Is Household Wealth Sustainable? An Examination of Asset Poverty Reentry After an Exit

This paper analyzed the influence of financial behaviors on the duration out of asset poverty while controlling for households’ life cycle and demographic characteristics. We found evidence for the existence of structural barriers to asset acquisition. Asset accumulation at or above levels equal to nine-months worth of income at the income-poverty level was important for improving a household’s odds of permanently escaping asset poverty, but a linear relationship between asset accumulation and the likelihood of returning to asset poverty did not emerge. Moreover, minimizing debt and diversifying the asset portfolio to include more productive assets were positively related to maintaining assets; but households should also consider the risks associated with portfolio allocations.     

Giving Victims of Bullying a Voice: A Qualitative Study of Post Bullying Reactions and Coping Strategies

Current research on how adolescents cope with bullying is primarily quantitative, examines youth in Grades 1 through 6, and neglects to specifically assess how victims of bullying cope with being bullied. The current qualitative study explored the coping strategies of 22 rural middle- and high-school youth victimized by bullying. Results indicated that youth report using an array of emotion focused coping strategies (an internal coping strategy that focuses on emotion regulation) and problem focused coping strategies (active behaviors that are aimed to decrease or eradicate the stressor). These coping strategies included help seeking, physical and verbal aggression, standing up for themselves, and prosocial bystander behavior. While the majority of coping strategies were similar between middle- and high-school participants, these groups reported utilizing verbal and physical aggression in different ways. Further, certain coping strategies, such as help seeking and lashing out with physical and verbal aggression, were utilized as both emotion- and problem-focused coping strategies. Implications are discussed.     

Risk Homeostasis Theory and Traffic Accident Data

The risk homeostasis theory posits, in essence, that a control mechanism analogous to the thermal homeostatic system in warm-blooded animals tends to keep risk per unit time constant, and, as a consequence, the number of traffic accidents per unit time of driving also tends to remain constant, essentially independent of changes in the traffic safety system. It is the purpose of the present research to examine the validity of this claim using a wide variety of traffic accident data. All the data examined are found to be incompatible with the risk homeostasis theory. The only specific field accident data offered in the literature to support the risk homeostasis theory are found to, in fact, refute the theory. The accident data provide evidence that a rich variety of user responses occur. While it is possible for users to collectively respond in such a way that safety benefits are completely cancelled, such a response is not particularly common; it is certainly not universally occurring, as suggested by the risk homeostasis theory. It is concluded that the risk homeostasis theory should be rejected because there is no convincing evidence supporting it and much evidence refuting it.     

Re-visioning nurses' punitive attitudes within forensic psychiatric and correctional nursing: the significance of ethical sophistication

1. Development is an essential lifelong process if we are to compassionately care for patients in forensic and correctional nursing. 2. Many of us are blocked in our ability to understand and to care; we will need to grow to meet the challenges and to bear the shocks of forensic and correctional nursing. 3. Concepts that correspond to Kegan's levels of consciousness imply a progression from punitive attitudes toward more positive attitudes.     

Estimating Fatality Reductions from Increased Safety Belt Use

Fatality reductions from increases in safety belt use are estimated taking into account that drivers who change from being nonusers to being users have lower accident involvement rates than the remaining nonusers, a process referred to as "selective recruitment." Analytical functions are derived which express expected fatality reductions in terms of changes in safety belt use rates from an initial rate. The function parameters are determined by requiring that computed average crash rates for nonusers be 53% higher than the rates for users, a recently determined empirical value. These functions show that, depending on the initial use rate and use rate increase, selective recruitment may increase or decrease expected fatality reductions. However, effects are relatively small, in no case exceeding +/- 5.3%.     

Effect of family structure on life satisfaction: australian evidence

How do family arrangements affect subjective well-being? We investigate this issue using data pooled from the IsssA and HILDA, both large, representative national samples of Australia (pooled n=38 447). Our regression analysis of cross-sectional and panel data examines how large are the differences in life satisfaction according to marital status and cohabitation. We find that women and men in formal marriages experience higher levels of life satisfaction than do people in other family arrangements. Moreover, both multiple tests in the cross-section, and tests controlling for prior happiness in the panel analysis, suggest that this is a causal relationship. Aggregating up the levels of life satisfaction generated by different marriage and cohabitation arrangements across a lifetime, suggests that a life-long marriage is the most satisfying. Early divorce followed by an enduring second marriage is little worse (because little time is spent outside the married state). But divorce without remarriage, or long lasting cohabitation without formal marriage, reduce the lifetime sum of subjective well-being by 4–12% for both women and men.     

Factors influencing middle and high schools' active parental consent return rates

The authors examined factors influencing the return rates for attempting to collect active parental consent forms from 21,123 students in the 7th through 10th grades in 41 middle and high schools. Overall return rates from middle schools were higher than from high schools. Schools that offered high levels of staff support for collecting consent forms had higher return rates. Procedures where the consent form was attached to a school form that parents had to complete and return to the school yielded the highest return rate. Implications for how researchers can obtain a high parent consent form return rate are discussed.     

Nonverbal cues employed in discriminating between disabled persons and actors

Undergraduate subjects were seen to accurately discriminate between simulating actors and genuinely disabled males confined to wheelchairs. Judgments were based on skill in manipulating the wheelchair, poorer muscular development of the disabled, and on appearance of clothing. Implications for research on the disabled employing actors was discussed.This study was supported by a grant from the York University Faculty of Arts awarded to the first two authors. The project was performed as the third author's Honours thesis. The authors wish to thank all participants for their cooperation and assistance in making this research possible. The authors also wish to thank Gail Kenyon, Coordinator of the Centre for Handicapped Students who helped recruit participants for the videotaping and to Lucie Cantrell, Executive Officer of the York University Counselling and Development Centre who arranged for the use of the Centre's facilities and equipment.