The Family Context of Assent: Comparison of Child and Parent Perspectives on Familial Decision‐Making

Assent guidelines currently fail to include an assessment of a child's decision‐making ability, experience and interest. This paper summarises a two‐stage study, conducted in the United Kingdom, exploring perspectives on children's decision‐making power and ability within their family, as an indicator for overall decision‐making readiness. Children desired to make some decisions but knew their parents held ultimate authority. Parents believed their children could make some decisions and actively trained them through involvement in daily decisions. Researchers should strive to include children in enrolment decisions to some degree, based on a consideration of their expectations for involvement informed by their daily family context.     

The Influence of Competition on Resource Allocation in Preschool Children

To examine how competition influences resource allocation in 4‐ to 6‐year‐olds, children were assigned to one of two conditions. In the experimental condition children colored a picture for a coloring contest whereas in the control condition they colored a picture to decorate a wall. Subsequently, all children participated in a resource allocation task with another child who was introduced as another participant in the coloring contest or who would also be coloring a picture for the wall. Finally, children were asked how many crayons (out of eight) they wanted to provide to the other child. In the resource allocation task, children made decisions about how to allocate stickers to self and other across four trial types: cost and no cost variations of both advantageous and disadvantageous inequality trials. Children were less prosocial in the experimental condition than in the control condition but only in disadvantageous inequality trials involving a cost. Children in the experimental condition withheld more crayons compared to children in the control condition. These results suggest that competition not only decreases prosocial behavior directly linked to the competition but also decreases generosity when provided with an unrelated resource allocation opportunity.     

Using Task Clarification and Feedback Training to Improve Staff Performance in an East African Nongovernmental Organization

The present study used a multiple-baseline design to illustrate the effectiveness of an intervention package consisting of a multipurpose job aid and feedback training in improving the performance of supervisors and animal trainers in a nongovernmental organization headquartered in East Africa. Prior to the intervention, the performance of three supervisors and three animal trainers was suboptimal. Performance improved when supervisors were taught to use the job aid and provide feedback, and reached a high and consistent level during a subsequent phase, in which supervisors used the job aid independently. Limited maintenance and generalization data suggest that the intervention package produced lasting and generalized effects, and social validity data suggest that supervisors viewed the intervention as acceptable. These findings appear to be the first experimentally controlled demonstration of the potential value of organizational behavior management in improving performance in nongovernmental organizations working in resource-poor areas.     

The Influence of Parent and Peer Attachments on Life Satisfaction in Middle Childhood and Early Adolescence

Satisfaction in different life domains wasexamined with respect to parent and peerattachment relationships in middle childhoodand early adolescence. Three hundred threestudents, evenly distributed across sex andgrade (fourth, sixth, and eighth) wereadministered People in My Life, ameasure of attachment relationships, and theMultidimensional Students' LifeSatisfaction Scale. Children and earlyadolescents in this sample generally reportedhigh levels of life satisfaction. Some sex andgrade differences in satisfaction with variouslife domains emerged. Attachments to bothparents and peers predicted life satisfaction,although the influence of these relationshipsvaried as a function of grade level and lifedomain. Findings are reviewed in relation topast research, and implications forprofessional practice are discussed.     

Barriers to the implementation of medication-assisted treatment for substance use disorders: the importance of funding policies and medical infrastructure

Despite growing interest in the use of evidence-based treatment practices, adoption of pharmacotherapies for treating substance use disorders (SUDs) remains modest. Using data from telephone interviews with 250 administrators of publicly funded SUD treatment programs, this study estimated a model of adoption of medication assisted treatment (MAT) for SUDs and examined the relative importance of regulatory, cultural, medical resource, patient-level, and funding barriers to MAT implementation. MAT-adopting programs had significantly greater medical resources, as measured by the employment of physicians and nurses, than non-adopting programs. Administrators of non-adopting programs were asked to rate the importance of 18 barriers to MAT implementation. The most strongly endorsed barriers were regulatory prohibitions due to the program's lack of medical staff, funding barriers to implementing MAT, and lack of access to medical personnel with expertise in delivering MAT. Barriers related to insufficient information about MAT and unsupportive staff attitudes were not widely endorsed. These findings suggest that efforts to promote the implementation of MAT that are inattentive to funding barriers and weaknesses in medical infrastructure may achieve sub-optimal results.     

On constructing ageing rural populations: ‘Capturing’ the grey nomad

The world’s population is ageing, with forecasts predicting this ageing is likely to be particularly severe in the rural areas of more developed countries. These forecasts are developed from nationally aggregated census and survey data and assume spatial homogeneity in ageing. They also draw on narrow understandings of older people and construct the potential impact of ageing (such as increased dependence on the health care system) as negative. The construction and reinforcement of such stereotypes have obscured public policy debate about ageing and also the rural. This paper considered how, through using a mixed method approach, narrow understandings of rural ageing could be extended and refined. Using a case study of grey nomads in rural Australia, the strengths and weaknesses of various research approaches were reviewed. The investigation concluded that both quantitative and qualitative data could be used to extend contemporary understandings of rural population ageing and move constructions of this phenomenon beyond an impending rural crisis.     

Involving Young People—Empowerment or Exploitation?

The principle that children should be heard as well as seen—that they have a right to be consulted over decisions affecting them and to have their views taken into account by the adults working with or for them—now has general currency. One consequence is that increasing numbers of children and young people are now appearing on conference platforms or are included on the executive councils of charities or participate in working parties. Such events are often effective, but sometimes they can be embarrassing or counter-productive to all concerned. Amanda Allard considers the lessons to be learnt from a successful initiative to involve young people in policy advocacy.     

Behavioral Language Interventions for Children with Autism: Comparing Applied Verbal Behavior and Naturalistic Teaching Approaches

The Analysis of Verbal Behavior - Several important behavioral intervention models have been developed for teaching language to children with autism and two are compared in this paper....