A Public Health Approach to Child Maltreatment Surveillance: Evidence from a Data Linkage Project in the United States

Historically, data concerning children reported for abuse or neglect in the US have been compiled by child protective service agencies and analysed independently from other sources of information. Yet these data suffer from the notable limitations of being both narrow in scope (i.e. containing a limited set of variables) and narrow in coverage (i.e. capturing data for only those children who are reported). In order to extend an understanding of children reported for maltreatment, the California Department of Social Services, in partnership with the University of California at Berkeley, is pursuing a ‘public health’ oriented approach to the surveillance of child maltreatment through linkages between child protective service records and population‐based sources of data. As an example of the information that can be generated through linked records, this article reports results from child‐level matches completed between the state's child protective service records and vital birth records. The cumulative percentage of children reported for abuse or neglect before the age of five is examined based on maternal and child characteristics at birth. This is followed by a discussion of record linkages as a means of furthering a public health approach to child maltreatment. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Citing Literature

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Volume 20 , Issue 4 July/August 2011

Pages 256-273     

Criteria for the selection of reporting method

Identification of optimal reporting method by analysis requires that a criterion be available for selecting those ‘best’ practices which are to act as the norms for standardisation. ‘Predictive ability’ has been suggested as such a criterion. This article argues that ‘predictive ability’ should be rejected in favour of an overriding economic criterion for the design of reporting methods and information systems. An information system is only valuable as part of a wider system. This article proposes that the wider system in which we are interested must be ‘more valuable’ in contemplation of change than without it, if changes in information systems are to be justified.     

LABOR FORCE MIGRATION AND ALLOCATIVE EFFICIENCY IN THE UNITED STATES: THE ROLES OF INFORMATION AND PSYCHIC COSTS

This paper examines the relative importance of information, psychic and other costs of relocation as mitigating factors (off-sets to spatial earnings differentials) within the migration decision. The methodology employed for this examination is based upon: (1) observation of relationships between the geographic allocation and personal characteristics of labor force migrants, and (2) inferences, drawn from these observations, on the relative importance of various relocation cost components. Empirical analyses of the migration decision based upon this indirect methodology provide important insights on both the determinants and allocative efficiency of interstate labor force migration in the United States.     

Improving computational efficiency in tree search methods for scheduling: A statistical approach

The paper examines how the computational efficiency of tree search applied to job-shop scheduling problems may be improved by a statistical method which provides both a bound and stopping rule for the search process. The Weibull distribution is used as the limiting form of the frequency distribution of the smallest members of samples of feasible job-shop schedules. Estimates of the optimal solution are obtained by calculating the most likely value of the Weibull location parameter, allowing a tight bracket for the optimal makespan value to be established. Estimates of the optimal solution of sub-problems with fixed partial sequence are proposed as approximate lower bounds for a ‘best-bound’ search strategy.     

DOES RAIDING EXPLAIN THE NEGATIVE RETURNS TO FACULTY SENIORITY?

We track faculty for 30 yr at five PhD‐granting departments of economics. Two‐thirds of faculty who take alternative employment move downward; less than one‐quarter moves upward. We find a substantial penalty for seniority, even after richly controlling for faculty productivity, and the penalty is little changed when we allow wages and returns to seniority to differ by mobility status. Faculty who end up moving to better or comparable positions were penalized as severely for seniority while they were in our sample as faculty who stay. These results are incompatible with the raiding hypothesis. Faculty from top 10 programs are also punished for seniority but to a lesser degree than other faculty, which could reflect reduced monopsony power against such faculty if they are more marketable. All results persist when we control for prospective publications and allow lower returns for older publications. Match‐quality bias has dissipated in the post‐internet period, which may be the consequence of greater availability of information. (JEL J62, J44, J42)     

Racial and Ethnic Differences in Experiences of Discrimination in Accessing Social Services Among Transgender/Gender-Nonconforming People

Members of the transgender/gender-nonconforming (GNC) community experience higher rates of discrimination based on their gender compared to their cisgender counterparts. Similarly, people of color experience higher rates of discrimination than White people. This study examines the difference in experiences of discrimination among transgender/GNC individuals in accessing social services providers by race/ethnicity (White and people of color). The data collected in a national cross-sectional survey (N = 6,451) and analyzed via chi-square test of independence and binary logistic regression demonstrate the disproportionate prevalence of discrimination based on race/ethnicity within the transgender/GNC population when accessing social services such as drug treatment centers, mental health clinics, domestic violence shelters, and rape crisis centers. Social workers are the most common provider of social services to the community, and have an ethical commitment to provision of services without discrimination. High rates of discrimination in accessing social services among transgender/GNC people, with even higher rates of discrimination for transgender/GNC people of color, highlight the need for improvement in social work education and practice.     

A theory of quality-related differences in retail margins: why there is a 'premium' on premium gasoline

This paper develops a theory of vertical and horizontal product differentiation to explain observed price-cost margin differentials for goods that differ in quality. The difference in price-cost margins between the high- and low-quality goods is shown to depend positively on consumers' average valuation for incremental increases in quality and positively on the distance to each competitor's closest rival. These predictions are largely supported using an extensive station-level data set of premium and regular unleaded gasoline prices from the Los Angeles Basin area from 1992–1995.     

NFL Draftnikology: Euclidean Metrics and Other Approaches to Scoring Ranking Predictions

With viewership of NFL (National Football League) football in the US rising above 20 million, interest in the NFL Draft has also been at all-time highs in recent years. Much of this interest is directed toward the “NFL draftniks” who provide draft predictions—so-called “mock drafts”—leading up to the NFL Draft. Despite increasing interest in “NFL draftnikology,” the scoring methodology used to evaluate mock NFL drafts lags far behind. This study offers a few alternative approaches, including a Euclidean metrics approach to evaluating mock NFL drafts. The usefulness of our methodologies extends to evaluation of economic and financial analysts.