Measuring the lifetime experience of domestic violence: application of the life history calendar method

Tracking Needs-Based Community and Specialized Services of Young Adults and Their Parents Before and During a First Episode of Psychosis (FEP): Highlighting Intervention Trajectories in FEP

Aim

This article aims to document 10 service trajectories of young adults (YA) and their parents, informed by healthcare professionals (HP), before and during a first episode of psychosis (FEP).

Design

Based on a crisis model perspective of the Life Course Theory (Elder; Elder and Shanahan) developed by Carpentier and White, and adapted to the current context to track community and specialized services trajectories. Thematic analysis was used to code responses to open-ended questions around the need for help and accessing services by young adults affected by a psychotic disorder, and their parents.

Setting

In collaboration with FEP clinics, setting of choice by YA and their parents.

Participants

5 YA, 12 parents, and 6 HP.

Results

10 individual service trajectories grouped into 3 distinct types of trajectories (optimal, typical, and complex) based on grouping 5 similar characteristics, highlighting service access complexity and early intervention in FEP.

Conclusion

This study is the first of its kind to examine the experiences of those who seek needs-based community and specialized services leading up to and during a FEP. Findings provide key insights related to early intervention in FEP and recommendations on improving access to such services in Quebec.

Portrayal of Domestic Violence Trajectories During the Perinatal Period

Domestic violence during the perinatal period (DVPP) refers to the various ways that women’s partners or ex-partners control and coerce them during pregnancy and the 2 years postpartum. From the descriptions of 17 women with firsthand experience of DVPP, this article reports on its manifestations and the associated contexts. The results reveal escalating violence, diverse forms of violence, and exacerbated consequences over the perinatal period. The contexts that pose additional challenges for the women include financial precariousness and the partner’s substance abuse, and to a lesser extent the residential situation.

Concordance of Reports of Intimate Partner Violence Across Partners and Measures: The Impact of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder

The Revised Conflict Tactics Scales (CTS2) is frequently used to assess intimate partner violence (IPV), but consistently yields low to moderate interpartner concordance of reports. Interpartner concordance on an alternative measure, the Event History Calendar Interview (EHCI), is largely unknown. We observed limited interpartner concordance of IPV reports on the CTS2 and EHCI, with wives generally reporting more IPV than husbands. Compared with the CTS2, the EHCI detected more cases of IPV, but not differential behavior counts. Partners' posttraumatic stress disorder severity, a common respondent characteristic and focus of IPV research, was associated with low interpartner concordance of reports on the CTS2, but not the EHCI. Additionally, husbands' posttraumatic stress disorder severity was associated with wives reporting more husband-perpetrated IPV on the CTS2 than the EHCI. Overall, the EHCI appears to mitigate some of the problems associated with the CTS2 as a measure of IPV, particularly among more highly traumatized samples.

Retrospective Reporting of First Employment in the Life-courses of U.S. Women

We investigate the accuracy of young women's retrospective reporting on their first substantial employment in three major, nationally-representative United States surveys, examining hypotheses that longer recall duration, employment histories with lower salience and higher complexity, and an absence of "anchoring" biographical details will adversely affect reporting accuracy. We compare retrospective reports to benchmark panel survey estimates for the same cohorts. We find that sociodemographic groups-notably non-Hispanic White women and women with college-educated mothers-whose early employment histories at these ages are in aggregate more complex (multiple jobs) and lower in salience (more part-time jobs), are more likely to omit the occurrence of their first substantial job or employment, and to misreport their first job or employment as occurring at an older age. We also find that retrospective reports are skewed towards overreporting longer, therefore more salient, later jobs over shorter, earlier jobs. The relatively small magnitudes of differences, however, indicate that the retrospective questions nevertheless capture these summary indicators of first substantial employment reasonably accurately. Moreover, these differences are especially small for groups of women who are more likely to experience labor-market disadvantage, and for women with early births.

Using participant-empowered visual relationship timelines in a qualitative study of sexual behaviour

This study examines how the use of participant-empowered visual relationship timelines adds to the quality of an ongoing qualitative data collection in a case study examining the influence of emotions on sexual risk-taking and perceptions of HIV risk among men who have sex with men. Gay and bisexual men (n = 25) participated in a 10-week, three-phase study. During a baseline in-depth interview, participants created a visual timeline using labelled stickers to retrospectively examine their dating/sexual histories. Participants then completed three web-based quantitative personal relationship diaries, tracking sexual experiences during follow-up. These data were extracted and discussed in a timeline-based debrief interview. The visual cues assisted with data collection by prompting discussion through the immediate identification of patterns, opportunities for self-reflection, and rapport-building. The use of flexible data collection tools also allowed for a participant-empowered approach in which the participant controlled the interview process. Through this process, we learned strategies for improving a participant-empowered approach to qualitative research, including: allowing visual activities to drive the interview, using flexible guidelines to prompt activities, and using discrete imagery to increase participant comfort. It is important that qualitative data collection utilise more participatory approaches for gains in data quality and participant comfort.

