‘You are not born being racist,are you?’ Discussing racism with primary aged-children

Ethnic-racial socialisation is broadly described as processes by which both minority and majority children and young people learn about and negotiate racial, ethnic and cultural diversity. This article extends the existing ethnic-racial socialisation literature in three significant ways: (1) it explores ways children make sense of their experiences of racial and ethnic diversity and racism; (2) it considers ways children identify racism and make distinctions between racism and racialisation; and (3) it examines teacher and parent ethnic-racial socialisation messages about race, ethnicity and racism with children. This research is based on classroom observations, semi-structured interviews and focus groups with teachers, parents and students aged 8–12?years attending four Australian metropolitan primary schools. The findings reveal that both teachers and parents tended to discuss racism reactively rather than proactively. The extent to which racism was discussed in classroom settings depended on: teachers’ personal and professional capability; awareness of racism and its perceived relevance based on student and community experiences; and whether they felt supported in the broader school and community context. For parents, key drivers for talking about racism were their children’s experiences and racial issues reported in the media. For both parents and teachers, a key issue in these discussions was determining whether something constituted either racism or racialisation. Strategies on how ethnic-racial socialisation within the school system can be improved are discussed.     

Cryptosporidium and Dairy Cattle in the Catskill/Delaware Watershed: A Quantitative Risk Assessment

We carried out a study to estimate the public health risk posed by dairy cattle located in New York City's Catskill/Delaware watershed, as measured by daily C. parvum-like oocyst loading. A Monte Carlo simulation model that takes into account the nature of the dairy cattle population within the target area, age-specific incidence/prevalence rates, as well as differential fecal production and oocyst-shedding intensity rates was used to address the objectives. Additionally, the model was designed to distinguish between zoonotic and nonzoonotic species/genotypes of Cryptosporidium. Total estimated daily C. parvum-like oocyst shedding across all age/production categories was estimated at 4.15 x 10(10). The zoonotic C. parvum comprised 93.5% of this load. It was estimated that preweaned calves produce 99.5% of the total daily C. parvum ocyst burden. The recently described nonzoonotic C. bovis was estimated to have a daily load of 2.2 x 10(9) oocysts across all age/production strata. C. parvum deer-like genotype was estimated to have a total daily load of 1.3 x 10(9) oocysts. The results of this study support earlier assertions that strategies aimed at reducing the cryptosporidial risk posed by dairy cattle to public health will be most efficacious if aimed at preweaned calves.     

Depression in the Profession: Social Workers' Experiences and Perceptions

This study reports the findings of interviews with fifty socialworkers who volunteered to describe their personal experiencesof depression in the workplace. The findings confirm the literatureon the stresses of social work and provide an account of theways in which the social workers sought to reconcile their mentalhealth needs with their role as professionals. The study suggeststhe potential for those working at all levels in social workagencies to support social workers who are experiencing depression.At a time of shortages in the profession in the UK, and of effortsto enable those with mental health problems to remain in orreturn to work, the experiences of those social workers interviewedillustrate the managerial, training and human resource imperativesto provide more supportive workplaces.     

Outcome study of protective services: comparison of interviews and records as data sources

This study explores a complex area for research, and yields, despite the problems, distinct indicators for fruitful further research.     

A comparison of some robust, adaptive, and partially adaptive estimators of regression models

Numerous estimation techniques for regression models have been proposed. These procedures differ in how sample information is used in the estimation procedure. The efficiency of least squares (OLS) estimators implicity assumes normally distributed residuals and is very sensitive to departures from normality, particularly to "outliers" and thick-tailed distributions. Lead absolute deviation (LAD) estimators are less sensitive to outliers and are optimal for laplace random disturbances, but not for normal errors. This paper reports monte carlo comparisons of OLS,LAD, two robust estimators discussed by huber, three partially adaptiveestimators, newey's generalized method of moments estimator, and an adaptive maximum likelihood estimator based on a normal kernal studied by manski. This paper is the first to compare the relative performance of some adaptive robust estimators (partially adaptive and adaptive procedures) with some common nonadaptive robust estimators. The partially adaptive estimators are based on three flxible parametric distributions for the errors. These include the power exponential (Box-Tiao) and generalized t distributions, as well as a distribution for the errors, which is not necessarily symmetric. The adaptive procedures are "fully iterative" rather than one step estimators. The adaptive estimators have desirable large sample properties, but these properties do not necessarily carry over to the small sample case.

The monte carlo comparisons of the alternative estimators are based on four different specifications for the error distribution: a normal, a mixture of normals (or variance-contaminated normal), a bimodal mixture of normals, and a lognormal. Five hundred samples of 50 are used. The adaptive and partially adaptive estimators perform very well relative to the other estimation procedures considered, and preliminary results suggest that in some important cases they can perform much better than OLS with 50 to 80% reductions in standard errors.     

Career Counseling With Lesbian Clients: Using the Theory of Work Adjustment as a Framework

Using the Theory of Work Adjustment (TWA; R. V. Dawis & L. H. Lofquist, 1984; L. H. Lofquist & R. V. Dawis, 1969) as a framework for identifying potential career challenges for lesbians, the authors explore the relationship between outness and discrimination and the four primary components of TWA. Career counseling implications are discussed, and specific suggestions are made for counselors.     

Interspecific Scaling of Toxicity Data

This paper reexamines the scaling approaches used in cancer risk assessment and proposes a more precise body weight scaling factor. Two approaches are conventionally used in scaling exposure and dose from experimental animals to man: body weight scaling (used by FDA) and surface area scaling (BW0.67--used by EPA). This paper reanalyzes the Freireich et al. (1966) study of the maximum tolerated dose (MTD) of 14 anticancer agents in mice, rats, dogs, monkeys, and humans, the dataset most commonly cited as justification for surface area extrapolation. This examination was augmented with an analysis of a similar dataset by Schein et al. (1970) of the MTD of 13 additional chemotherapy agents. The reanalysis shows that BW0.75 is a more appropriate scaling factor for the 27 direct-acting compounds in this dataset.