A qualitative investigation into military veterans’ experiences in a problem-solving court: Factors that impact graduation rates

Veterans treatment courts (VTCs) are designed to offer a rehabilitative approach to criminal justice, focusing on treatment for mental health and substance use disorders. This qualitative study develops an in-depth understanding of a Midwestern VTC by asking participants (n = 15) their views on the most helpful aspects of the program and how the program could be more helpful. Three themes emerged from the data. 1) Military veterans felt that they were treated in a compassionate and caring manner, while also being held accountable for their behaviors. 2) Military veterans felt that they were not labeled by their mental health diagnoses, but that their identities as people and military veterans were more fully recognized. 3) Military veterans were dissatisfied with some of the services they received from the local VA. These findings are discussed in the context of problem-solving courts and military veterans’ experiences of services.     

How are nurses at risk?

The effectiveness of occupational health and safety management systems (OHSMS) can be understood through analysis of surveys such as the experiences of exposure to occupational hazards by Australian nursing occupations. How effectively OHSMS are implemented in the Australian health industry is unclear as few studies describe current hazard exposure patterns or the impact of OHSMS in the Australian health industry. This paper concludes from the analysis of an Exposure Survey of Australian nursing occupations that nursing occupations perceive themselves to be "at risk" of injury and/or management of OHS risk in work duties is affected by the patterns of hazard exposure, occupation group as well as employee attributes, perceptions, patterns and situations of work. The results highlight the top-rated hazards and imply that the perceptions of hazards in the workplace are different to actual risk experience (e.g. injury patterns). There is an unacceptable level of exposure to diverse hazards in Australian nursing occupations workplaces in regard to regulatory and performance obligations. Stronger strategies to achieve more effective risk treatment, integrate with hospital accreditation and quality programs are discussed to benefit system performance and the welfare of those in nursing occupations.     

Sexual assault while in the military: violence as a predictor of cardiac risk?

The purpose of this article is to determine whether known cardiac risk factors are more prevalent among women veterans who report having sustained sexual assault while in the military. We surveyed a random sample of 3,632 women veterans using Veterans Administration (VA) ambulatory care nationally. Obesity, smoking, problem alcohol use, sedentary lifestyle, and hysterectomy before age 40 were found to be more common in women reporting a history of sexual assault while in the military than in women without such history. An association between myocardial infarction and prior sexual assault history may be mediated in part by known cardiac risk factors.     

How does language affect decision-making in social interactions and decision biases?

This paper investigates how communication in a particular language affects decision-making in social interactions and risk preferences. We test two competing hypotheses: the cognitive accessibility hypothesis, and the expectation-based hypothesis. The cognitive accessibility hypothesis argues that communication in a particular language will activate the underlying cultural frame and affect behavior. The expectation-based hypothesis argues that different languages will induce different expectations regarding the choices of others and affect behavior. We test these two hypotheses using an extensive range of behaviors in a set of incentivized experiments with bilingual subjects in Chinese and English. We find that the subjects are more prosocial in strategic interaction games (trust games) when the experiments are conducted in Chinese. However, no treatment effects are observed in the individual choice games on social preference. The results are more in line with the expectation-based hypothesis.     

How does labour share respond to risk? Theory and evidence from the Chinese industrial sector

This study discusses the role of firm risk in the declining labour share in China. Based on the model developed by Holmström and Milgrom (1987), the authors demonstrate that lower firm risk can motivate workers to work harder, leading to higher output per worker and average wage. However, increased output will lower the labour share. Using data from the Chinese Industrial Enterprises Database for the period 1998–2007 and the World Bank's Investment Climate Survey 2005, empirical evidence supports this hypothesis and performs robustly across various model specifications and proxies for firm risk, indicating a positive correlation between labour share and firm risk.     

How does active parental consent influence the findings of drug-use surveys in schools?

This study examines the impact of passive and active parental consent procedures on the type of adolescents participating in a school-based survey examining substance use. Schools recruited from a random sample of metropolitan schools were assigned to passive or active parental consent condition. Results showed that participation rates in active consent schools were lower than in passive consent schools for junior students (60% vs. 80%) but not senior students. Although consent condition had limited impact on prevalence estimates among older students, among younger students estimates of cannabis use and ecstasy use were higher in the passive consent condition than the active consent condition. Active consent procedures introduce some degree of selection bias into studies of adolescents' substance use and may compromise the external validity of prevalence estimates produced, especially among younger students.     

How does actual unemployment and the perceived risk of joblessness affect smoking behavior? Gender and intra-family effects

Review of Economics of the Household - Using the 1999–2011 waves of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, we examine how actual unemployment and the perceived risk of joblessness, as reflected...     

How does the Huntington''s disease mutation damage cells?

Huntington's Disease (HD) is an autosomal dominant neurodegenerative condition with devastating consequences. HD is caused by the expansion of a CAG trinucleotide repeat stretch in the coding sequence of the HD gene that gives rise to a long polyglutamine tract in the huntingtin protein. How this mutated protein gives rise to the disease state is controversial. In this Perspective, I discuss the results of a new study on the effects of the mutated huntingtin protein in light of previous findings and suggest that the HD mutation damages cells by perturbing multiple parallel pathways by gain-of-function and possibly also dominant negative mechanisms.     

How does inequality aversion affect inequality and redistribution?

