Predicting relapse of problematic child-rearing situations

BackgroundThe development and evaluation of risk assessment instruments for child maltreatment is still in its infancy, both in the Netherlands and internationally. The aim of this study was to examine the predictive validity of a structured clinical judgement instrument – the Check List of Child Safety (CLCS) – that is widely used in the Netherlands. The second aim was to examine the predictive validity of a newly developed actuarial risk classification that is based on variables measured with the CLCS.MethodThe sample consisted of 3963 Dutch families who were under the supervision of the Dutch Child Welfare Agency (CWA) between 2011 and 2013 because of problematic child-rearing situations. Relapse was defined as restarting treatment by the CWA because of newly substantiated problematic child-rearing situations. The actuarial risk classification was developed by means of a CHAID analysis. The predictive validity of the CLCS and the actuarial risk classification were examined by calculating several performance indicators (sensitivity, specificity, false positives, false negatives and AUC values).ResultsThe predictive validity of the CLCS was poor, with a non-significant AUC of .530, meaning that the CLCS performed no better than chance. The predictive validity of the actuarial risk classification was moderate, with a significant AUC of .630.ConclusionThe actuarial risk classification not only outperformed the CLCS, but is also time-saving in practice since it comprises only variables that are significantly related to relapse.     

News across the channel ‐ contact and communication between the Dutch and Walloon refugees in Norwich and their families in flanders, 1565–1640

This article examines the contacts kept between Dutch and Walloon refugees, who fled the Low Countries in the second half of the sixteenth century and their relatives and friends back home. The Norwich exile communities are taken as a case study to discuss how and how long family ties were maintained across the Channel. By looking at letters, port‐books and wills it will be analysed how long a particular Dutch and Walloon identity, which was centred around the refugee churches, was preserved. It will be shown that links to the continent were kept by many of the refugee families even in the second generation in exile. These commitments, however, did not prevent the refugees from participating successfully in English social and economic life. Instead, an international community existed for a considerable time within Norwich's city walls.     

The Selendang Ayu Shipwreck and Oil Spill: Considering Threats and Fears of a Worst‐Case Scenario*

On December 8, 2004, the Selendang Ayu, a Malaysian‐flagged freighter, ran aground off Unalaska Island in Alaska's Aleutian chain. Despite rescue efforts by the United States Coast Guard, six of the Selendang Ayu's crew members died. In addition to the deaths, more than 300,000 gallons of heavy bulk fuel oil spilled into the sea. Much of the oil washed onto the island's shores, into areas providing cultural, recreational, subsistence, and commercial fishing resources for residents of the renewable resource community of Dutch Harbor/Unalaska. The purpose of this article is to identify and examine different dimensions of risk, based on qualitative research conducted in 2005. We use a contextual constructionist approach to understand risk, which conceptualizes risk as an objective hazard, threat, or danger that is mediated through social and cultural processes. Research methods included 31 personal interviews, participatory observation, and a review of media coverage. Findings revealed several dimensions of risk perceived by residents: the incident in relation to Dutch Harbor/Unalaska as a high‐risk community and more general current events; threats to the community's annual $1 billion seafood industry; threats to Alaska Native subsistence culture; and issues of future risk and uncertainty. Interviews and observations support our conclusion that the Selendang Ayu incident represented a “shot across the bow” that could have been a “worst case” if oil had contaminated commercial fish processing. Residents believe that it is only a matter of time before another, more damaging accident occurs. Given this general perception, it is important to more clearly assess risk in Dutch Harbor/Unalaska and help the community increase resilience to the multiple hazards it faces. More broadly, Dutch Harbor/Unalaska serves as an example—all communities could benefit from better risk assessments and increased attention to resiliency.     

The Obligation to Volunteer as Fair Reciprocity? Welfare Recipients’ Perceptions of Giving Back to Society

Dutch citizens on welfare have to volunteer at Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) in return for their benefits. Through applying the ‘worlds of justification’ of Boltanski and Thévenot, this article aims to provide a better theoretical and empirical understanding of social justice of policies that obligate welfare clients to participate in CSOs. The analysis of 51 in-depth interviews with Dutch welfare recipients shows that respondents perceive these policies partly but not unilaterally as unfair. If respondents perceive welfare as ‘free money’ and if they are convinced that civic behavior demands interventions against free riding on welfare resources, ‘mandatory volunteering’ is considered as fair. Our main contribution is to the theoretical debate on recognition and redistribution by showing empirically how ‘othering’ plays an important role in determining when mandatory volunteering becomes a matter of redistribution or recognition.

