Search

Verfügbar in der Sage Public Health Emergency Collection: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9849116, The COVID-19 pandemic has had profound societal and economic effects. Concerns were raised that domestic violence might increase because of the enacted infection control measures. Previous findings on this issue have been contradictory. Since existing studies mainly rely on official reports, administrative data, helpline calls, or retrospective measures, their findings are likely to prove unreliable. Few population-based surveys include pre-pandemic data, limiting their ability to test for causality regarding increasing violence. Therefore, the aim of this study was to compare findings from population-representative surveys on the prevalence of intimate partner violence (IPV) and violence against children (VAC) before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. Based on the data of N = 3,639 individuals living with a romantic partner and N = 1,313 parents living with at least one of their children from three German representative population surveys, we estimated average marginal effects for the temporal trends (i.e., pre vs. post infection control measures) of domestic violence separately for males and females. To minimize bias across survey waves, inverse probability weighting was used. Results show no statistically significant increase in either physical or psychological forms of IPV or VAC as a result of the implementation of COVID measures. On the contrary, the 1-year prevalence was decreasing for certain forms of violence. Our findings suggest that the assessment of the consequences of infection control measures needs an empirical basis. Further research should be conducted using high-quality data sources. Therefore, the present study should be considered a stepping stone for ongoing research efforts to examine the consequences of pandemic-related infection control measures on the general population.

Das FGW-geförderte Projekt 'Glücklich in Wuppertal' hat die erste Phase in der Einrichtung des weltweit ersten appbasierten urbanen Wohlbefindens-Panels ermöglicht. Mit einer Smartphone-App wird hier sowohl Glücksforschung systematisch auf die urbane Ebene gebracht als auch ein neues Instrument für Partizipation in der Stadt geschaffen. Basierend auf der Infrastruktur und Vorarbeiten der Happiness Research Organisation (HRO) und eingebettet in Arbeiten des Wuppertal Instituts zu neuen Wohlstandsmodellen erfasst die App in mehreren sich ergänzenden Modulen das subjektive und kommunale Wohlbefinden der Wuppertaler Bevölkerung. Über die Projektlaufzeit von 12 Monaten wurde der zentrale Fragebogen 1799-mal voll verwertbar von unterschiedlichen Personen ausgefüllt. Über eine sehr starke Medienpräsenz und sonstige Kommunikationsmaßnahmen konnte gemeinsam mit lokalen Partner_innen ein hoher Bekanntheitsgrad der App erreicht werden. Erste Einbindungen der Ergebnisse in städtische Entwicklungsprozesse laufen und werden aktuell erweitert., The Project 'Happy in Wuppertal' included the first phase of establishing the world’s first urban app-based well-being panel. With an app for smartphones research on well-being and happiness is being brought to the city level. Beyond research, the app will become a new tool for participation in the City of Wuppertal. The project uses existing work and infrastructure of the Happiness Research Organization (HRO) that has been implemented in various international projects. It is also based on work at the Wuppertal Institute on new forms of wealth and well-being. The app consists of several complementing modules that look into the personal and communal well-being of the citizens of Wuppertal. Within 12 months the central questionnaire has been answered 1799 times in full by different individuals. The app is very well known within the city due to partnerships with local enterprises and media. Some first steps towards using the app in decision making have been taken and will be extended.

Smartphone-Apps ermöglichen eine niedrigschwellige und regelmäßige Kommunikation zwischen Bürgern und kommunaler Verwaltung. Sie können damit die Mängel 'analoger' Formen der Bürgerbeteiligung ausgleichen und fördern eine partizipative Stadtentwicklung. Die App kann in städtische Entwicklungsprozesse eingebunden werden, um mehr Menschen die Möglichkeit zur Partizipation zu geben. In Wuppertal geschieht dies bereits. Zentrale Erfolgsfaktoren sind ein intuitives Interface, ein deutlicher Mehrwert für die Nutzer_innen, Öffentlichkeitsarbeit, lokale Partner_innen und ein zeitnahes Feedback aus Politik und Verwaltung. Breit angelegte Erhebungen können zeigen, wie Luftqualität, Arbeitsplätze und städtische Infrastrukturen von Bürger_innen wahrgenommen werden und welche Faktoren dazu führen, dass Stadtteile 'glücklich machen'.

Callous-unemotional (CU) traits represent the affective components of the psychopathy construct and show a strong relationship to violence and conduct-disorder in children. The Inventory of Callous-Unemotional Traits (ICU) is the current standard to assess CU traits. Despite the ICU having originally been constructed as a four-dimensional instrument, several studies found a three-factorial structure in combination with a general ICU-factor to be the best fitting factor-model. An imbalance in the number of positively and negatively worded items can be observed between the identified ICU dimensions. To investigate the effect of item keying on the factor structure we tested different factor-models in data stemming from a large sample (N = 3878) of German ninth grade students. Our findings suggest that the original four-factorial structure with a method factor shows good model fit. This solution is furthermore in line with the specifiers of the additional coding of Limited Prosocial Emotions for Conduct Disorder in the DSM-V.

Besides other explanatory variables, parenting styles and parental violence might also be responsible for setting a path towards overweight/obesity in childhood. While this association has consistently been observed for adults, findings for adolescents still remain scarce and inconsistent. Therefore, the goal of this study is to add evidence on this topic for children and adolescents. Analyses are based on a sample of 1729 German, ninth-grade students. To analyze associations between parenting dimensions and weight status, non-parametric conditional inference trees were applied. Three gender-specific pathways for a heightened risk of overweight/obesity were observed: (1) female adolescents who report having experienced severe parental physical abuse and medium/high parental warmth in childhood; (2) male adolescents who report having experienced low or medium parental monitoring in childhood; and (3) this second pathway for male adolescents is more pronounced if the families receive welfare. The importance of promoting parenting styles characterized by warmth and a lack of physical abuse is also discussed. This is one of only a few studies examining the association of parenting dimensions/parental physical abuse and weight status in adolescence. Future studies should include even more parenting dimensions, as well as parental physical abuse levels, in order to detect and untangle gender-specific effects on weight status.