In order to end or at least reduce the amount of sexual violence in our society, it is necessary to identify the factors that play a part in men's sexual aggression against women they know. One hundred and ninety-five men ranging in age from 19 to 82 were randomly sampled from enumeration records of a small Canadian city and completed questionnaires. Overall, 73 percent of men reported never having been sexually coercive. Logistic regression analysis, using a dichotomous coercion criterion, established that childhood abuse, adolescent promiscuity, and restrictive emotionality all increased the likelihood of sexual coercion. Early sexual socialization and aspects of the male role related to emotional expressivity appear to be important in the development of coercive behavior. As such, prevention programs must be aimed at earlier interventions in families, communities, and schools.

The dominant model of posttraumatic growth (PTG) suggests that growth is precipitated by significant challenges to one's identity or to core assumptions that give one's life meaning, and develops as one goes through meaning-making or schema reconstruction processes. Other perspectives suggest, however, that such growth occurs by other means. We use a numerically aided phenomenological approach to elucidate common profiles of growth in a sample of 52 adults who lost a loved one in a traumatic mine explosion 8 years earlier. Of the three clusters extracted, 1 captured the essence of the PTG model, including threat to sense of self, meaning-making, and personal growth; 1 featured an inability to find meaning and an absence of growth; and 1 featured minimal meaning threat with modest growth. Those most likely to report PTG interpreted the experience as threat to self, with growth coming from development of new self-understanding. The data suggest that a better understanding of the processes of PTG may be realized by taking a more refined approach to the assessment of loss and growth, and by drawing distinctions between personal growth and benefits.

This study examined the impact of parents, peers, the media, and sex education on shaping adolescents’knowledge about dating relationships. Half of the 100 (48 females, 52 males) participants were early adolescents (13 to 14 years) and half were middle adolescents (15 to 16 years). Through a questionnaire, participants identified the quantity of information, perceived correctness, and influence of each of the sources. Friends and sex education teachers were perceived to provide the most information, adults to provide the most accurate information, and friends to have the greatest influence on dating choices. Sex differences existed across various questions and source types. Girls received more information on dating across sources, perceived parents and the media to be more accurate sources of information, and were more influenced by their parents than were boys. Boys gave higher rankings to dating partners and dating behavior as comfortable sources of information than did girls.

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Narratives are critical to how people understand themselves and the significant events of their lives. Drawing upon social memory theory and the social constructionist approach to social problems, this study provides a narrative analysis of the counter-memory activism of the Westray Families Group (WFG), which formed after 26 men died in the 1992 Westray mine explosion (Plymouth, NS). Against alternative explanations promoted by more powerful stakeholders, the WFG adopted and weaved a corporate negligence narrative into their commemorative activism. This study illustrates how a small families group can draw reflexively upon and reshape cultural scripts to narrate how others should remember and respond to key events.