The Impact of Parental Death on Child Well-being: Evidence From the Indian Ocean Tsunami

Identifying the impact of parental death on the well-being of children is complicated because parental death is likely to be correlated with other, unobserved factors that affect child well-being. Population-representative longitudinal data collected in Aceh, Indonesia, before and after the December 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami are used to identify the impact of parental deaths on the well-being of children aged 9–17 at the time of the tsunami. Exploiting the unanticipated nature of parental death resulting from the tsunami in combination with measuring well-being of the same children before and after the tsunami, models that include child fixed effects are estimated to isolate the causal effect of parental death. Comparisons are drawn between children who lost one or both parents and children whose parents survived. Shorter-term impacts on school attendance and time allocation one year after the tsunami are examined, as well as longer-term impacts on education trajectories and marriage. Shorter- and longer-term impacts are not the same. Five years after the tsunami, there are substantial deleterious impacts of the tsunami on older boys and girls, whereas the effects on younger children are more muted.     

Potential and Possibility: Psychodynamic Psychotherapy and Social Change with Incarcerated Patients

In the present paper, Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of symbolic power is used to illustrate how the practice of psychodynamic psychotherapy in a prison-based mental health treatment program constitutes both a psychological and sociological intervention, congruent with clinical needs of this particular population. The author draws from psychodynamic theory, Bourdieu’s framework and her experience as a clinical social worker with the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.     

Cumulative Risk,Negative Emotionality,and Emotion Regulation as Predictors of Social Competence in Transition to School: A Mediated Moderation Model

The goals of this study were to examine the additive and interactive effects of cumulative risk and child negative emotionality on children's social competence in the transition from preschool to school and to test whether these associations were mediated by child emotion regulation within a sample of 310 low‐income, ethnically diverse boys. Multiple informants and methods were used to measure contextual risk factors and negative emotionality at the ages of 1.5 and two, emotion dysregulation at the age of 3.5, and social competence in the home at the age of five and in school at the age of six. Results indicated that the relation between cumulative risk and emotion dysregulation was amplified for children with higher levels of negative emotionality. In turn, emotion dysregulation predicted lower social competence across both the home and the school contexts. This study represents an early effort to develop an integrative model of social competence by considering joint contributions of contextual risk, negative emotionality, and emotion regulation.     

A Survey of Specialist Youth Gender Diversity Services in Australia: A Whole‐of‐Family Approach

The number of referrals for children and young people seeking to affirm their gender has risen exponentially in Australia and elsewhere. Whilst the individual mental health needs and treatment outcomes for this group have been the subject of recent research, considerably less emphasis has been placed on exploring and amalgamating individual family member experiences, particularly siblings, using circular questioning. Yet, gender diversity is known to affect everyone in the family, and research clearly demonstrates that youth who feel validated and supported by individual family members in their gender identities benefit from improved mental health and global outcomes. This study aims to explore current clinical practices, professional viewpoints, use of circular questioning, and whole‐of‐family involvement in specialist youth gender diversity services in Australia. Clinical leads and coordinators of publicly funded youth gender diversity services and individual specialists across Australia were invited to complete an online survey, exploring individual protocols and practices in relation to involving the family, and the rationale underpinning this. All six respondents agreed that adopting a systemic understanding, considering general family functioning, and seeking individual family member opinions, was critical. Nevertheless, all family members were infrequently seen, with resourcing issues and time constraints being cited as the main reasons. The value of adopting a systemic and whole‐of‐family line of enquiry was supported by all respondents. Whilst sibling viewpoints were considered valuable by most professionals, siblings were infrequently seen for a variety of reasons. Further attention could therefore be given to involving siblings during specialist assessments. The findings consistently highlighted the value of a systemic line of enquiry and whole‐of‐family approach for gender diversity services and specialists. However, no current assessment guidelines incorporate this as a recommendation. Therefore, future Australian guidelines could formalise a systemic approach.     

