Preliminary Development and Validation of the Social and Emotional Health Survey for Secondary School Students

This study reports on the preliminary development and validation of the Social and Emotional Health Survey (SEHS) with a sample of 4,189 (51 % female) California students in Grades 8, 10, and 12. The SEHS was designed to measure the psychological building blocks of adolescents’ positive mental health and is operationalized in the present study by a theoretical model comprised of 12 measured indicators that form four first-order domains (belief-in-self, belief-in-others, emotional competence, and engaged living) that, in turn, contribute to one underlying, second-order meta-construct called covitality. This study was the first to investigate the validity and utility of the adolescent covitality construct, which is conceptualized as the synergistic effect of positive mental health resulting from the interplay among multiple positive-psychological building blocks. Findings from confirmatory factor analyses, invariance analysis, and latent means testing all supported the theoretical model underlying the SEHS, indicating that the second-order covitality model was the best fit for both males and females. Results from a path-modeling analysis indicated that covitality was a strong predictor of students’ subjective well-being (operationalized as a composite of life satisfaction, positive affect, and negative affect), and findings from additional concurrent validity analyses indicated that adolescents’ covitality level was significantly associated with self-reported academic achievement, perceptions of school safety, substance use, and experiences of depressive symptoms. Implications for theory, practice, and future research are discussed.     

Population Projections by Age for Florida and its Counties: Assessing Accuracy and the Impact of Adjustments

Projections of total population have been evaluated extensively, but few studies have investigated the performance of projections by age. Of those that did, most focused on projections for countries or other large areas. In this article, we evaluate projections by age for Florida and its counties, as produced and published between 1996 and 2010 by the Bureau of Economic and Business Research at the University of Florida. We first compare the precision and bias of projections of total population with the precision and bias of projections by age, at both the state and county levels. This is followed by a more detailed examination of county-level projection errors for individual age groups, first in the aggregate and then disaggregated by sex and population size. The second part of the analysis focuses on a number of adjustments that were implemented in projections published in 2006 and 2009. Intended to improve accuracy, these adjustments involved updates to the base population, fertility rates, and survival rates. We compare the accuracy of projections incorporating these adjustments with the accuracy of projections excluding them. We believe this study offers a unique opportunity to examine a variety of characteristics regarding the forecast accuracy of small-area population projections by age.     

Out with the Old,In with the Old: A Closer Look at Younger Versus Older Elderly Migration*

Objective. This research examines the migration behavior of the elderly, recognizing that the older and younger elderly may make different decisions and have different consequences for the states in which they live. Methods. Using U.S. Census migration flow data, we describe the movements of the younger and older elderly. Our econometric analysis brings together the wisdom of elderly migration research that focuses on motives (amenity vs. return/assistance) and the Tiebout‐related research that considers the effects of policy. Results. We find that all elderly age groups avoid moving to states with high estate/inheritance/gift taxes, although the effect weakens with age. Likewise, the younger elderly appear to be “shopping around” for destinations with a temperate climate and favorable government policies regarding income taxes and welfare spending, whereas the older elderly are more likely to be “driven out” of their origin state by a high cost of living and income and property taxes. Conclusions. Our findings suggest that both the patterns of migration and the factors that affect migration decisions differ between the younger and older elderly.     

Social Legislation in Australia

Despite strong public interest in law reform by both state and federal governments, very little has been written about social legislation in Australia. Discussions about social legislation frequently proceed with each participant assuming an individual and subjective definition of social legislation; rarely is there agreement about the role and purpose of social legislation. This paper examines some writings on social policy in an effort to provide a definition of social legislation; a basis for identifying legislation as ‘social’ is provided. It is argued that for legislation to be social it must have a distributional character. Further consideration is given to the role of social legislation and the motivations for introducing legislative measures to deal with social ills. Attention is focused on approach, rights and tokenism in social legislation.     

Sources of growth and cyclical stability for Nevada counties: Transfer payments and property income

The growing relative number, the improved economic well-being, and the migration of elderly retirees is not only reshaping the social and economic structure of many areas, it is also modifying both long-term and short-run patterns of economic growth. Transfer payments and property incomes, two of the most important source of elderly income, have been among the leading sources of national income growth over the past several decades. Unlike most labor-related industry sources of earnings, the level of transfer payments and property incomes received by the residents of the region is not directly dependent upon local economic activity. Consequently, as transfer payments and property incomes of elderly retirees become increasingly important sources of income and purchasing power within a region, they also can alter regional short-run cyclical patterns of income growth. This article examines the pattern of growth of transfer payments and property incomes in the context of national economic cycles, and explores the implication of those findings on metropolitan and nonmetropolitan Nevada economies.     

Feeding Patterns and Emotional Care in Breastfed Infants

A number of studies have suggested breastfed infants have improved bonding and attachment or cognitive development outcomes. However, mechanisms by which these differences might develop are poorly understood. We used maternal time use data to examine whether exclusively breastfeeding mothers spend more time in close interactive behaviors with their infants than mothers who have commenced or completed weaning. Mothers (188) participating in a time use survey recorded infant feeding activities for 24 h over a 7 day period using an electronic device. Tracking was conducted at 3, 6, and 9 months postpartum. Data was collected for maternal activities including infant feeding and time spent in emotional care. The mothers of exclusively breastfed infants aged 3–6 months fed them frequently and total time spent in breastfeeding averaged around 17 h a week. Maternal time spent in emotional care was also substantial, and found to correlate positively with time spent breastfeeding. Exclusively breastfed infants received greatest amounts of emotional care from their mother, and exclusively formula fed infants the least. Mixed fed infants received more emotional care time than formula fed infants, but less than fully breastfed infants. These findings may help explain the differential cognitive developmental outcomes reported in the medical literature for breastfed and non breastfed infants.     

A semiparametric method of multiple imputation

In this paper, we describe how to use multiple imputation semiparametrically to obtain estimates of parameters and their standard errors when some individuals have missing data. The methods given require the investigator to know or be able to estimate the process generating the missing data but requires no full distributional form for the data. The method is especially useful for non-standard problems, such as estimating the median when data are missing.