Barriers and Facilitators of Responding to Problem Gambling: Perspectives from Australian Mental Health Services

Despite high rates of comorbidity between problem gambling and mental health disorders, few studies have examined barriers or facilitators to the implementation of screening for problem gambling in mental health services. This exploratory qualitative study identified key themes associated with screening in mental health services. Semi-structured interviews were undertaken with 30 clinicians and managers from 11 mental health services in Victoria, Australia. Major themes and subthemes were identified using qualitative content analysis. Six themes emerged including competing priorities, importance of routine screening, access to appropriate screening tools, resources, patient responsiveness and workforce development. Barriers to screening included a focus on immediate risk as well as gambling being often considered as a longer-term concern. Clinicians perceived problem gambling as a relatively rare condition, but did acknowledge the need for brief screening. Facilitators to screening were changes to system processes, such as identification of an appropriate brief screening instrument, mandating its use as part of routine screening, as well as funded workforce development activities in the identification and management of problem gambling.     

Aerodynamic roughness variation with vegetation: analysis in a suburban neighbourhood and a city park

Urban Ecosystems - Local aerodynamic roughness parameters (zero-plane displacement, z d , and aerodynamic roughness length, z 0 ) are determined for an urban park and a suburban neighbourhood with...     

Deep Uncertainties in Sea-Level Rise and Storm Surge Projections: Implications for Coastal Flood Risk Management

Sea levels are rising in many areas around the world, posing risks to coastal communities and infrastructures. Strategies for managing these flood risks present decision challenges that require a combination of geophysical, economic, and infrastructure models. Previous studies have broken important new ground on the considerable tensions between the costs of upgrading infrastructure and the damages that could result from extreme flood events. However, many risk-based adaptation strategies remain silent on certain potentially important uncertainties, as well as the tradeoffs between competing objectives. Here, we implement and improve on a classic decision-analytical model (Van Dantzig 1956) to: (i) capture tradeoffs across conflicting stakeholder objectives, (ii) demonstrate the consequences of structural uncertainties in the sea-level rise and storm surge models, and (iii) identify the parametric uncertainties that most strongly influence each objective using global sensitivity analysis. We find that the flood adaptation model produces potentially myopic solutions when formulated using traditional mean-centric decision theory. Moving from a single-objective problem formulation to one with multiobjective tradeoffs dramatically expands the decision space, and highlights the need for compromise solutions to address stakeholder preferences. We find deep structural uncertainties that have large effects on the model outcome, with the storm surge parameters accounting for the greatest impacts. Global sensitivity analysis effectively identifies important parameter interactions that local methods overlook, and that could have critical implications for flood adaptation strategies.     

Early socialization of hostile attribution bias: The roles of parental attributions,parental discipline,and child attributes

The goal of this study was to examine child and parent predictors of children's hostile attribution bias (HAB) with a particular focus on exploring the associations between parents’ early attribution of child misbehavior and children's HAB in the transition to school age. Participants were 241 children (118 girls) of middle‐income families who were at risk for school‐age conduct problems. Multi‐method, multi‐informant data were collected on maternal attributions of child misbehavior, parental use of corporal punishment, and child attributes (i.e., verbal IQ, effortful control, theory of mind, and emotional understanding) at 3 years, and child HAB in ambiguous situations at 6 years. Results indicated that mothers’ internal explanations for children's misconduct may either reduce or increase children's later HAB depending on the specific content of attributions, such that mothers’ belief that children misbehave because of their internal state (i.e., emotional state or temperament) was associated with lower levels of child HAB, whereas attributing power‐based motives (i.e., manipulative, controlling intentions) in children was associated with higher levels of HAB. The findings are discussed with respect to appreciating the complexity of parents’ explanations for children's behavior, and considering parental cognition as a potential target for early identification and prevention of child HAB and related problems.     

