Use of Play in Parenting and Family Groups

Parents who play with their children are more likely to have a strong parent-child attachment. Including play in parenting and family groups can help build parent-child relationships. However, little is written about how to include play in existing protocols for parenting and family groups. This article explores how a multi-family group used playful activities to build client engagement, scaffold parent skills in using play, and increase parents’ willingness to play with their children at home. It concludes by providing a list of play activities which can be easily integrated into parenting and family groups.     

U.S. Hispanics: A demographic and issue profile

This paper highlights sociodemographic characteristics of Hispanics and extrapolates issues attendant to this large and growing segment of American society. Educational, political, and economic issues are considered.This article was presented at the 40th California History Institute sponsored by the Holt-Atherton center for Western Studies, the University of the Pacific, Stockton, California, April 24–25, 1987.     

From after-school to expanded learning: a decade of progress

Following a decade of rapid expansion of afterschool enrichment programs, leaders in the field are rethinking how those programs can be designed to play a larger role in supporting student achievement and development and in strengthening school reform initiatives.     

EXPANSIONARY AUSTERITY? INTERNATIONAL EVIDENCE

This paper investigates the short‐term effects of fiscal consolidation on economic activity in OECD economies. We examine contemporaneous policy documents to identify changes in fiscal policy motivated by a desire to reduce the budget deficit and not by responding to prospective economic conditions. Using this new dataset, our estimates suggest that fiscal consolidation has contractionary effects on private demand and GDP. By contrast, estimates based on conventional measures of the fiscal policy stance used in the literature support the expansionary fiscal contractions hypothesis but appear to be biased toward overstating expansionary effects.     

Computable general equilibrium models for trade policy analysis in developing countries: A survey

This paper surveys the contributions of computable general equilibrium (CGE) simulation models designed to quantify the implications of alternative trade policy scenarios in developing countries. The paper starts with a review of the basic structure of CGE models, using a one-sector model with product differentiation on the import and export side. The basic properties of CGE models are established and a series of applications to trade policy, internal-external balance and growth, and intertemporal issues are discussed.     

Task force on Medicaid in Missouri: a community collaboration in gerontological social work education

Master's level social work gerontology students formed a Task Force on Missouri Medicaid as the primary course project of the Social Policy and Aging class at George Warren Brown School of Social Work, Washington University in St. Louis. Led by students, the Task Force collaborated with community leaders to address issues with the escalating enrollment and cost of Missouri's Medicaid program, resulting in a widely disseminated policy brief. Students identified multiple professional skills gained through this assignment and community leaders determined the issue brief to be a significant contribution to Missouri's Medicaid policy debate.     

The Personhood in Dementia Questionnaire (PDQ): Establishing an association between beliefs about personhood and health providers' approaches to person-centred care

Purpose of the studyInterest in person-centred dementia care has flourished in the last two decades. Despite growing interest in the development and implementation of person-centred approaches to dementia care, important empirical questions remain. For instance, although Kitwood (1997) emphasized that personhood, a status extended by others, is at the heart of person-centred care, to our knowledge, no one has demonstrated empirically that beliefs about patient status influence how care is provided. The purpose of this series of three studies was to operationalize Kitwood's definition of personhood in order to test this hypothesis.Design and methodsTo operationalize Kitwood's definition of personhood, we generated items to create the Personhood in Dementia Questionnaire (PDQ; Study 1). We then completed preliminary tests of the PDQ's convergent and discriminant validity (Study 2). Finally, we examined the PDQ's relationships with other constructs such as burnout and job satisfaction, and we used linear regression to test the hypothesis that health providers' beliefs about personhood influence intended approaches to dementia care (Study 3).ResultsIn Study 1, we generated a pool of 64 potential questionnaire items. In Study 2, a 20-item version of the PDQ demonstrated good internal consistency, resistance to socially desirable responding, and evidence of convergent and discriminant validity. In Study 3, PDQ scores accounted for a significant proportion of variance in health providers' intended approaches to dementia care, including pain management. PDQ scores were not related to job satisfaction or to most aspects of burnout.ImplicationsThese results provide the first direct empirical evidence of Kitwood's (1997) theory that beliefs about patient personhood have the potential to influence health providers' care decisions, including decisions about pain management.     

Strategic competitive information systems

A variety of strategic competitive information systems is described and evaluated in terms of three criteria which should be met by strategic information systems. The more sophisticated varieties—those that incorporate specific models into the system—generally meet the criteria better than do the ‘retrieval’ varieties of systems. Since systems of this kind are relatively expensive to develop, this suggests that the area of strategic competitive information may be one of great potential payoff for the integration of models into information systems.     

Tobacco,Marijuana, and Alcohol Use in University Students: A Cluster Analysis

Abstract

Objective: Segmentation of populations may facilitate development of targeted substance abuse prevention programs. The authors aimed to partition a national sample of university students according to profiles based on substance use. Participants: The authors used 2008–2009 data from the National College Health Assessment from the American College Health Association. The sample consisted of 111,245 individuals from 158 institutions. Methods: The sample was partitioned using cluster analysis according to current substance use behaviors. The association of cluster membership with individual and institutional characteristics was examined. Results: Cluster analysis yielded 6 distinct clusters. Three individual factors—gender, year in school, and fraternity/sorority membership—were the most strongly associated with cluster membership. Conclusions: In a large sample of university students, the authors were able to identify 6 distinct patterns of substance abuse. It may be valuable to target specific populations of college-aged substance users based on individual factors. However, comprehensive intervention will require a multifaceted approach.