     

The uses of social science in the history of dutch social work, 1900–1980

In this paper the author reviews the history of Dutch social work between 1900 and 1980 and tries to shed light on how Dutch social workers enlisted various insights developed by the social sciences to gain jurisdiction in dealing with social problems. He argues against the simplistic idea that scientific knowledge is merely applied in practical settings such as social work. Social workers did not just apply scientific insights; they also used scientific insights strategically to demarcate their position from various opponents both inside and outside the profession. It is useful to differentiate between the reflexive and strategic uses of social sciences: reflexive means that new interpretations of the social world and the nature of social problems are offered which imply different ways of doing social work; strategic means that with these new interpretations new boundaries are created between social work and competing actors in the field of dealing with social problems.     

Derogating benevolent behavior of deviant in-group members: group processes within a real-life sample of heterosexual Christians

How do people evaluate potentially good and desirable behavior by others? We investigate how participants (N = 154) evaluate a couple that wants to adopt an orphan that would otherwise die. We collected data from heterosexual Christians in two cities in the Dutch Bible belt. We manipulated whether the adoptive-parents-to-be were a heterosexual couple or a lesbian couple and whether the couple self-identified as devout Christians or not. Using a subjective group dynamics account, we predicted and found that participants evaluated the lesbian couple in more negative terms than the heterosexual couple, especially when this couple was also Christian. These findings illustrate how positive behavior is derogated when displayed by in-group deviants.     

Underwriting slavery: insurance and slavery in the Dutch Republic (1718–1778)

This article shows that slavery was more connected to Dutch society and economy than has been previously assumed. It does so by investigating the people involved in Dutch slavery insurance in the period 1718–1734, when the Dutch slave trade was monopolized by the state-chartered West India Company (WIC) and the period 1763–1778, when the private slave trade reached its peak and slavery insurance was more common. This article analyzes a variety of primary sources that have not been studied in this light before. The analysis shows that a large and varied group was involved and that slavery insurance was not a regional institution that only affected the Dutch colonies.     

The Effect of Active and Passive Peer Discouragement on Adolescent Risk taking: An Experimental Study

This experiment investigated the effect of peer discouragement on adolescent risk taking. Overall, 269 Dutch adolescents aged 11–15 years completed a risk taking computer task in the presence of an e‐confederate who demonstrated very little risk taking (passive peer discouragement) and/or sent risk‐discouraging messages to participants (active peer discouragement). The results showed that, compared to a situation with no peer discouragement, adolescents took significantly less risk only when they encountered a combination of active and passive peer discouragement; hence, when peers practiced what they preached. No gender differences were found in the effect of passive and active peer discouragement on risk taking. The results showed that digital peer messages play a promising role in diminishing adolescent risk taking.     

The way bullying works: How new ties facilitate the mutual reinforcement of status and bullying in elementary schools

This study addresses the puzzle how high-status bullies in elementary school are able to maintain high status among their classmates despite bullying (some of) them. The dynamic interplay between bullying and status was studied, focusing on how relational bullying affects the creation, dissolution, and maintenance of status attributions, and vice versa. Longitudinal round-robin peer nomination data were obtained from 82 school classes in 15 Dutch elementary schools (2055 students; 50% boys) followed over three yearly measurements, starting out in grades 2–5 when students were aged 8-11. An age-dependent effect of bullying on the creation of new status attributions was found. Whereas the youngest group punished bullying by a refusal to attribute status to the bully, this turned into a reward of bullying in the oldest groups. Unexpectedly, high-status bullies seemed to avoid continual bullying of the same victims, pointing to explanations of why their status can persist.     

