Attachment‐Based Family Therapy With a 13‐Year‐Old Girl Presenting With High Risk for Suicide

This article describes the application of Attachment‐Based Family Therapy (ABFT) to the treatment of a 13‐year‐old female adolescent presenting with high risk of suicide, complicated by a history of depression and sexual trauma. The article begins with an overview of ABFT, including (a) how attachment theory guides treatment; (b) the structure of the clinical model; and (c) the data that provide empirical support. A case example is then presented that exemplifies the primary clinical procedures used to reach therapeutic goals in ABFT, including attachment repair and autonomy/competence promotion. Weekly changes in suicide ideation and depression scores are presented. The article concludes with a discussion about implications for family‐based treatment of suicidal youth.     

The Relevance of Organizational Structure to NGOs’ Approaches to the Policy Process

VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations - NGOs are recognized as active participants in the policy process. There is general agreement that they are agenda setters...     

Precarious lives,precarious labour: family support and young men's transitions to work in the UK

This research is about young people, family support and transitions into the workforce. We provide the results of a comparative, qualitative study with young men in two southern English towns. We argue that relationships of support in families are vital to young people's ability to ‘navigate’ precarious labour market opportunities. As Youth Studies has become increasingly preoccupied with individualism, we are compelled to draw attention to the collective support that is necessary to ‘launch’ the life trajectories of young people who are transitioning into an economic environment marked by insecurity and uncertainty. We conclude with recommendations for future research.     

Accounting for uncertainty in health economic decision models by using model averaging

Summary.  Health economic decision models are subject to considerable uncertainty, much of which arises from choices between several plausible model structures, e.g. choices of covariates in a regression model. Such structural uncertainty is rarely accounted for formally in decision models but can be addressed by model averaging. We discuss the most common methods of averaging models and the principles underlying them. We apply them to a comparison of two surgical techniques for repairing abdominal aortic aneurysms. In model averaging, competing models are usually either weighted by using an asymptotically consistent model assessment criterion, such as the Bayesian information criterion, or a measure of predictive ability, such as Akaike's information criterion. We argue that the predictive approach is more suitable when modelling the complex underlying processes of interest in health economics, such as individual disease progression and response to treatment.     

Life satisfaction among the rural elderly: What do the numbers mean?

Studies of life satisfaction among the elderly are based almost entirely on quantitative data, yet we have little knowledge of whether such data are consistent and valid representations of satisfaction. The present paper addresses this issue through a comparison of quantitative and qualitative data on satisfaction with housing, family, spouse, self-esteem, health, friends and life as a whole. The data were obtained from 15 elderly men and women living in rural Ontario who had participated in both a survey study of life satisfaction and an intensive qualitative study of loneliness, social activities and social relationships. The values selected by participants from scales of satisfaction were found to be fairly similar overall to judgements made by the investigators on the basis of qualitative data from interviews and diaries. But there were also a number of discrepancies across both participants and domains, and these discrepancies were not systematic. The scale values appear to be at best a superficial representation of participants' satisfaction. It is concluded that quantitative approaches are of limited utility in studies of the quality of life, and that they are most appropriately viewed as supplementary to approaches employing qualitative data and analysis.     

Environmentalism among nation-states

This article attempts to offer a better understanding of international environmental cooperation by measuring state environmentalism. We examine whether there is a structural response by nation-states to various international agreements on the environment. Using alpha and theta reliability scaling, we create an environmental scale that measures the propensity of a nation-state to take political action in support of the environment, as indicated by the ratification of key international treaties. Our work suggests that environmentalism is, in fact, a structural characteristic of nation-states that leads them to respond in a patterned way to environmental policies.     

Isolated housewives and complex maternal worlds – The significance of social contacts between women with young children in industrial societies*

This article reconsiders the picture of the mother of young children in industrialised societies as the ‘isolated housewife’, suggesting this notion is by no means straightforward. We suggest there is considerable evidence for the existence of mothers' social contacts and their significance both as ‘work’ and ‘friendship’ in industrial societies. A pre-occupation with the notion of the ‘isolation’ of ‘housewives’ has led social researchers to neglect sustained examination of the social relationships within which many/most mothers are involved on a day-to-day basis. Complexities of interpretation, for example what ‘isolation’ can actually mean, need to be drawn out from the existing literature. Evidence presented from two recent ethnographic studies shows patterned opportunities/constraints occurring in relation to mothers' social contacts within localised settings, whether through organised groups or other personal ties. The complex nature of individual women's social contacts is thus brought out. Some key questions are raised for the importance to sociology, anthropology and social policy of these apparently insignificant or invisible women's networks.     

Robust automatic methods for outlier and error detection

Summary.  Editing in surveys of economic populations is often complicated by the fact that outliers due to errors in the data are mixed in with correct, but extreme, data values. We describe and evaluate two automatic techniques for the identification of errors in such long-tailed data distributions. The first is a forward search procedure based on finding a sequence of error-free subsets of the error-contaminated data and then using regression modelling within these subsets to identify errors. The second uses a robust regression tree modelling procedure to identify errors. Both approaches can be implemented on a univariate basis or on a multivariate basis. An application to a business survey data set that contains a mix of extreme errors and true outliers is described.     

The prevalence of pathological gambling in Galicia (Spain)

Since 1977, when gambling was legalized in Spain, the amount of money spent on it has increased each year. Expenditures on gambling are now more than 3 billion pesetas per year. This paper provides the results of a study on the prevalence of pathological gambling in the Galicia region of northwest Spain, with a representative random sample (N=1,615) from the seven largest cities of Galicia. The prevalence of pathological gambling was 1.7% utilising the DSM-III-R diagnostic criteria. An additional 1.6% were problem gamblers, 0.6% excessive social gamblers and 1% exexcessive gamblers. The results suggest that slot machines are the most addictive form of gambling. Pathological gamblers are homogeneously distributed in the population with the exception that males and upper income family membership are overrepresented. Alcohol and cigarette consumption were higher among pathological gamblers than in the general population.This research was funded by the Service of Mental Health and Drug Abuse of the Health Authority of Galicia (SERGAS, Consellería de Sanidade). The author is grateful to M. José Fuentes, M. Carmen Carro, M. Angeles González, M. Carmen Lorenzo, Ana Pérez, Ana Sáinz, and Beatriz Torres for her help in collecting the data. I also thank Iain Brown for his helpful comments and English revision of this article. Paper presented at the Society for the Study of Gambling, London, November 1991.     

Coping with self and academic talent

This study tested a possible explanatory framework of the coping and adaptation of 159 academically able seventh graders by exploring their strengths and vulnerabilities in coping with their differences, their peer relationship styles, and their patterns of achievement motivation. All of the youth in this sample scored in the 97th percentile on grade-level standardized tests with one fourth scoring at the mean of college-bound seniors on the SAT, an above-grade-level test for this age group. The range of responses included a bifurcated distribution pattern of strengths and vulnerabilities in values related to achievement motivation and normal distribution patterns in coping with self and academic ability and peer relationship style. The findings support use of structured self-reports in obtaining academically able youths' perspectives on self-in-context and as a supplement in psychosocial assessment.