Health Information Seeking Using Tech and Non-Tech Sources Among a Diverse Sample of Caregivers in the Deep South.

Caregivers of people living with dementia (PLWD) are often tasked with making decisions about their loved one's daily care and healthcare treatment, causing stress and decision-making fatigue. Many caregivers engage in health information seeking to improve their health literacy for optimal decision-making, though there is limited knowledge about the strategies used to increase their health literacy. This study involved a survey of caregivers in Alabama, most of whom were African American and/or living in rural communities that have historically underserved. The findings shed light on caregivers' experiences in seeking out health-related information and their perceptions of various sources of information.

Gender Role Attitudes and Prosecutorial Decision-Making in a Case of Intimate Partner Violence.

Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) is a pervasive public health crisis that impacts individuals across the gender spectrum. Traditionally, IPV is conceptualized through a gendered lens, with men as the perpetrators and women as the victims. The current study explored the association between perpetrator/victim sex, prosecutor gender role attitudes, and prosecutorial decision-making in a case of alleged IPV. We hypothesized that prosecutors with more traditional gender role attitudes would be more lenient, and this effect to be exacerbated in cases involving a female perpetrator. Criminal prosecutors across the United States (N = 94) completed the Male Role Norms Inventory-Revised and read case materials describing the alleged IPV between a heterosexual couple (e.g., arrest report, medical records). The victim/perpetrator sex was manipulated to involve either a female- (male victim) or male- (female victim) perpetrated IPV case. Results indicate that gender role attitudes were not associated with prosecutorial decision-making. However, prosecutors perceived the violence as more serious and the perpetrator as more likely to reoffend when the perpetrator was male; further, they attributed more blame to the female victim. An interaction between perpetrator sex and prosecutor gender role attitudes indicates those with more traditional beliefs were more likely to blame the female (rather than male) victim. These data suggest extralegal factors related to the perpetrator (i.e., perpetrator sex), rather than prosecutor individual differences (i.e., gender role attitudes), are associated with prosecutor discretionary decision-making. In tandem with real-world disparities in the prosecution of IPV based on perpetrator sex, the current research stresses the importance of exploring a diversity of factors that account for these observed differences.

Direct Yet Opposite Effects of Stress-related and Mindful Eating on Diet Quality.

OBJECTIVE: Examine the relationships among dietary quality, mindful eating, and constructs of the Transactional Model of Stress and Coping. METHODS: In this cross-sectional study, women (n = 67) aged 25-50 years, with a body mass index of 25-40 kg/m2 completed 3 days of 24-hour recalls and a survey that included the Perceived Stress Scale, Eating and Appraisal Due to Emotions and Stress Questionnaire, and the Mindful Eating Questionnaire. Structural equation modeling assessed relationships among all constructs with the dependent variable, the Healthy Eating Index-2015. RESULTS: Mindful Eating Questionnaire (ß = 0.60, P = 0.001) and Emotion and Stress-related Eating scores from Eating and Appraisal Due to Emotions and Stress Questionnaire (ß = -0.69, P < 0.001) (r2 = 0.50) were directly associated with Healthy Eating Index-2015, but no indirect effects were identified. CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS: Overall dietary quality is associated with greater mindful eating but more emotion and stress-related eating scores among women who were overweight or obese. Future studies could assess model constructs using other diet quality scores and including additional coping mechanisms such as substance use, physical activity, and meditation.

Identifying Poly-Victimization Among Prisoners: An Application of Latent Class Analysis.

Research suggests that people in prison may be especially vulnerable to victimization and may be more likely to report exposure to multiple types, known as poly-victimization. However, the literature surrounding patterns of victimization among prisoners is limited. Before we can fully understand the variation in victimization experiences among prisoners, a necessary first step is to identify victim profiles within prisons. The current study utilizes data from the 2004 Survey of Inmates in State and Federal Correctional Facilities and employs latent class analysis to identify unique victim profiles among prisoners to understand the variation in victimization experiences, with a focus on identifying those exposed to poly-victimization. The findings of this study indicate (a) that there are four distinct victim profiles-poly-victimization (2%), physical victimization in adulthood (31%), physical victimization in childhood (17%), and low/no victimization (49%); (b) that some prisoners experience poly-victimization, although this consists of a small proportion of prisoners; and (c) that there are clear demographic differences between the latent classes, with some of the largest differences among those in the poly-victimization profile. The findings of the current study are important because they add more depth to the knowledge regarding poly-victimization among prisoners, a topic that has received little attention from researchers. The current study suggests that correctional policy may need to be tailored in a way that recognizes the different needs of prisoners who have been exposed to different forms of victimization.

