The white paper from the Justice and Gender-Based Violence Research Initiative offers policy and practice recommendations to achieve justice for victims, families, and communities.

Job title: PhD Candidate in psychology (309874), Employer: NTNU - Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Deadline: Sunday, November 1, 2026

Researchers tested the DNA of dogs to determine whether mutations in a gene for friendly dog behavior are linked to extreme friendliness in humans as well.

When Attachment Advice Starts Sounding Like Neuroscience

Background We aimed to explore associations between the presence of pets at one and 4–5 years of age with internalizing and externalizing problems at 7–8 years. Methods Participants comprised 1893 families from the INfancia y Medio Ambiente (INMA) project. Information was collected on the presence of (1) any pet, (2) dogs, (3) cats, (4) birds or (5) other animals. Pet ownership was categorized as never, always, only at age 1 and only at age 4–5. Internalizing and externalizing problems were measured at ages 7–8 years through the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire, a Likert questionnaire on children’s behavioural and emotional symptoms. Negative binomial regression models and Tukey’s multiple comparison tests were used to analyse data sets. Five sensitivity analyses were performed. Results Families that always owned a pet made up 24.4% of the sample. In addition, 11.5%, 4.5%, 3.8% and 17.6% of the families owned a dog, cat, bird or other animal, respectively. The median (P25–P75) for internalizing problems was 3 (1–5) and 5 (3–8) for externalizing problems. Owning a cat only at age 4–5 increased mental health problems: relative rate ratio (RRR) [95% confidence interval (CI)] 1.37 (1.05–1.79) for internalizing and 1.26 (1.02–1.56) for externalizing. Always having other animals was a protective factor for internalizing problems with an RRR of 0.80 (0.66–0.96). These associations remained after multiple comparison testing and sensitivity analyses. Conclusion Owning a cat only at 4–5 years of age was linked to more internalizing and externalizing problems, whereas always having other animals was a protective factor against internalizing problems. Graphical abstract

Objective: The purpose of the study was to examine which attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) symptoms at ages 3 to 5 are most strongly associated wi...

The primary objective of this project is to manage the continuation of the well established Afterschool Matters Initiative, which includes several publications and a Research Grantee program, in addit...