Reviews

Abstract

Michelle DeMars reviews The Indispensable Academic Librarian: Teaching and Collaborating for Change; Norma Durian reviews The Library Outreach Casebook; Trina Boykin Nolen reviews Licensing Digital Content: A Practical Guide for Librarians, Third Edition.     

Comprehensive neighbourhood mapping: developing a powerful tool for child protection

This paper proposes ‘comprehensive neighbourhood mapping’ as a schema for gathering and interpreting information within a given geographical area which is informed by imaginative thinking about the safety of children and young people from sexual crime. It would build upon current forms of profiling by local authorities, health authorities and central Government. CNM would actively involve local people, in partnership with agencies, in ‘mapping’ danger points and support points. Eight components are discussed, including environmental issues, locations of sex offenders, sites where teenagers meet and share information, supportive individuals and organizations. Some issues for pilot projects are discussed, including the need to set up planning and implementation groups and to integrate CNM into wider child protection and community safety strategies. CNM is grounded in an ecological perspective which sees partnership approaches as essential and believes an overarching view of neighbourhood needs, based on detailed local information and understanding of how different forms of harm interconnect, is crucial in developing child protection strategies. At times of acute official anxiety about community ‘lynch‐mob’ reactions to known paedophiles, CNM aims to build communities which instead are informed and thoughtful about child protection. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Psychological Control and Autonomy Granting: Opposite Ends of a Continuum or Distinct Constructs?

This article explores the relationship between parental psychological control and parental autonomy granting, and the relations between these constructs and indicators of adolescent psychosocial functioning, in a sample of 9,564 adolescents from grades 9 to 12. Participants completed a comprehensive parenting questionnaire as well as several measures of psychosocial adjustment. Confirmatory factor analyses of the parenting items revealed discrete factors for psychological control and autonomy granting, suggesting that these are distinct parenting constructs rather than opposite ends of a parental control continuum. Moreover, structural equation modeling showed that these factors were weakly correlated and differentially related to adolescent internalizing symptoms. Findings have implications for future conceptualization and measurement of psychological control and autonomy granting, and for research examining their effects on adolescent development.     

Pathways between education and health: a causal modelling approach

Summary.  The association of poor education and poor health has been consistently observed in many studies and in various countries. Thus far, studies examining the mechanisms underlying this association have looked at only a limited set of potential pathways. This study simultaneously examines six distinctive pathways, which have been hypothesized to link education and health and found support from previous studies. A causal analysis of education and health was performed using structural equation models. Data were used from six phases of the National Child Development Study, which is based on following up an initial sample of 17416 children who were born in 1958. The association between education and health appears to be explained by a combination of mechanisms: adolescent health and adult health behaviours for men and women, adult social class among men and parental social class among women. We conclude that improvements in population educational attainment may not automatically lead to improvements in population health, and that health policies for improving health and reducing health inequalities need to target specific causal pathways.     

The effects of teenage childbearing on adult soft skills development

Research examining impacts of teenage childbearing on economic and social outcomes have focused on completed schooling and labor force outcomes. In this paper, we examine outcomes that have remained largely unexplored, soft skills and personality. We use Add Health data to construct relevant controls for teenage mothers and explore a set of measures that proxy for what is usually deemed in economics as “non-cognitive” or “soft skill” traits. We find that teenage childbearing increases impulsivity, a trait that has been found to have negative effects on a large set of outcomes and has a negative effect on other personality traits perceived as positive, such as openness to experiences. Our results remain consistent through a set of robustness checks, and we interpret our findings to suggest that adolescence may be a sensitive period for the development of soft skills and that childbearing may interrupt this process.     

Implications of behavioural economics for financial literacy and public policy

This paper summarizes and highlights different methodological approaches to behavioural economics in the context of the conventional economic wisdom and the implications of these different methodological approaches for financial literacy, related institutional change, and public policy. Conventional economics predicts no substantive improvement from improvements to financial literacy. The errors and biases approach to behavioural economics suggests limited improvements to decision making from financial education as errors and biases are largely hardwired in the brain. Government and expert intervention affecting individual choice behaviour is recommended. The evidence suggests that the bounded rationality approach to behavioural economics, with its focus on smart decision makers and the importance institutional and environment constraints on decision making, is the most promising lense through which to analyse financial decision making. From this perspective, financial decision making can be improved by providing decision makers with better quality information presented in a non-complex fashion, an institutional environment conducive to good decisions, an incentive structure that internalize externalities involved in financial decision making, and financial education that will facilitate making the best use of the information at hand within a specific decision-making environment.