The Ideologically Colonized Metropole: Dutch Racism and Racist Denial

Many in The Netherlands deny the existence of race and racism even as significant research strongly suggests otherwise. This paper synthesized existing literature to illuminate The Netherlands' unique form of racism, which is rooted in racial neoliberalism, anti‐racialism (i.e. the denial of race), racial Europeanization, and the particular Dutch history of colonial exploitation. This article summarizes existing scholarship addressing racism in wide array of social institutions in The Netherlands before addressing the historical roots of Dutch racism and how Dutch aphasia and racial Europeanization deny the links between contemporary and historical oppression before, finally, offering an explanation for this disconnect.     

A cross-national validation of the client satisfaction questionnaire: the Dutch experience

A Dutch translation of the eight-term version of the Client Satisfaction Questionnaire (CSQ-8) was administered to community mental health outpatients in the Netherlands (n = 110). Data analyses indicate that the Dutch CSQ-8 has highly similar operating characteristics and psychometric properties compared with the English language version. Results also indicate that one general satisfaction factor was found in the Dutch CSQ-8 data. All eight of the scale items loaded heavily on this general factor, strong inter-item correlations were found, and the scale demonstrated high internal consistency. On these grounds, we can conclude that the Dutch CSQ-8 has the same properties as the original questionnaire and can be used as such in Holland. It was also found that those clients who decided to stop therapy on their own were less satisfied than other clients. Clients who made a common decision with their therapist or let him/her make that decision were more satisfied than clients who stopped by themselves. Additional research is planned to investigate whether clients who complete treatment goals are indeed more satisfied and whether this line of research could be a means of studying the external validity of the scale.     

Beyond Profitability: The Dutch Transatlantic Slave Trade and its Economic Impact

Dutch research into the slave trade and its importance to the Dutch economy has often limited itself to investigating the financial success of slave trading companies, calculating the success of slaving by its profit rates. The central argument made in this article is that gross margin is a better indicator for the importance of the slave trade to the Dutch Republic. Even if a slave trading company did not make a net profit on a voyage, such a voyage led to extra activities such as shipbuilding or the production of trade goods. This article provides a reconstruction of this gross margin for the entire period that the Dutch were engaged in the trans-Atlantic slave trade by combining the most recent data on the size of the slave trade (including illicit trade) with data on both African and American price data of slaves.     

The relationship between fishermen's health and sleeping habits

This article describes research on fishermen's health and sleeping habits in Iceland. It presents the first findings of the project that were presented in October 2002 at a conference that was organized during Seamen Safety Week in Iceland. It covers physical and mental stress symptoms, sleep disturbance, and obesity, as well as fishermen's own reaction to their health and well-being. Take notice that the findings that are presented in this article can be found in a report presented in August, when the whole study will be finished. Finally, it is concluded how successful the response has been and how the project can be used positively with other studies. It is also noted that, in fact, these findings will be used for further studies linked to safety on board.     

A Cross‐linguistic Examination of Toddlers’ Interpretation of Vowel Duration

Languages differ in their phonological use of vowel duration. For the child, learning how duration contributes to lexical contrast is complicated because segmental duration is implicated in many different linguistic distinctions. Using a language‐guided looking task, we measured English and Dutch 21‐month‐olds’ recognition of familiar words with normal or manipulated vowel durations. Dutch but not English learners were affected by duration changes, even though distributions of short and long vowels in both languages are similar, and English uses vowel duration as a cue to (for example) consonant coda voicing. Additionally, we found that word recognition in Dutch toddlers was affected by shortening but not lengthening of vowels, matching an asymmetry also found in Dutch adults. Considering the subtlety of the cross‐linguistic difference in the input, and the complexity of duration as a phonetic feature, our results suggest a strong capacity for phonetic analysis in children before their second birthday.     

The impact of legislator and constituency ideology on voting on the assault weapons ban

Using variables that represent a legislator's entire legal constituency, previous research by social scientists has concluded that views of the legislator's constituency have little effect on how legislators vote. This question is reexamined by defining constituency as those voters most likely to vote for the legislator (i.e., members of the legislator's own political party and independents). Furthermore, instead of measuring constituency by either a demographic or vote-based measure, a survey measure of the ideological identification of voters (i.e., the voter's self-identification as liberal, moderate, or conservative) is introduced. It is found that the ideology of a senator's electoral constituency was an important factor on the recent U.S. Senate vote to ban 19 semi-automatic assault weapons. The findings have important implications for how social scientists conceptualize and measure constituency.     

