Relationship building and message planning: An exploration of media challenges and strategies used during school crises at the P-12 level

Schools at the P-12 level increasingly face crises related to school shootings, violence, and other tragedies. Understanding the communication challenges schools face is paramount to assisting schools with communication before, during, and after crisis events. The current study focuses on the challenges created by media interest in such crises and the strategies implemented to overcome these challenges and provide responsible information to stakeholders. Interviews conducted with 21 school crisis teams at the P-12 level revealed that sensationalism, seeking alternative routes to information, and framing were key challenges in working with the media. In light of these challenges, administrators focused on creating media plans, building relationships with the media, being accurate but guarded, and communicating reassurance and reunification. Implications are discussed for school districts nationally.     

Social Distance and the Formerly Obese: Does the Stigma of Obesity Linger?*

Research has documented the stigma of obesity extensively, but little attention has been given to the study of stigma toward formerly obese individuals. The present study examines whether the stigma of obesity in romantic relationships carries over to formerly obese individuals by using primary data collected from a Midwestern university in the United States (N = 363). We consider how an individual's own body weight, demographic characteristics, familiarity, and attitudes affect the willingness to form a romantic relationship with a formerly obese person. Results suggest that obese individuals are less likely to hesitate about engaging in a romantic relationship with a formerly obese person than underweight or normal weight individuals, but only when attitudes toward obese and formerly obese individuals are controlled. In terms of demographic characteristics, men and African Americans are more likely to hesitate about forming a romantic relationship than their respective counterparts. More familiarity with currently obese family members and formerly obese close friends appears to reduce the stigma minimally. Greater social distance is also desired if weight loss is believed to be temporary.     

Struggle as opportunity: making sense of U.S. migration experiences through Buddhist practice

Recent scholarship demonstrates how immigrants rely on religion for resources and psychological and social support at various stages of migration. Many studies of religion focus on the institutional role of faith-based organisations, with little regard for the social importance of religious experiences in daily life. Using interviews with U.S. immigrants who identify as Buddhists, I examine how migrants use Buddhist philosophies as a lens for finding meaning in the struggles associated with migration, including language acquisition, employment, and legal status. Through their practice, migrants gain a sense of agency amid vulnerable circumstances. I also explore the potentially negative consequences of the practice’s individual focus, including the propensity to mask structural causes of inequality and impede possibilities for collective action.     

Reducing poverty and inequality through tax-benefit reform and the minimum wage: the UK as a case-study

Atkinson’s book Inequality: What Can Be Done? (Harvard University Press, 2015) sets out a range of concrete proposals aimed at reducing income inequality, which cover a very broad span but include major changes to the income tax and social transfers system and the minimum wage. These are framed with specific reference to the UK but have much broader relevance in demonstrating how substantial the impact on inequality of such measures could be. This paper assesses the first-round effects of these tax, transfer and minimum wage reforms on income inequality and poverty based on a microsimulation approach using EUROMOD. The reforms involve a significantly more progressive income tax structure, a major increase in the minimum wage to the level which is estimated to represent the ‘Living Wage’, and alternative routes to reforming social transfers – either to strengthen the social insurance element or to restructure the entire system as a Participation Income (a variant of Basic/Citizen’s Income). The results show how the first-round effects of either set of tax and transfer proposals would be to substantially reduce the extent of income inequality and relative income poverty and the paper draws out how the two approaches differ in their effects. The additional impact of raising the minimum wage to the Living Wage is modest, reflecting in particular the position of beneficiaries in the household income distribution and the offsetting effects on household income of the withdrawal of means-tested cash transfers.     

Ignorability conditions for frequentist non parametric analysis of conditional distributions with incomplete data

Rubin (1976 Rubin, D.B. (1976). Inference and missing data. Biometrika 63(3):581–592.[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) derived general conditions under which inferences that ignore missing data are valid. These conditions are sufficient but not generally necessary, and therefore may be relaxed in some special cases. We consider here the case of frequentist estimation of a conditional cdf subject to missing outcomes. We partition a set of data into outcome, conditioning, and latent variables, all of which potentially affect the probability of a missing response. We describe sufficient conditions under which a complete-case estimate of the conditional cdf of the outcome given the conditioning variable is unbiased. We use simulations on a renal transplant data set (Dienemann et al.) to illustrate the implications of these results.     

