon its limitations and work to redress and refine its use, while simultaneously developing new strategies that engage a wider range of community resources.

No description available.

Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) exhibit a strong influence on later functioning in adolescence and adulthood, including impacts on physical and mental health, as well as behavioral and risk-related outcomes. A dose-response effect is evident, in that as the number of ACEs increase, the likelihood of detrimental outcomes similarly rises. Important outcomes associated with increased ACEs include: physical health problems like cancer or heart disease, risky sexual behaviors, diagnosis of a trauma-related disorder, and criminality (Felitti et al., 1998; Espleta et al., 2018; Lew & Xian, 2019; Ramakrishnan et al. 2019; Van Niel et al., 2014). More recently, the exploration of the impact of ACEs has demonstrated differential accumulated risk in offender populations, with ACEs that are more prevalent and a more intensified dose-response relationship between ACEs and outcomes associated with sexual offending and other violent behaviors (Harlow, 1999; Levenson, Willis, & Prescott, 2014; Baglivio et al., 2014; Stinson, Quinn, & Levenson, 2016). One such population evidencing increased risk are youth who have engaged in sexually abusive behaviors. These youth have experienced ACEs at higher rates than other typical youth in the community, or those involved in the justice system (Baglivio & Epps, 2016; Levenson, Willis, & Prescott, 2016), resulting in them being categorized as high-risk. Predictors like out-of-home placements have been linked to an earlier onset of aggression and sexually abusive behaviors (Hall, Stinson, & Moser, 2017). Conversely, ACEs and the youth’s own behavior are two important factors to consider when evaluating the timing and persistence of an out-of-home placement. The current study evaluates the temporal relationship between two main factors (specific ACEs and the youth’s own behavior) and out-of-home placements. We also plan to examine the relationship between these two factors and the persistence of specific placements. Data for this study consisted of archival records that were collected from a nonprofit inpatient treatment facility for adolescents who had engaged in sexually abusive behavior. The sample was comprised of 290 males and 5 females between the ages of 10 and 17 years of age (M = 14.8, SD = 1.56). The mean age was 14.8 years at time of first admission (SD = 1.56; range: 10-17 years). The sample was minimally diverse with regard to ethnicity: 83.1% Caucasian, 9.5% African American, 0.7% Hispanic, 4.4% mixed race, and 2.4% unspecified. The majority of participants were referred by the state’s Division of Children’s Services (68%), while others were referred by court representatives (20%), parents/guardians (3%), mental health providers (4%), insurance representatives (0.7%), or others (0.3%). These referrals were often used as an alternative to formal legal sanctioning (i.e., court diversion). Prior to admission, the majority of participants were residing in either a family member’s home (40.3%), residential care (78.3%) and/or foster care (48.4%), though others came from group homes (37.3%), inpatient care (36.9%), and/or a friend’s home (4.4%). The majority had only one admission to the current facility (89.5%), while approximately 10% had two or more admissions. It is expected that physical and sexual abuse will be the most significant predictors for placements like juvenile detention centers and residential treatment facilities. It is also expected that ACEs will prompt more immediate but also longer out-of-home placement decisions resulting from the youth’s own behavior. This study is for an honors thesis and has a completion deadline set for next month. For this reason, statistical analyses are still underway. Results and implications for this research will be discussed.

No description available.