Factors Affecting Initial Intimate Partner Violence-Specific Health Care Seeking in the Tokyo Metropolitan Area, Japan

This study examined the factors affecting a women's initial intimate partner violence (IPV)-specific health care seeking event which refers to the first health care seeking as a result of IPV in a lifetime. Data were collected using the Life History Calendar method in the Tokyo metropolitan area from 101 women who had experienced IPV. Discrete-time survival analysis was used to assess the time to initial IPV-specific health care seeking. IPV-related injury was the most significant factor associated with increased likelihood of seeking IPV-specific health care seeking for the first time. In the presence of a strong effect of formal help seeking, physical and sexual IPV were no longer significantly related to initial IPV-specific health care seeking. The results suggest some victims of IPV may not seek health care unless they get injured. The timing of receiving health care would be important to ensure the health and safety of victims.

Trajectory of intimate partner violence and healthcare seeking over the life course: study of Japanese women in the Tokyo metropolitan area, Japan

OBJECTIVES

To describe the trajectory of, and examine factors affecting, intimate partner violence (IPV) and IPV-specific healthcare seeking among Japanese women over the life course.

STUDY DESIGN

Life course study.

METHOD

One hundred and one women, aged 24-80 years, who had a lifetime history of IPV were interviewed in the Tokyo metropolitan area, Japan in 2005 and 2006. Life course data were collected according to the life history calendar method. Hierarchical linear modelling was used to examine IPV-specific healthcare seeking over the life course.

RESULTS

Injury, formal or informal help seeking, public assistance, worse self-rated health status and smoking significantly increased the likelihood of IPV-specific healthcare seeking over the life course. There are significant cohort effects on healthcare seeking. The results suggest that women who experience IPV may seek healthcare services not only immediately after the first occurrence of IPV, but also later in life.

CONCLUSIONS

IPV is not always associated with immediate healthcare seeking. In particular, sexual IPV is not significantly associated with healthcare seeking. Pursuing formal and informal help is associated with healthcare seeking.

Exploring eating and activity behaviors with parent-child dyads using event history calendars

Despite advances in science, the prevalence of childhood obesity persists and outcomes remain inconsistent. An event history calendar (EHC) is a tool to facilitate understanding of family life dynamics influencing eating and activity choices. This tool uses reflection to assess temporally linked behavior in the context of life events so that choices related to eating and activity are more explicit. Fourteen parent-child (6-14 years) dyads completed an EHC and interview 2 months following a healthy eating/activity intervention. Phenomenological analysis revealed themes including "awareness" of activity/eating behaviors, "healthy lessons," "family time," and "barriers" to change. The EHC facilitated participant communication and understanding by making connections between behaviors, habits, and events in family context, so that eating and activity behaviors could be realistically reviewed. This tool has potential to guide development of individualized interventions through barrier identification and goal establishment in research and clinical settings to help counteract childhood obesity over time.

Shared environmental contributions to substance use

The current study examined the association between substance use in the household during childhood, parental attitudes towards substance use and lifetime substance use in males. Subjects included 1081 monozygotic and 707 dizygotic twins from the Virginia Adult Twin Study of Psychiatric and Substance Use Disorders. Retrospective reports of substance use and features of the family environment (adult household substance use and parental attitudes towards substance use) were obtained using a life history interview. A trivariate Cholesky decomposition was conducted using the program Mx to decompose common shared environmental variance. Findings suggest that family environmental factors accounted for a large proportion of the shared environmental effects for illicit drug use. Results illustrate an important way of extending behavior genetic research to reveal specific etiological environmental mechanisms.

Predicting alcohol consumption in adolescence from alcohol-specific and general externalizing genetic risk factors, key environmental exposures and their interaction

BACKGROUND

Alcohol consumption is influenced by specific genetic risk factors for alcohol use disorders (AUDs), non-specific genetic risk factors for externalizing behaviors and various environmental experiences. We have limited knowledge of how these risk factors inter-relate through development.

METHOD

Retrospective assessments in 1796 adult male twins using a life history calendar of key environmental exposures and alcohol consumption from early adolescence to mid-adulthood. Analysis by linear mixed models.

RESULTS

The importance of non-specific genetic risk factors on maximal alcohol consumption rose rapidly in early to mid-adolescence, peaked at ages 15-17 years and then declined slowly. Alcohol-specific genetic risk factors increased slowly in influence through mid-adulthood. We detected robust evidence for environmental moderation of genetic effects on alcohol consumption that was more pronounced in early and mid-adolescence than in later periods. Alcohol availability, peer deviance and low prosocial behaviors showing the strongest moderation effects. More interactions with environmental risk factors were seen for the non-specific externalizing disorder risk than for specific genetic risk for AUDs.

