Remarriage patterns among recent widows and widowers

Remarriage is one of the most important determinants of physical and economic well-being among the widowed. The goal of this study is to estimate how hazard rates for remarriage vary among widows and widowers on the basis of both observable and unobservable characteristics. The remarriage estimates rely on nationally representative samples of widows and widowers from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics. Continuous-time hazard rate regressions indicate strong age and duration dependence effects for middle-aged widows and widowers and for older widowers. Among middle-aged widows, blacks and those with dependent children in the home have lower rates of remarriage. For middle-aged widowers, living in urbanized areas limits the prospects of remarriage. For older widowers, education and, to some extent, economic status appear to have positive effects on the remarriage rates. Overall, age and time since widowhood have the strongest and most consistent effects on remarriage rates for different widowed groups.     

A new look at child abuse tragedies

Thirty-five child abuse inquiry reports, published in Britain between 1973 and 1989, were reviewed and the cases reanalysed using a systemic framework. Problematic interactions were identified within the families, among members of the professional networks and between the families and professionals. These relational aspects of each case interacted and progressively skewed the course of events. The findings have important implications for the practice of child protection, including the assessment of risk and decisions by statutory professionals to employ controlling interventions such as Emergency Protection Orders.     

Understanding Leaders of Repressive Social Movements

Researchers studying right-wing authoritarianism (RWA) have discussed the need to distinguish authoritarian followers from leaders. Altemeyer's (2003) studies raise several issues about political leadership in the real world. First, are most leaders of authoritarian social movements high on both RWA and social dominance (SDO)? Second, is it possible to be an authoritarian leader of a repressive social movement without being high on SDO? Third, it would be useful to develop techniques to assess SDO at a distance. Fourth, what roles do the psychological motives of need for power, need for affiliation and intimacy, and need for responsibility play in motivating leadership behavior in high SDO leaders? Finally, does social dominance exist in countries with non–Western value systems? Understanding the psychology of leaders of repressive social movements may help us develop ways to limit access to the power they crave and to mitigate the damage that they do.     

Remembrances of things past: test–retest reliability of retrospective migration histories

Summary Matched retrospective life history data collected from the same individuals in two waves of the Malaysian Family Life Survey provide a unique opportunity to evaluate the quality of long-term recall data in a rapidly changing developing country. Recall quality, measured by consistency of incidence and dating of moves reported 12 years apart, is higher among the better educated. Respondents better remember more salient moves, those linked with other important life events such as marriage, childbirth or a job change and moves that lasted a long time. Migrations that dim in memory as time passes are typically shorter duration or local moves, often made while the respondent was young. The dating of moves is also significantly improved when linked with other salient events. Our findings suggest concrete and practical steps that can be followed to improve the quality of retrospective life-histories collected in field surveys.     

On a dynamic response model of W. F. Kempf

Kempf's model was used by W. F. Kempf and P. Hampapa (1977, “Conditional inference for the dynamic test model,” in Mathematical Models for Social Psychology (W. F. Kempf and B. H. Repp, Eds.), Chap. 3, pp. 81–100, Wiley, New York) to analyze the cross-classification of responses to four items on sex typing of children's household chores from the 1971 Detroit Area Study. The model alters the simple Rasch measurement model for dichotomous items to include transfer effects, so that responses are allowed to be serially dependent (G. Rasch, 1966, “An individualistic approach to item analysis,” in Readings in Mathematical Social Science (P. F. Lazarsfeld and N. W. Henry, Eds.), pp. 89–107, MIT Press, Cambridge, 1980; Probabilistic Models for Some Intelligence and Attainment Tests, expanded ed., Univ. of Chicago Press, Chicago). Although Kempf and Hampapa did not find strong reason to reject the dynamic model, the present analysis indicates that it should be rejected in favor of a two-dimensional Rasch model.     

Changing Our Understanding of Child Welfare: Replacing the Residual Paradigm

Public policies and programs for children are shaped by collective understandings of what is possible and practical and are given expression through collective action. In the United States this collective action has primarily manifested itself through the development of the public child welfare system. Since its inception the child welfare system has been guided by a residual paradigm. This residual paradigm has been the principle organizing framework for knowledge development and practice in child welfare. It has defined the domain of the field, delineated the scope of professional inquiry, and proven to be a cul de sac that prevents finding solutions to the pernicious problems of widespread child poverty and child maltreatment.     

Predicting successful and unsuccessful transitions from school to work by using sequence methods

Policy makers recognize the importance of identifying early young people who are likely to end up jobless on entry to the adult labour market. This paper uses sequence techniques to characterize 712 young peoples' transitions from school to work into `types', with jobless types interpreted as unsuccessful transitions. A logit model is estimated for transition type using a collection of static individual, family and school characteristics. This allows us to identify which young people are most likely to experience unsuccessful transitions into the adult labour market. Policy makers might use such information to target social and educational policy more effectively to promote social inclusion.     

Sheltered Employment Strategies In Five Countries

The paper outlines sheltered employment strategies drawn from five countries (USA, Sweden, The Netherlands, Britain, and New Zealand) with a view to articulating policy options. The focus for the study was at the level of individual organizations in each country and personnel at all managerial levels were interviewed to ascertain their orientation with respect to the organisation of sheltered employment at three individual, yet interdependent structural levels: the national industry, the individual enterprise, and work itself. Work activity was observed and official documentation was studied to strengthen the validity of interview data. The results indicate that successful workshops were not only well informed of the dominant industry philosophy but also had their own clearly articulated interpretation of that philosophy. A number of policy options were seen to emerge from the patterns observed.