Social Policy Supports for Adolescence in the Twenty‐First Century: Framing Questions

Worldwide changes are altering the conditions under which adolescents prepare for adulthood and are increasing the need for thoughtful, tailored, youth policies and programs. This article offers a set of “framing questions” aimed at helping countries and communities create policies that are adapted to the particulars of a given context. These questions are presented as a means for policy makers, advocates, practitioners, researchers, community members, parents, and adolescents to formulate services, supports, and opportunities that will help adolescents become adults who are problem free, fully prepared, and fully engaged in their communities.     

Property rights, collective sales and government intervention: averting a tragedy of the anticommons

In response to the need to cater for the requirements of a larger future population, the Urban Redevelopment Authority of Singapore released development guide plans, which have provided for higher development intensity to residential land in various parts of the island. One of the impacts is that many property owners in Singapore have banded together to capitalize on the “marriage value” of the en bloc site to reap big windfalls as compared to individual sales. But there were minority owners who objected to the sale. The Land Titles (Strata) (Amendment) Act 1999 was passed on 11 October 1999 to facilitate such en bloc sales as these will release prime land for higher density redevelopment to provide more quality private housing in land-scarce Singapore. This paper shows how property rights and property ownership could have led to a tragedy of the anticommons and how government intervention through legislation has averted such a tragedy. Whilst the Land Titles (Strata) (Amendment) Act 1999 has been successful in facilitating en bloc sales resulting in optimization of scarce land resources, it has raised controversial issues such as majority rule versus minority protection and the attenuation of property rights. The authors conclude that in land-scarce Singapore, public good, in that more land will be made available for private housing for the majority, should take precedence.     

Parameter Estimation for Discrete Distributions by Generalized Hellinger-Type Divergence Based on Probability Generating Function

This article considers a probability generating function-based divergence statistic for parameter estimation. The performance and robustness of the proposed statistic in parameter estimation is studied for the negative binomial distribution by Monte Carlo simulation, especially in comparison with the maximum likelihood and minimum Hellinger distance estimation. Numerical examples are given as illustration of goodness of fit.     

An Applied Comparison of Area-Level Linear Mixed Models in Small Area Estimation

This article reviews four area-level linear mixed models that borrow strength by exploiting the possible correlation among the neighboring areas or/and past time periods. Its main goal is to study if there are efficiency gains when a spatial dependence or/and a temporal autocorrelation among random-area effects are included into the models. The Fay–Herriot estimator is used as benchmark. A design-based simulation study based on real data collected from a longitudinal survey conducted by a statistical office is presented. Our results show that models that explore both spatial and chronological association considerably improve the efficiency of small area estimates.     

Statistical Analysis for the Inverse Trinomial Distribution

This article considers parameter estimation, goodness of fit, likelihood ratio and score tests, and model selection by Akaike information criterion for the inverse trinomial (IT) distribution, a classical one-dimensional random walk distribution. The IT distribution has a cubic variance function of the mean and is a generalization of the negative binomial distribution. Basic distributional properties and expressions for the probability mass function, recurrence formula, moments, and score functions are also presented.     

Social Optimal Location of Facilities with Fixed Servers,Stochastic Demand,and Congestion

We consider two capacity choice scenarios for the optimal location of facilities with fixed servers, stochastic demand, and congestion. Motivating applications include virtual call centers, consisting of geographically dispersed centers, walk‐in health clinics, motor vehicle inspection stations, automobile emissions testing stations, and internal service systems. The choice of locations for such facilities influences both the travel cost and waiting times of users. In contrast to most previous research, we explicitly embed both customer travel/connection and delay costs in the objective function and solve the location–allocation problem and choose facility capacities simultaneously. The choice of capacity for a facility that is viewed as a queueing system with Poisson arrivals and exponential service times could mean choosing a service rate for the servers (Scenario 1) or choosing the number of servers (Scenario 2). We express the optimal service rate in closed form in Scenario 1 and the (asymptotically) optimal number of servers in closed form in Scenario 2. This allows us to eliminate both the number of servers and the service rates from the optimization problems, leading to tractable mixed‐integer nonlinear programs. Our computational results show that both problems can be solved efficiently using a Lagrangian relaxation optimization procedure.     

Webster‐Stratton Incredible Years Basic Parent Programme (IY) in child care placements: residential staff carers' satisfaction results

The aim of the present study was to investigate residential child care staff satisfaction with their involvement in the Webster‐Stratton Incredible Years Basic Parent Programme (IY). In an exploratory, not randomized study, 27 professionals from two different short‐term Portuguese residential child care centres (IG1, n = 15; IG2; n = 12) completed weekly IY evaluations and an overall satisfaction questionnaire at the end of their participation in the IY intervention. The weekly level of satisfaction was assessed with regard to each of the programme's components (content, DVDs, group leaders, group discussion). At the last session, they filled out a questionnaire aimed to evaluate the levels of satisfaction regarding the programme overall, the teaching format, the group leader(s) and the usefulness of specific educational techniques they learned. Data indicated that residential staff carers were highly satisfied with the weekly sessions and with the overall usefulness of the intervention programme. Results are discussed in terms of implications and future research directions.     

'You'll never walk alone': CCTV surveillance, order and neo-liberal rule in Liverpool city centre

This paper is concerned to chart the establishment and uses of CCTV within the location of Liverpool city centre. In doing this the paper seeks to contextualize CCTV within contemporary 'partnership' approaches to regeneration which are reshaping the material and discursive form of the city. Thus CCTV schemes along with other security initiatives are understood as social ordering strategies emanating from within locally powerful networks which are seeking to define and enact orderly regeneration projects. In focusing on the normative aspects of CCTV, the paper raises questions concerning the efficacy of understanding contemporary forms of 'social ordering practices' primarily in terms of technical rationalities while neglecting other, more material and ideological processes involved in the construction of social order.     

Aggregate age-at-marriage patterns from individual mate-search heuristics

The distribution of age at first marriage shows well-known strong regularities across many countries and recent historical periods. We accounted for these patterns by developing agent-based models that simulate the aggregate behavior of individuals who are searching for marriage partners. Past models assumed fully rational agents with complete knowledge of the marriage market; our simulated agents used psychologically plausible simple heuristic mate search rules that adjust aspiration levels on the basis of a sequence of encounters with potential partners. Substantial individual variation must be included in the models to account for the demographically observed age-at-marriage patterns.     

Advocacy for Black and Minority Ethnic Communities: Understandings and Expectations

Recent policy has promoted ‘advocacy’ as a meansof promoting social justice for many disadvantaged groups. Yet‘advocacy’ is a contested concept, and the understandingsthat members of disadvantaged groups themselves have of advocacyhave rarely been explored. Previous research indicates thatunderstandings may vary considerably. Using empirical evidencefrom research conducted in Glasgow, Scotland, this paper examinesthe understandings and expectations of ‘advocacy’held by black and minority ethnic (BME) service providers andpotential service users. The BME service providers believedthat they were offering advocacy, and did so in the contextof a marginalized position for their services. The BME communitymembers supported the development of advocacy services, buttheir own marginalization was in many ways reinforced by servicesthey were already using. They had clear ideas about appropriateadvocacy services for their situation. These ideas were groundedin their current situation, and did not necessarily conformto dominant ideas about advocacy. In conclusion, the prospectsfor successful advocacy are assessed.