The Theory Behind the Traps — Considerations for the Practice of Family Therapy in a Multi-frame Work Team*

Family systems theory as an approach to problem generation and change is practiced in many settings where other theoretical stances are also held. The issue of successful team work within a clinic where other therapists work from psychoanalytic and behavioural models is addressed. Structural, strategic and systemic approaches are compared with the psychoanalytic and behavioural. Particular attention is paid to apparent similarities between psychoanalytic and systemic family therapy theory. It is concluded that basic differences exist which make successful merging of the two views impossible. Practical examples of difficulties and attempted solutions are offered.     

Playing with conflict: a longitudinal study of varieties of spontaneous verbal conflict during mother-child interaction at home

Although conflict is central to major developmental theories, relatively little is known about the ways in which young children and caregivers argue at home. The existing psychological research focuses narrowly on serious, ‘problem-solving’ conflicts. In contrast, this in-depth longitudinal study describes varieties of spontaneous conflict talk occurring at home between nine middle-class Caucasian American mothers and their 2- to 4-year-old children. All dyads produced conflicts with nonse-rious, imaginary and/or ritual markings for a mean of 31% (± 2.8%) of all mother-child conflicts. Overall, most mother-child marked conflicts were nonserious, but the percentage of marked conflicts that were imaginary increased with age. Mothers used marked conflicts to manage ongoing problematic interactions with their children, while children apparently introduced marked conflicts primarily during play. Available data on child-child conflicts showed that some of these conflicts also were marked and were introduced primarily during play. Implications for how varieties of conflict may contribute to social competence within the family and peer group are discussed.     

Differences between actual and perceived student norms: an examination of alcohol use, drug use, and sexual behavior

Researchers in the social norms area have previously focused primarily on alcohol consumption, paying comparatively less attention to drug use and sexual behavior. The major purposes of this study were to (1) compare perceptions of peer norms in the areas of alcohol use, drug use, and sexual behavior with actual behavior and (2) determine if a relationship existed between a student's perceptions of normative behavior and a student's actual behavior. Participants were 833 college students at a large, public university in the Northeast. Study participants overestimated alcohol use, drug use, and sexual behavior among their peers. There was also a positive relationship between actual behavior and perceived peer norms, although the effect sizes for all behaviors were small to moderate. The authors provide further support for the tenets of social norms theory and suggest that social norms interventions are appropriate both campus-wide and to targeted high-risk groups.     

Primal and Dual Capacity Utilization: An Application to Productivity Measurement in the U.S. Automobile Industry

Capacity utilization measures have traditionally been constructed as indexes of actual, as compared to “potential,” output. This potential or capacity output (Y*) can be represented within an economic model of the firm as the tangency between the short- and long-run average cost curves. Economic theoretical measures of capacity utilization (CU) can then be characterized as Y/Y* where Y is the realized level of output. These quantity or primal CU measures allow for economic interpretation; they provide explicit inference as to how changes in exogenous variables affect CU. Additional information for analyzing deviations from capacity production can be obtained by assessing the “dual” cost of the gap.

In this article the definitions and representations of primal-output and dual-cost CU measures are formalized within a dynamic model of a monopolistic firm. As an illustration of this approach to characterizing CU measures, a model is estimated for the U.S. automobile industry, 1959–1980, and primal and dual CU indexes are constructed. Application of these indexes to adjustment-of-productivity measures for “disequilibrium” is then carried out, using the dual-cost measure.     

Multivariate Kendall's tau for change‐point detection in copulas

Statistical procedures for the detection of a change in the dependence structure of a series of multivariate observations are studied in this work. The test statistics that are proposed are $L_1$ , $L_2$ , and $L_{\infty }$ distances computed from vectors of differences of Kendall's tau; two multivariate extensions of Kendall's measure of association are used. Since the distributions of these statistics under the null hypothesis of no change depend on the unknown underlying copula of the vectors, a procedure based on the multiplier central limit theorem is used for the computation of p‐values; the method is shown to be valid both asymptotically and for moderate sample sizes. Alternative versions of the tests that take into account possible breakpoints in the marginal distributions are also investigated. Monte Carlo simulations show that the tests are powerful under many scenarios of change‐point. In addition, two estimators of the time of change are proposed and their efficiency is carefully studied. The methodologies are illustrated on simulated series from the Canadian Regional Climate Model. The Canadian Journal of Statistics 41: 65–82; 2013 © 2012 Statistical Society of Canada     

“They give you back that dignity”: understanding the intangible resources that make a transitional house a home for homeless families

Approximately 33% of the homeless population in 2017 were families with children. Researchers have argued for interventions and services to employ an ecological perspective to mitigate some of the unintentional harm inherent in existing programs designed to serve homeless families. This paper utilized a case study of a transitional housing program to (1) determine how well the program met recommendations informed by the ecological perspective and (2) explore underlying themes across recommendations. Past and current residents of a transitional housing program participated in semi-structured interviews as part of a program evaluation. Interviews were deductively and inductively coded to meet aims 1 and 2, respectively. Residents identified several aspects of the program that met the ecological perspective recommendations including culturally-responsive services, trauma-based services, and social and community connections. Major underlying themes spanning across recommendations included interpersonal resources (caring, sense of belonging), empowerment resources (advocacy, family preservation), impact on family (family life, positive youth development), and communication. This case study, through the analysis of residents’ perspectives, highlights the important role of transitional housing programs in providing a supportive, empathetic, empowering, and home-like environment that gives residents “back that dignity” so they are emotionally and physically prepared to successfully transition to permanent housing.     

Play in Mexican‐American mothers and toddlers is frequent,multimodal, and rich in symbolic content

Play offers rich opportunities for toddlers to develop motor, social, cognitive, and language skills, particularly during interactions with adult caregivers who may scaffold toddlers to higher levels of play than toddlers achieve on their own. However, research on play has narrowly focused on children from White, middle‐income backgrounds, leaving a dearth of knowledge about dyadic play in diverse cultural communities. We videorecorded 222 Mexican‐American mothers playing with their 2‐year‐old toddlers with a standard set of toys. Play behaviors were coded as nonsymbolic or symbolic (play type) and as expressed through manual, verbal, or multiple channels (play modality). Play between toddlers and mothers was frequent, high in symbolic content, and toddler play closely corresponded with mother play in type and modality: Toddlers’ nonsymbolic play related to mothers’ nonsymbolic play; toddlers’ symbolic play related to mothers’ symbolic play; toddlers’ manual play related to mothers’ manual play; and toddlers’ multimodal play related to mothers’ multimodal play. Play in Mexican‐American mothers and toddlers is frequent, multimodal, and symbolically rich, offering new directions for future research and practice.     

Involuntary Immobility and the Unfulfilled Rite of Passage: Implications for Migration Management in the Gambia,West Africa

Gambia, the smallest country on the African continent, is one of the largest contributors, per capita, to irregular migrants in Europe. Aspirations to migrate are ingrained culturally, to the extent that they can be understood as a rite of passage. Unfilled rites, associated with involuntary immobility, have led to pervasive frustration and feelings of entrapment, locally referred to as having the nerves syndrome. This article explores the societal and cultural significance of migration in this context, exploring the meanings that this especially has for effective migration management. It provides evidence and context for the deep motives, embedded socially and culturally, for migration as a significant mechanism to maintain status and achievement of adulthood. In view of this, initiatives by foreign and domestic governments and NGOs to work on campaigns and strategies to entice citizens to remain and work at home should be carefully considered. Foreign policies and funds to so-called empower youth to stay in their home countries may be misleadingly ineffective. The academic literature does not sufficiently address this.