We investigate the effects of inequality aversion on equilibrium labor supply, tax revenue, income inequality, and median voter outcomes in a society where agents have heterogeneous skill levels. These outcomes are compared to those which result from the behavior of selfish agents. A variant of Fehr-Schmidt preferences is employed that allows the externality from agents who are “ahead” to differ in magnitude from the externality from those who are “behind” in the income distribution. We find first, that inequality-averse preferences yield distributional outcomes that are analogous to tax-transfer schemes with selfish agents, and may either increase or decrease average consumption. Second, in a society of inequality-averse agents, a linear income tax can be welfare-enhancing. Third, inequality-averse preferences can lead to less redistribution at any given tax, with low-wage agents receiving smaller net subsidies and/or high-wage individuals paying less in net taxes. Finally, an inequality-averse median voter may prefer higher redistribution even if it means less utility from own consumption and leisure.     

Migration information campaigns: How to analyse their impact?

Information campaigns aim at discouraging potential migrants from leaving their countries irregularly. This article discusses how to analyse the impact of such campaigns by identifying different research lines in the literature. The impact of migration information campaigns may be explored by, firstly, focusing on transnational migratory data and inter-state relations (the macro-level); secondly, by investigating their impact on narratives within societies (the meso-level); and, finally, by investigating the micro-level of their influence on migratory decision-making. At each level, scholars face considerable methodological challenges to filter out the impact of campaigns. This article suggests that a promising research avenue is to analyse more widely the narratives and information sources upon which (potential) migrants rely. Opening up the research focus may avoid the risk of over-emphasising the impact of information campaigns by only looking at them. It allows to better understand which sources of information actually influence migratory behaviour.     

Exploring the new child protection system in Mainland China: How does it work?

Child protection has become an increasingly important issue in China. Notably however, few studies have explored the Chinese child protection system itself. The purpose of this study is to explore the basic elements of China's child protection system, which was initiated as a pilot program in May 2013, in order to find out how this child protection program works. A content analysis approach was used for this study. A total of 97 related public documents and 11 supplemented interviews were analyzed. We report on the five major categories of basic elements of China's child protection, accompanied by a detailed analysis. Findings show that: (1) The child protection pilot program aims to serve more vulnerable and disadvantaged children rather than abused and neglected children; (2) Although Minors' Protection Office was established to specialize in improving child protection mechanisms and services, a number of agencies bear the primary responsibilities of children protection in practice; (3) A reporting system for reporting suspected child abuse has been advocated in the practice of child protection for the first time; (4) Domestic child protection organizations and institutions play important roles in providing alternative care services. The findings presented in this paper also indicate that although a basic framework for child protection has formed in pilot areas, there are significant barriers to developing and implementing such a system.     

How much does reducing inequality matter for global poverty?

The Journal of Economic Inequality - The goals of ending extreme poverty by 2030 and working towards a more equal distribution of incomes are part of the United Nations’ Sustainable...     

How does naloxone distribution relate to opioid overdose deaths?

The $64,000 question — or however much money has been spent on naloxone, the lifesaving medication that rescues opioid overdose victims — is whether the distribution of the medication has an effect on overdose deaths.     

How to begin a new topic in mathematics: does it matter to students' performance in mathematics?

The authors use Canadian data from the Third International Mathematics and Science Study to examine six instructional methods that mathematics teachers use to introduce new topics in mathematics on performance of eighth-grade students in six mathematical areas (mathematics as a whole, algebra, data analysis, fraction, geometry, and measurement). Results of multilevel analysis with students nested within schools show that the instructional methods of having the teacher explain the rules and definitions and looking at the textbook while the teacher talks about it had little instructional effects on student performance in any mathematical area. In contrast, the instructional method in which teachers try to solve an example related to the new topic was effective in promoting student performance across all mathematical areas.     

Social capital and disasters: How does social capital shape post-disaster conditions in the Philippines?

ABSTRACT

Social capital is a common feature among disaster-resilient communities. This research aims to define how social capital shapes the post-disaster conditions in the 2011 Typhoon Washi-affected communities of Cagayan de Oro and Iligan City in Region 10 Philippines. Qualitative analysis was used in analyzing the data gathered through purposive sampling and semi-structured interviews. Thirty typhoon survivors and 14 focal persons of the government and non-government agencies were chosen based on their active involvement in the community. The findings revealed that the solidarity among typhoon-affected communities contributed to the recovery of the survivors. The findings also highlighted that the solidarity in the typhoon-affected communities is part of the normative structure of the society where bonding and linking social capital are nurtured. Further, the community remains to believe that their respective local officials can be trusted and are capable of helping them in times of need despite the shortcomings during the 2011 Typhoon Washi. We argue that social capital in the community is not easily diminished over a crisis and therefore must be nurtured towards effective community-based disaster resilience mechanisms.     

How do heat and flood risk drive residential green infrastructure implementation in Phoenix,Arizona?

Urban Ecosystems - Green infrastructure is an increasingly popular strategy to simultaneously address challenges associated with urbanization and global environmental change, including increased...     

Do military veteran and civilian students function differently in college?

Objective: The authors sought to assess military veterans' functioning in college by comparing their experience with that of civilian students. Participants: The study, conducted from April 2012 to February 2013, included 445 civilian and 61 student service member/veteran (SSM/V) undergraduates, drawn from a community college and two 4-year Catholic colleges, in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and New York. Methods: Participants completed anonymous online surveys. Six areas of functioning in transition to college were examined: Health, Fitting In, Emotional Adjustment, Productivity, Perceived Career Support, and Social Engagement. Results: Students, both SSM/V and civilian, with past exposure to a potentially traumatic event fit in worse than students without such exposure. Past exposure to trauma was associated with poorer emotional adjustment in civilian students, but not in SSM/V. Conclusions: Implications of results were discussed.