Nonviolent Resistance: Helping Caregivers Reduce Problematic Behaviors in Children and Adolescents

In this review, the principles of nonviolent resistance (NVR) and studies examining its acceptability and efficacy are reviewed. Originating in the sociopolitical field, NVR has been adapted for numerous settings including parents of youth with externalizing and other problems, foster parents, teachers and school personnel, and caregivers of psychiatric inpatients. NVR has also been applied to reduce accommodation of highly dependent adult children and to improve novice driving habits. The principles of NVR include refraining from violence, reducing escalation, utilizing outside support, and maintaining respect for the other.     

A New Multicriteria Risk Mapping Approach Based on a Multiattribute Frontier Concept

Invasive species risk maps provide broad guidance on where to allocate resources for pest monitoring and regulation, but they often present individual risk components (such as climatic suitability, host abundance, or introduction potential) as independent entities. These independent risk components are integrated using various multicriteria analysis techniques that typically require prior knowledge of the risk components’ importance. Such information is often nonexistent for many invasive pests. This study proposes a new approach for building integrated risk maps using the principle of a multiattribute efficient frontier and analyzing the partial order of elements of a risk map as distributed in multidimensional criteria space. The integrated risks are estimated as subsequent multiattribute frontiers in dimensions of individual risk criteria. We demonstrate the approach with the example of Agrilus biguttatus Fabricius, a high‐risk pest that may threaten North American oak forests in the near future. Drawing on U.S. and Canadian data, we compare the performance of the multiattribute ranking against a multicriteria linear weighted averaging technique in the presence of uncertainties, using the concept of robustness from info‐gap decision theory. The results show major geographic hotspots where the consideration of tradeoffs between multiple risk components changes integrated risk rankings. Both methods delineate similar geographical regions of high and low risks. Overall, aggregation based on a delineation of multiattribute efficient frontiers can be a useful tool to prioritize risks for anticipated invasive pests, which usually have an extremely poor prior knowledge base.     

Absolute and relative risk aversion: An experimental study

Kenneth Arrow posed the hypotheses that investors reveal decreasing absolute risk aversion (DARA) and increasing relative risk aversion (IRRA). It is very difficult to empirically test these two hypotheses since one needs to analyze an investor's investment decisions at various points in his/her economic life cycle as the investor's wealth varies. An experimental study is conducted to test these two hypotheses when the subject's wealth varies depending on his/her investment performance. The experiment involves an actual money gain or loss which is indexed to the individual's investment performance. It is found that DARA is indeed strongly supported, but IRRA is rejected.     

Robustness of Risk Maps and Survey Networks to Knowledge Gaps About a New Invasive Pest

In pest risk assessment it is frequently necessary to make management decisions regarding emerging threats under severe uncertainty. Although risk maps provide useful decision support for invasive alien species, they rarely address knowledge gaps associated with the underlying risk model or how they may change the risk estimates. Failure to recognize uncertainty leads to risk‐ignorant decisions and miscalculation of expected impacts as well as the costs required to minimize these impacts. Here we use the information gap concept to evaluate the robustness of risk maps to uncertainties in key assumptions about an invading organism. We generate risk maps with a spatial model of invasion that simulates potential entries of an invasive pest via international marine shipments, their spread through a landscape, and establishment on a susceptible host. In particular, we focus on the question of how much uncertainty in risk model assumptions can be tolerated before the risk map loses its value. We outline this approach with an example of a forest pest recently detected in North America, Sirex noctilio Fabricius. The results provide a spatial representation of the robustness of predictions of S. noctilio invasion risk to uncertainty and show major geographic hotspots where the consideration of uncertainty in model parameters may change management decisions about a new invasive pest. We then illustrate how the dependency between the extent of uncertainties and the degree of robustness of a risk map can be used to select a surveillance network design that is most robust to knowledge gaps about the pest.     

A General Model of Random Variation

A statistical distribution of a random variable is uniquely represented by its normal-based quantile function. For a symmetrical distribution it is S-shaped (for negative kurtosis) and inverted S-shaped (otherwise). As skewness departs from zero, the quantile function gradually transforms into a monotone convex function (positive skewness) or concave function (otherwise). Recently, a new general modeling platform has been introduced, response modeling methodology, which delivers good representation to monotone convex relationships due to its unique “continuous monotone convexity” property. In this article, this property is exploited to model the normal-based quantile function, and explored using a set of 27 distributions.     

Why Risk Analysis is Difficult,and Some Thoughts on How to Proceed

Risk analysis is challenged in three ways by uncertainty. Our understanding of the world and its uncertainties is evolving; indeterminism is an inherent part of the open universe in which we live; and learning from experience involves untestable assumptions. We discuss several concepts of robustness as tools for responding to these epistemological challenges. The use of models is justified, even though they are known to err. A concept of robustness is illustrated in choosing between a conventional technology and an innovative, promising, but more uncertain technology. We explain that nonprobabilistic robust decisions are sometimes good probabilistic bets. Info‐gap and worst‐case concepts of robustness are compared. Finally, we examine the exploitation of favorable but uncertain opportunities and its relation to robust decision making.     

Volunteers and the risk of posttraumatic stress disorder

Symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) result from exposure to a traumatic event and influence a person's ability to cope psychologically. Recent documentation from emergency rooms shows that medical personnel, including volunteers who treated severely injured people, can develop symptoms of PTSD even though the volunteers themselves were not personally subjected to the stressful event. This article finds similar results among adolescents who volunteered with Magen David Adom (MDA), Israel's national emergency medical, disaster, ambulance, and blood bank service. Because of the security threats Israel has faced, these adolescents are likely to be exposed to traumatic events during their volunteer service, and some may develop PTSD. This article explores who is most susceptible to developing PTSD and the underlying theories of why that may be the case. Since the adolescents' motives to volunteer vary, the article proposes that volunteers with certain motives retain their enthusiasm for volunteering despite the danger of developing PTSD symptoms. It also finds that some of the motives to volunteer correlated with a reduction in the level of PTSD symptoms. Understanding the adolescents' motivations to volunteer will help nonprofit leaders and managers allocate volunteers according to their motivations and the levels of threat a particular job entails.