Patterns of alcohol use and marijuana use among students at 2- and 4-year institutions

Objective: The objective of this study was to understand substance use patterns of alcohol, marijuana, and simultaneous alcohol and marijuana (SAM) use among 2- and 4-year college students. Participants: Participants were 526 young adults aged 18–23 (n?=?355 4-year students; n?=?171 2-year students) recruited from February 2015 to January 2016 who were participating in a larger longitudinal study. Methods: Latent class analysis (LCA) was used to identify past-month classes of alcohol, marijuana, and SAM use. Results: Among both 2- and 4-year students, a four-class solution yielded the best-fitting model, with 2-year classes tending to include greater marijuana use and less alcohol use and 4-year classes tending to include heavy alcohol use. Demographic characteristics were largely similar across classes. Conclusions: Classes of alcohol, marijuana, and SAM use differed by education status. Screening and prevention efforts for 4-year students may need to be tailored for the needs of 2-year students.     

Impact of metabolic syndrome and its components on kidney stone in aging Taiwanese males

Objectives: Metabolic syndrome (MtS) and kidney stone are two common aging diseases with male dominant. This is the first study regarding the potential impact of MtS and its components on kidney stone in aging Chinese population.

Methods: A total of 694 males with a mean age of 55.6 years were enrolled. The definition of MtS was according to the modified criteria developed by the Bureau of Health Promotion in Taiwan. Subjects were classified as having a disease of kidney stones according to diagnosis by a physician with available medical records or evidence from ultrasonography judged by an investigator of urologist.

Results: Using age-adjusted multivariate logistic regression analysis, our results showed that subjects with kidney stone had significantly higher prevalence of MtS (p?=?0.04, OR?=?1.74, 95% CI: 1.0 1–3.00). The presence of MtS had significant correlation with kidney stone (p?=?0.01, OR?=?1.83, 95% CI: 1.1 4–2.93), which were associated with the increment of MtS components (p?p?Conclusions: In aging Taiwanese males, the presence of MtS and its components are strongly associated with kidney stone. Abnormal BP is the most significant risk component of MtS for kidney stone.     

Influence of Temporal Distance on the Perceived Importance of Career‐Related Self‐Efficacy and Outcome Expectations

Because all career choices are about future actions, time is an important contextual variable in social cognitive career choice ( Hesketh, 2000 ). However, there is a dearth of research examining the effect of time. The authors examined how temporal distance to career entry influences the perceived importance of self‐efficacy and outcome expectations concerning a career pursuit. They also examined the moderating effects of perceived support and barriers, as well as country. The participants were college students in the United States (n= 180) and in South Korea (n= 215). The results of hierarchical regression analyses did not show main effects of time, but a 3‐way interaction indicated the complex interplay of time and other contextual variables. Implications for career counseling and future research are discussed.     

Social inclusion through employment: the marketisation of employment support for people with learning disabilities in the United Kingdom

Employment for people with learning difficulties is considered key to their social inclusion. This contradicts the perceived un-employability of people with learning difficulties that has been part of their social identities throughout their history hitherto. The national rate of employment for people with learning difficulties remains extremely low and has barely changed in the 20?years between 1990 and 2010. This paper investigates links between learning disabilities and employment, drawing on interview-based research. It analyses the quality of experience of the minority in employment to consider whether employment can serve the inclusive purpose expected of it.     

A direct procedure for monitoring the coefficient of variation using a variable sample size scheme

A variable sample size (VSS) scheme directly monitoring the coefficient of variation (CV), instead of monitoring the transformed statistics, is proposed. Optimal chart parameters are computed based on two criteria: (i) minimizing the out-of-control ARL (ARL₁) and (ii) minimizing the out-of-control ASS (ASS₁). Then the performances are compared between these two criteria. The advantages of the proposed chart over the VSS chart based on the transformed statistics in the existing literature are: the former (i) provides an easier alternative as no transformation is involved and (ii) requires less number of observations to detect a shift when ASS₁ is minimized.