Examples of doubly stochastic measures supported on the graphs of two functions

A doubly stochastic measure (DSM) is a measure μ on the unit square so that μ([0, 1] × A) = μ(A × [0, 1]) = m(A) where m is Lebesgue measure. The set of DSMs forms a convex set in the space of measures. It is known that DSMs supported on the union of two graphs of invertible functions are extreme points of that convex set (Seethoff and Shiflett, 1977/78 Seethoff, T.L., Shiflett. (1977/78). Doubly stochastic measures with prescribed support. Z. Wahrscheinlichkeitstheorie und Verw. Gebiete 41(4):283–288.[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). In general, there are few examples of extreme points in the literature. There are examples of so-called hairpins where the functions involved are inverses of each other, but there are also examples of the union of the graphs of a function and its inverse does not support a DSM (Sherwood and Taylor, 1988 Sherwood, H., Taylor, M.D. (1988). Doubly stochastic measures with hairpin support. Probab. Theory Related Fields 78(4):617–626.[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). In this paper, for a function f in a certain class, we find companion functions g so that the union of the graphs of f and g support a DSM even though the union of the graphs of f and f-inverse do not.     

Family of Origin Supervision in the Workplace: Impacts on Therapist and Team Functioning

The Adolescent and Family Unit at Redbank House carried out a trial of Bowen's Family of Origin Coaching that has prompted us to comment on the usefulness of this approach as a component of clinical supervision. This article will describe how this trial came about, the process adaptations required to make it possible and how some of the ethical dilemmas raised by this approach were addressed. Personal reflections from the team members will be shared, and our observations in terms of impact of this form of supervision on clinical functioning, team cohesion and service provision will then be discussed. In essence, we aim to provide an anecdotal account of our experience and ask the question, ‘Is supervision that focuses on the therapist's individual functioning as a product of their intergenerational patterns a valid use of resources in a clinical setting?’     

An examination of sexual strategies used by urban southern and rural Midwestern university women

The purposes of this study were (a) to determine whether women's use of persuasion, non‐physical coercion, and physical force strategies to obtain sex from a man varied between U.S. women from an urban Southern and rural Midwestern university and (b) to determine if sexual behavior history and early courtship behavior affected the use of these strategies (or not using any strategy). Women from the Midwest and the South did not differ in their use of sexual strategies. There were, however, other variables that accounted for differences in women's use of sexual strategies. Women who used persuasion strategies had fewer lifetime sexual partners than women who used any other strategy. Women who used physical force strategies reported a lower age at first intercourse and more early courtship behaviors than all others. Overall, the results indicated that sexual strategies are related to sexual behavior history and early courtship behaviors rather than cultural setting or demographics.     

Social support as a mediator of revictimization of low-income African American women

Mediating effects of social support on the link between childhood maltreatment and adult intimate partner violence (IPV) were explored in a sample of 362 low-income, African American women. We examined relations between childhood maltreatment experiences (total maltreatment, sexual abuse, physical abuse, emotional abuse, emotional neglect, and physical neglect) and adult maltreatment (physical IPV and nonphysical IPV). Results of hierarchical multiple regression analyses revealed small, but significant, effects. Further, social support mediated revictimization. Social support fully mediated relations in which the form of childhood maltreatment was different than the form of adult IPV (e.g., the relation between childhood sexual abuse and adult nonphysical IPV), but only partially mediated the relations in which the form of childhood maltreatment was similar to adult IPV (e.g., the relation between childhood emotional abuse and adult nonphysical IPV). Implications for clinical interventions for women with intimate partner violence experiences are discussed.     

A Perspective on Dioxin Emissions from Municipal Solid Waste Incinerators

This paper discusses the following key issues concerning human exposure to dioxins and furans emitted from typical, modern MSW incinerators: (1) Are MSW incinerators the major source of PCDD/PCDF input into the environment? (2) Are environmental concentrations around MSW incinerators substantially elevated relative to background levels? And (3) are MSW incinerators the major source of human exposure to PCDDs and PCDFs? Current scientific evidence indicates that (1) combustion sources in general (including steel mills, copper smelting plants, motor vehicles, pulp and paper mills, and MSW incinerators) are major sources of PCDD/PCDF input in the environment; (2) environmental concentrations of PCDDs and PCDFs around operating MSW incinerators are not substantially elevated; and (3) 99% of human exposure to PCDDs and PCDFs is from background contamination, even for individuals living near a modern MSW incinerator.