Partiality in Prosecution? Discretionary Prosecutorial Decision Making and Intimate Partner Violence.

In the United States, prosecutors are typically allotted a large amount of discretion when litigating a criminal case. Although some level of discretion is necessary for various reasons (e.g., lack of resources), concerns have arisen in both scholarly and popular discourse that prosecutorial discretion remains generally unchecked. Furthermore, research suggests prosecutors may be influenced by extralegal factors when making decisions about how to proceed with criminal charges. In this study, prosecutors responded to a case of alleged intimate partner violence, in which the sex and sexual orientation of the defendant and victim were manipulated. Neither sex nor sexual orientation impacted prosecutor choice to proceed with charges, the severity of the charge selected, or the harshness of the plea bargain offered. However, prosecutors were more willing to proceed without the victim's cooperation when the victim was female and perceived heterosexual males as more aggressive than heterosexual females. These data suggest prosecutorial decision making in cases of intimate partner violence may not be unduly influenced by defendant/victim sex and sexual orientation.

The Victim-Offender Overlap in Prison: Examining the Factors Associated With Group Membership.

Historically, criminologists have examined offending and victimization in the community as separate outcomes. Recently, however, researchers have begun to explore the shared commonalities of being an offender and a victim. The victim-offender overlap literature shows that victimization and offending are not different and distinct outcomes, but rather these outcomes share numerous risk factors. A close examination of the victim-offender overlap has not been done within the prison literature. Thus, it remains unclear whether there are commonalities among prisoners who offend while incarcerated and those who experience victimization. The focus of the current study is to (a) identify the proportion of the prisoners who were victims-only, offenders-only, victim-offenders, or neither victim nor offender and (b) identify the factors that predict membership into the four categories of the overlap. The current study used the 2004 Survey of Inmates in State and Federal Correctional Facilities with multinomial logistic regression analyses to examine which factors are associated with group membership into the victim-only, offender-only, or victim-offender groups in prison. Findings show that although the victim-offender overlap exists among prisoners, the majority of prisoners were neither a victim nor an offender. Victim-offenders and victims-only comprise only a small proportion of the sample. Findings also indicate that there are few unique factors across the groups. Results of the study have implications policy and future research.

Mental disorder and victimisation in prison: Examining the role of mental health treatment.

BACKGROUND: There is evidence that people with mental disorders are at increased risk of victimisation in prison. It is unclear whether this risk of victimisation varies across types of disorders or symptoms and what role mental health treatment has on victimisation risk in this context. AIMS: To examine the relationship between specific mental disorders, psychiatric symptoms, and victimisation in prison and the effect of treatment for the disorders on victimisation risk. METHODS: Using a nationally-representative sample of prisoners, path analyses were conducted to examine the relationship between mental disorder and victimisation. The analyses also examined whether receiving mental health treatment in prison affected any such relationship. RESULTS: Victimisation risk varied with the type of mental disorder or symptoms. Depression, personality disorder, hopelessness, paranoia, and hallucinations were associated with increased victimisation risk. Psychotic illnesses were otherwise negatively associated with victimisation. Receiving mental health treatment in prison was associated with greater risk of victimisation there. Receiving treatment appeared to mediate the relationship between mental disorders, symptoms, and victimisation. CONCLUSIONS: The findings suggest that not all inmates with mental disorders are at an increased risk of victimisation. Further, mental health treatment in prison also appears to be a risk factor of victimisation. More research is needed to further elucidate the relationship between mental disorders, treatment, and victimisation. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Violent Victimization in the Prison Context: An Examination of the Gendered Contexts of Prison.

Currently there are few published, multilevel studies of physical assault victimization of prisoners. This study builds on the extant research by utilizing a nationally representative sample of correctional facilities (n = 326) and inmates (n = 17,640) to examine the impacts of a large set of theoretically and empirically derived individual- and contextual-level variables on prison victimization, including how the gendered context of prison impacts victimization. Results support the lifestyles/routine activities approach. Inmates who were charged with a violent offense, were previously victimized, were smaller in size, were not married, were without a work assignment, misbehaved, did not participate in programs, used alcohol or drugs, and those who had a depression or personality disorder were more likely to be victimized. In addition, the data suggest that 8% of the variance in victimization is due to the prison context. Prisons with high proportions of violent offenders, males, inmates from multiracial backgrounds, and inmates with major infractions had increased odds of victimization. Moreover, the sex-composition of the prison has significant main and interactive effects predicting victimization. Specifically, we find that the effects of being convicted of a drug crime, drug use, military service, major infractions, and diagnosed personality disorders are all gendered in their impacts on victimization.