The Interview for Decisional Abilities (IDA): a tool to assess the decisional capacity of abused and neglected older adults

We present the Interview for Decisional Abilities (IDA), a semi-structured tool for use by adult protective services (APS) workers as part of their comprehensive assessments of clients. The IDA was created in response to a Federal mandate to standardize the procedures and competencies of APS agencies with a view to improving client assessments and facilitating cross-jurisdictional research on adult mistreatment. The proximal aim of the IDA is to guide workers in gathering information on the ability of suspected victims of adult mistreatment to make decisions about the risks they face.     

Changes in At-Risk American Men's Crime and Substance Use Trajectories Following Fatherhood

Fatherhood can be a turning point in development and in men's crime and substance use trajectories. At-risk boys (N = 206) were assessed annually from ages 12 to 31 years. Crime, arrest, and tobacco, alcohol, and marijuana use trajectories were examined. Marriage was associated with lower levels of crime and less frequent substance use. Following the birth of a first biological child, men's crime trajectories showed slope decreases, and tobacco and alcohol use trajectories showed level decreases. The older men were when they became fathers, the greater the level decreases were in crime and alcohol use and the less the slope decreases were in tobacco and marijuana use. Patterns are consistent with theories of social control and social timetables.     

General assistance among U.S. cities: A test of alternative hypotheses

Using 1980 census data, this study seeks to explain variations in race‐specific measures of general assistance among 109 U.S. cities. Four hypotheses (derived from developmental, conflict, and human ecological theories) are developed as potential explanations of welfare recipiency rates and payment levels. Three control variables (southness, population size, and education) are included in the analysis. Ordinary least squares (OLS) regression analysis reveals that for blacks, poverty, level of manufacturing employment (1970–1980), and southness are significant predictors of recipiency rates; whereas per capita revenue, segregation, southness, and population size are significant predictors of mean payment. For whites, poverty, percent white, and southness are significant predictors of welfare rates; whereas per capita revenue, percent white, segregation, and southness are significant predictors of mean payment. The analysis provides partial support for the need hypothesis in explaining General Assistance recipiency with respect to both races. It also provides moderate support for the segregation hypothesis and weak support for the functional transformation hypothesis in explaining General Assistance recipiency for blacks.     

Preparing Social Work Doctoral Students for Teaching

The results of a national survey of 51 social work doctoral program directors indicate that, although the majority of doctoral programs include preparation for teaching as a program objective, they offer limited formal course work and few opportunities for supervised teaching experiences. The authors discuss the results of this survey and make recommendations for better preparing social work doctoral students for their roles as teachers.     

Financial stress, family relationships, and Australian youths’ transitions from home and school

We analyze the effect of mothers?? and youths?? reports of family financial stress and relationship dissatisfaction on Australian youths?? transitions into adult roles. We find that mothers?? reports of financial stresses and borrowing constraints are associated with earlier transitions to inactivity, while youths?? reports of financial stresses are associated with earlier nest-leaving. Youths reporting unsatisfactory relationships with parents leave school and move out earlier than their peers, while unsatisfactory relationships between parents are associated with youths making later transitions. Overall, financial stress and dissatisfaction have independent associations with youths?? transitions and youths?? perspectives have different consequences to those of their mothers.     

Statistical methodology for assessing homology of intronic regions of genes

We consider the problem of statistically evaluating the similarity of DNA intronic regions of genes. Present algorithms are based on matching a sequence of interest with known DNA sequences in a gene bank and are designed primarily to assess homology among exonic regions of genes. Most research focuses on exonic regions because they have a clear biological significance, coding for proteins, and therefore tend to be more conserved in evolution than intronic regions. To investigate whether the intronic features of genes whose expression is highly sensitive to environmental perturbations differ from genes that have a more constant expression, a collection of oncogenes, tumor suppressor genes, and nonregulatory genes involved in energy metabolism are compared. An analysis of the features of these genes' intronic regions result in clustering by regulatory group. In addition, Billingsley's test for Markov structure (1961) suggests that 67% of the intronic regions in this collection of genes show evidence of nonrandom structure, indicating the possibility of a biological function for these regions. The result of Billingsley's test for homology is used as input to a clustering algorithm. The biological significance of this methodology lies in the identification of groups based on the intronic regions from genes of unknown function. With the advent of rapid sequencing techniques, there is a great need for statistical techniques to help identify the purpose of poorly understood portions of genes. These methods can be utilized to assess the functional group to which such a gene might possibly belong.     

The Community Asset Transfer of Leisure Facilities in the UK: A Review and Research Agenda

VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations - This paper reviews recent work on community asset transfers (CAT): a transfer of management of facilities from the public...     

A Bayesian approach to Weibull survival models—Application to a cancer clinical trial

In this paper we outline a class of fully parametric proportional hazards models, in which the baseline hazard is assumed to be a power transform of the time scale, corresponding to assuming that survival times follow a Weibull distribution. Such a class of models allows for the possibility of time varying hazard rates, but assumes a constant hazard ratio. We outline how Bayesian inference proceeds for such a class of models using asymptotic approximations which require only the ability to maximize the joint log posterior density. We apply these models to a clinical trial to assess the efficacy of neutron therapy compared to conventional treatment for patients with tumors of the pelvic region. In this trial there was prior information about the log hazard ratio both in terms of elicited clinical beliefs and the results of previous studies. Finally, we consider a number of extensions to this class of models, in particular the use of alternative baseline functions, and the extension to multi-state data.