“They always want to argue with you”: Navigating raciolinguistic ideologies at airport security

In the aftermath of the Holocaust, Dutch public discourse promotes a self-image of the Netherlands as ‘innocently’ post-racial, a place where distinctions are drawn based on cultural differences rather than bodily characteristics. However, this innocence is called into question when groups or individuals, who culturally, legally and linguistically ‘fit’ within the Netherlands, are still racialised to the point of not being recognised as properly Dutch. This paper uses a feminist approach to autoethnography and critical discourse analysis to explore the author's racialised/racialising experiences of Dutch airport security, and how these experiences are both informed by and themselves re-inform wider enactments of normative raciolinguistic ideologies. Drawing on theorisations of the links among language, embodiment and (self-)surveillance by Sara Ahmed and Samy Alim, this paper argues that although markers of citizenship and linguistic ability can be fluidly employed and engaged with, raciolinguistic categorisation is still heavily influenced by bodily appearance.     

“A stone wall out of the earth that thundering cannon cannot destroy"? Bastion and Moat at the Castle,Cape Town

Although the urgency with which the Dutch East India Company administration at the Cape built defensive works was a direct result of their fear of attack from both land and sea, there was an additional imperative, for the Castle at Cape Town stood as a symbol of Dutch colonial aspirations. In this paper, we compare written and material texts of one part of the Castle's architecture to show firstly, how the discordances between such sources can reveal an underside of early colonization and secondly, how the Castle moat, in the seventeenth century a stamp of aspirant power, was by the mid‐nineteenth century a dump and a public nuisance.     

Using video observation in the family context: The association between camera-related behaviors and parental sensitivity

Research on parental sensitivity often relies on video observation of parent–infant dyads. However, to date, no study has assessed both infants’ and parents’ interactions with the camera, and how this relates to parental sensitivity levels. This exploratory study micro-coded camera-related behaviors (CRB) by 4-month olds and their mothers and fathers on a 1-s time base, and examined the associations between those behaviors and parental sensitivity in 75 Dutch families. While parents’ CRB made up only 0.8% of total interaction time, infants’ made up 12%. Multi-level time-series analyses showed that infants’ CRB predicted mothers’. Infants’ CRB predicted fathers’ CRB, and vice versa. Maternal sensitivity was significantly lower when children looked at the camera for over one-third of total interaction time (Cohen's d = 1.26). These findings indicate further research is required to better understand how video observation might threaten ecological validity.     

The Perks and Perils of Non-Statutory Fundraising Regulatory Regimes: An Anglo-Irish Perspective

This article reviews recent non-statutory attempts at charity fundraising regulation in the UK and Ireland. It explores the definition of success for each regime and examines whether broader policy lessons for fundraising regulation may be learnt from these implementation experiences to date. To this end, the article compares the UK framework for fundraising regulation (via the Fundraising Standards Board) with recent Irish proposals for non-statutory regulation. It also identifies the key challenges facing each regime. The article draws upon current Canadian, Dutch and American regulatory experiences and benchmarks these alternative non-statutory efforts against the Anglo-Irish models by way of comparative analysis. The article tackles the broader question of how we measure success in regulatory terms and argues for better identification of the constituency to be regulated, thereby enabling prioritisation of the salient performance indicators that should be included in any non-statutory framework.     

Ethnic differences in intergenerational solidarity in the Netherlands

Using data from the 2002–2003 Netherlands Kinship Panel Study and the Social Position and Provisions Ethnic Minorities Survey (N = 2833) we describe patterns of intergenerational solidarity among five different ethnic groups in the Netherlands. We compare patterns of normative, associational and functional solidarity between various immigrant groups and the native Dutch, and question how and to what extent behavior is determined by filial norms, socio-demographic position or ethnic background. Results show that immigrant adult children show higher levels of normative (filial obligations) and associational (contact) solidarity. Functional solidarity (providing support) shows a more complex pattern. Immigrants are no more likely to provide counsel or advice than the Dutch but immigrant women are more likely to provide practical support than Dutch women.