CONCLUSIONS

The impact of specific and non-specific genetic influences on alcohol consumption have different development trajectories. Genetic effects on alcohol use are more pronounced when social constraints are minimized (e.g. low prosocial behaviors or parental monitoring) or when the environment permits easy access to alcohol and/or encourages its use (e.g. high alcohol availability or peer deviance). Gene-environment interactions influencing alcohol intake may be more robust at younger ages, indicating greater plasticity of genetic influences early in the development of drinking patterns.

Reliability and Validity of Prisoner Self-Reports Gathered Using the Life Event Calendar Method

Data collection using the life event calendar method is growing, but reliability is not well established. We examine test-retest reliability of monthly self-reports of criminal behavior collected using a life event calendar from a random sample of minimum and medium security prisoners. Tabular analysis indicates substantial agreement between self-reports of drug dealing, property, and violent crime during a baseline interview (test) and a follow-up (retest) approximately three weeks later. Hierarchical analysis reveals that criminal activity reported during the initial test is strongly associated with responses given in the retest, and that the relationship varies only by the lag in days between the initial interview and the retest. Analysis of validity reveals that self-reported incarceration history is strongly predictive of official incarceration history although we were unable to address whether subjects could correctly identify the months they were incarcerated. African Americans and older subjects provide more valid responses but in practical terms the differences in validity are not large.

Toward a comprehensive developmental model for alcohol use disorders in men

The multiple risk factors for alcohol use (AU) and alcohol use disorders (AUDs) are interrelated through poorly understood pathways, many of which begin in childhood. In this report, the authors seek to develop an empirical, broad-based developmental model for the etiology of AU and AUDs in men. We assessed 15 risk factors in four developmental tiers in 1,794 adult male twins from the Virginia population based twin registry. The best fitting model explained 39% of the variance in late adolescent AU, and 30% of the liability to lifetime symptoms of AUD. AU and AUDs can be best understood as arising from the action and interaction of two pathways reflecting externalizing genetic/temperamental and familial/social factors. Peer group deviance was important in each pathway. Internalizing symptoms played a more minor role. Familial/social factors were especially important influences on AU, while genetic/temperamental factors were more critical for AUDs. We conclude that AU and AUDs in men are complex traits influenced by genetic, family, temperamental, and social factors, acting and interacting over developmental time.

The Life History Calendar Method and Multilevel Modeling: Application to Research on Intimate Partner Violence

Intimate partner violence (IPV) is prevalent and often recurrent in women’s lives. To better understand the changing risk of IPV over the life course, which could guide more effective policies and program responses, methodological innovations are needed. Life History Calendar methods enhance respondents’ recall of the timing of specific types of IPV experienced over the life course. Multilevel modeling provides a way to analyze individual and collective trajectories and examine covariates of IPV risk. We apply these complementary methods to examine IPV trajectories for a sample of women of Filipina descent living in the United States, examining life course timing and cohort effects.

A developmental twin study of church attendance and alcohol and nicotine consumption: a model for analyzing the changing impact of genes and environment

OBJECTIVE

Church attendance is one of the most consistent predictors of alcohol and nicotine consumption. The authors sought to clarify changes in the role of genetic and environmental factors in influencing church attendance and the interrelationship between church attendance and alcohol and nicotine use from early adolescence into adulthood.

METHOD

The authors used data from two interview waves 6 years apart of 1,796 male twins from a population-based register, in which respondents were asked about current and past church attendance and psychoactive drug use. Structural twin models were fitted and tested using the Mx software program.

RESULTS

As twins developed from childhood through adulthood, the influence of shared environmental factors on church attendance declined dramatically while genetic factors increased. In early and late adolescence, the negative correlations between church attendance and alcohol and nicotine consumption resulted largely from shared environmental factors. In adulthood, the inverse relationship between church attendance and substance use became stronger and arose largely from genetic factors.

CONCLUSIONS

As individuals mature, they increasingly shape their own social environment in large part as a result of their genetically influenced temperament. When individuals are younger and living at home, frequent church attendance reflects a range of familial and social-environmental influences that reduce levels of substance use. In adulthood, by contrast, high levels of church attendance largely index genetically influenced temperamental factors that are protective against substance use. Using genetically informative designs such as twin studies, it is possible to show that the causes of the relationship between social risk factors and substance use can change dramatically over development.