U.S. Data Sources on the Foreign Born and Immigration

Migration data can be divided into two broad types: “stock” or census and survey data and “flow” or administrative data. Both stock and flow data are valuable resources for analyzing the migration process. In the statistical system of the United States, the U.S. Census Bureau is the primary source for census and survey data on the foreign born. The Department of Homeland Security and the U.S. State Department provide several different administrative sources for studying immigration. The goal of this study is to review the best sources of government data available for analyzing (1) the size, distribution, and characteristics of the foreign‐born population and their households and (2) the level of immigration into the United States, and the distribution and characteristics of immigrants by status.     

Libraries Without Walls 7:

Abstract

Megan Dazey speaks with Diane Graves, University Librarian, about her work with open access and scholarly communication at Trinity University. Graves discusses Trinity University's recent adoption of an open access policy, the issues that led to this decision, and what it means for faculty at Trinity. Issues taken under consideration include the significant journal price increase of the last decade, authors who wish to retain copyright of their works, and the interaction of the open access policy with Trinity's institutional repository.     

Overcoming barriers to time-saving: reminders of future busyness encourage consumers to buy time

Spending money on time saving purchases improves happiness. Yet, people often fail to spend their money in this way. Because most people believe that the future will be less busy than the present, they may underweight the value of these purchases. We examine the impact of debiasing this previously unexplored barrier of consumer decisions to ‘buy time’ in a field experiment with a US-based sharing economy (N = 78,726). Prompting people to think that they will be as busy in the future as they are today increased the likelihood that customers would both open the email and click a link to purchase various services. In sum, making the future feel as busy as the present encourages individuals to buy future time.     

Reluctant entrepreneurs: musicians and entrepreneurship in the ‘new’ music industry

Changing labour conditions in the creative industries – with celebrations of autonomy and entrepreneurialism intertwined with increasing job insecurity, portfolio careers and short‐term, project‐based contracts – are often interpreted as heralding changes to employment relations more broadly. The position of musicians’ labour in relation to these changes is unclear, however, given that these kinds of conditions have defined musicians’ working practices over much longer periods of time (though they may have intensified due to well‐documented changes to the music industry brought about by digitization and disintermediation). Musicians may thus be something of a barometer of current trends, as implied in the way that the musically derived label ‘gig economy’ is being used to describe the spread of precarious working conditions to broader sections of the population. This article, drawing on original qualitative research that investigated the working practices of musicians, explores one specific aspect of these conditions: whether musicians are self‐consciously entrepreneurial towards their work and audience. We found that, while the musicians in our study are routinely involved in activities that could be construed as entrepreneurial, generally they were reluctant to label themselves as entrepreneurs. In part this reflected understandings of entrepreneurialism as driven by profit‐seeking but it also reflected awareness that being a popular musician has always involved business and commercial dimensions. Drawing on theoretical conceptions of entrepreneurship developed by Joseph Schumpeter we highlight how the figure of the entrepreneur and the artist/musician share much in common and reflect various aspects of romantic individualism. Despite this, there are also some notable differences and we conclude that framing musicians’ labour as entrepreneurial misrepresents their activities through an overemphasis on the economic dimensions of their work at the expense of the cultural.     

Part I––Comparing Noncancer Chronic Human Health Reference Values: An Analysis of Science Policy Choices

The goal of this study was to systematically evaluate the choices made in deriving a chronic oral noncancer human health reference value (HHRV) for a given chemical by different organizations, specifically those from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Health Canada, RIVM (the Netherlands), and the U.S. Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry. This analysis presents a methodological approach for comparing both the HHRVs and the specific choices made in the process of deriving an HHRV across these organizations. Overall, across the 96 unique chemicals and 171 two‐way organizational comparisons, the HHRV agreed approximately 26% of the time. A qualitative method for identifying the primary factors influencing these HHRV differences was also developed, using arrays of HHRVs across organizations for the same chemical. The primary factors identified were disagreement on the critical or principal study and differential application of the total uncertainty factor across organizations. Of the cases where the total UF was the primary factor influencing HHRV disagreement, the database UF had the greatest influence.