A genetically informative developmental study of the relationship between conduct disorder and peer deviance in males

BACKGROUND

Conduct disorder (CD) and peer deviance (PD) both powerfully predict future externalizing behaviors. Although levels of CD and PD are strongly correlated, the causal relationship between them has remained controversial and has not been examined by a genetically informative study.

METHOD

Levels of CD and PD were assessed in 746 adult male-male twin pairs at personal interview for ages 8-11, 12-14 and 15-17 years using a life history calendar. Model fitting was performed using the Mx program.

RESULTS

The best-fit model indicated an active developmental relationship between CD and PD including forward transmission of both traits over time and strong causal relationships between CD and PD within time periods. The best-fit model indicated that the causal relationship for genetic risk factors was from CD to PD and was constant over time. For common environmental factors, the causal pathways ran from PD to CD and were stronger in earlier than later age periods.

CONCLUSION

A genetically informative model revealed causal pathways difficult to elucidate by other methods. Genes influence risk for CD, which, through social selection, impacts on the deviance of peers. Shared environment, through family and community processes, encourages or discourages adolescent deviant behavior, which, via social influence, alters risk for CD. Social influence is more important than social selection in childhood, but by late adolescence social selection becomes predominant. These findings have implications for prevention efforts for CD and associated externalizing disorders.

Genetic and environmental influences on alcohol, caffeine, cannabis, and nicotine use from early adolescence to middle adulthood

CONTEXT

While both environmental and genetic factors are important in the etiology of psychoactive substance use (PSU), we know little of how these influences differ through development.

OBJECTIVE

To clarify the changing role of genes and environment in PSU from early adolescence through middle adulthood.

DESIGN

Retrospective assessment by life history calendar, with univariate and bivariate structural modeling.

SETTING

General community.

PARTICIPANTS

A total of 1796 members of male-male pairs from the Virginia Adult Twin Study of Psychiatric and Substance Use Disorders.

MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES

Levels of use of alcohol, caffeine, cannabis, and nicotine recorded for every year of the respondent's life.

RESULTS

For nicotine, alcohol, and cannabis, familial environmental factors were critical in influencing use in early adolescence and gradually declined in importance through young adulthood. Genetic factors, by contrast, had little or no influence on PSU in early adolescence and gradually increased in their effect with increasing age. The sources of individual differences in caffeine use changed much more modestly over time. Substantial correlations were seen among levels of cannabis, nicotine, and alcohol use and specifically between caffeine and nicotine. In adolescence, those correlations were strongly influenced by shared effects from the familial environment. However, as individuals aged, more and more of the correlation in PSU resulted from genetic factors that influenced use of both substances.

CONCLUSIONS

These results support an etiologic model for individual differences in PSU in which initiation and early patterns of use are strongly influenced by social and familial environmental factors while later levels of use are strongly influenced by genetic factors. The substantial correlations seen in levels of PSU across substances are largely the result of social environmental factors in adolescence, with genetic factors becoming progressively more important through early and middle adulthood.

Creating a social world: a developmental twin study of peer-group deviance

CONTEXT

Peer-group deviance is strongly associated with externalizing behaviors. We have limited knowledge of the sources of individual differences in peer-group deviance.

OBJECTIVE

To clarify genetic and environmental contributions to peer-group deviance in twins from midchildhood through early adulthood.

DESIGN

Retrospective assessments using a life-history calendar. Analysis by biometric growth curves.

SETTING

General community.

PARTICIPANTS

Members of male-male pairs from the population-based Virginia Twin Registry personally interviewed in 1998-2004 (n = 1802).

MAIN OUTCOME MEASURE

Self-reported peer-group deviance at ages 8 to 11, 12 to 14, 15 to 17, 18 to 21, and 22 to 25 years.

RESULTS

Mean and variance of peer-group deviance increased substantially with age. Genetic effects on peer-group deviance showed a strong and steady increase over time. Family environment generally declined in importance over time. Individual-specific environmental influences on peer-group deviance levels were stable in the first 3 age periods and then increased as most twins left home. When standardized, the heritability of peer-group deviance is approximately 30% at ages 8 to 11 years and rises to approximately 50% across the last 3 time periods. Both genes and shared environment contributed to individual differences in the developmental trajectory of peer-group deviance. However, while the correlation between childhood peer-group deviance levels and the subsequent slope of peer-group deviance over time resulting from genetic factors was positive, the same relationship resulting from shared environmental factors was negative.

CONCLUSIONS

As male twins mature and create their own social worlds, genetic factors play an increasingly important role in their choice of peers, while shared environment becomes less influential. The individual-specific environment increases in importance when individuals leave home. Individuals who have deviant peers in childhood, as a result of genetic vs shared environmental influences, have distinct developmental trajectories. Understanding the risk factors for peer-group deviance will help clarify the etiology of a range of externalizing psychopathology.