Friendship,Negative Peer Experiences,and Daily Positive and Negative Mood

We examined the effect of negative peer experiences (NPEs; peer victimization and exclusion) on mood (depressed, angry, positive). Seventy‐seven (43 female) fifth graders from elementary schools located in a small town in the Midwest completed a friendship quality measure, in addition to daily reports (seven school days) of mood and peer experiences. Multilevel modeling showed that children who had NPEs in which no one intervened had more negative and less positive mood. For negative mood, this result was attenuated if the child had a friend who was generally helpful. The results demonstrate the positive role of bystanders during NPEs and highlight the protective role of high‐quality friendships.     

Building Resilience in Social Workers: An Exploratory Study on the Impacts of a Mindfulness-based Intervention

Burnout is a frequent and well-documented consequence of social work practice. The literature suggests that mindfulness-based interventions might help develop the mental states and emotional skills that are indicators of resilience. This mixed-methods, non-randomised controlled, exploratory study with 14 social workers in Canada investigated differences in social workers’ levels of stress, resilience, and burnout after a mindfulness-based intervention, compared to a waitlist group. The intervention group was also interviewed about changes in their relationships within the workplace, their perceived sense of mental health, and wellbeing. Results suggested that the mindfulness-based intervention significantly decreased the treatment group’s perceived stress compared to those on the waitlist and continued to decline for 26 weeks post-intervention. Intervention participants reported positive changes in attitudes, perspectives, behaviours, and energy in relation to their workplace relationships with peers and supervisors. Mindfulness-based interventions for reducing stress and building resilience to burnout in social workers and other helping professionals hold promise, and invite further research.     

Partially hidden multi-state modelling of a prolonged disease state defined by a composite outcome

Lifetime Data Analysis - For rheumatic diseases, Minimal Disease Activity (MDA) is usually defined as a composite outcome which is a function of several individual outcomes describing symptoms or...     

Urban American Indian/Alaskan Natives compared to non-Indians in out-of-home care

Historically, American Indian/Alaskan Native (AI/AN) children have been disproportionately represented in the foster care system. In this study, nationally representative child welfare data from October 1999 was used to compare urban AI/AN children to non-Indian children placed into out-of-home care. Compared to non-Indian children, urban AI/AN children were older, were more often male, came from poorer homes, and were more frequently placed into group homes/ residential placements. Urban AI/AN caregivers had a greater prevalence of alcohol abuse and mental health problems compared with non-Indian caregivers.     

Fathers' Early Emotion Talk: Associations With Income,Ethnicity, and Family Factors

Contextual, mother‐, child‐, and father‐level variables were examined in association with fathers' emotion talk to infants during a shared picture book activity, in an ethnically diverse, low‐income sample (N = 549). Significant main effects included the rate of emotion talk from fathers' romantic partners (i.e., the infant's mother), infant attention and distress, and sensitive parenting. Significant interactions were also found. Higher income African American fathers referred to negative emotions more than non‐African American higher income fathers. In addition, African American fathers who demonstrated more negative and intrusive parenting referred to positive emotions more than non‐African American fathers who demonstrated negative and intrusive parenting. Our findings support family systems theory and, specifically, the interdependence of individuals' behaviors within the family unit. Interaction effects are discussed with respect to cultural variation in beliefs about parenting behaviors and the cultural experience of African Americans, including the Black cultural experience and the minority experience.     

Inducing risk-neutral preferences: An examination in a controlled market environment

This article reports 15 first-price auction experiments, each with four bidders, designed to test Cedric Smith' (1961) hypothesis that risk-neutral behavior can be induced in subjects' decisions by paying them in lotteries on money that are linear in the outcome probabilities. We choose the first-price auction environment because of its relatively high success in surviving a large number of tests, which contrasts with the widely documented tendency of subjects to violate the expected utility axioms in making choices among gambles. In the first five experiments, subjects were experienced in first-price auctions with monetary rewards. We prescreened these subjects for exceptionally high bidding consistency with the constant relative risk-averse model. The results unyielded only weak support for the risk-neutralizing procedure (3 of 10 risk-averse cases became risk-neutral, but only 1 in 8 that were retested continued to exhibit risk-neutral behavior). We recruited 16 new subjects with no previous experience for four lottery-only auctions. Eight of the 16 subjects bid as if risk-neutral, but in a retest of 12 subjects only 2 remained consistently risk-neutralized. Finally we recruited 12 inexperienced subjects, and each subject bid against 3 robot bidders whose bidding strategies were known to the human bidder. We use this procedure to control for Nash expectations. These 12 subjects were run under both monetary and lottery reward conditions. Two of the 12 subjects bid as if risk-neutral in the lottery auction, but both of these subjects had shown risk-neutral behavior with monetary rewards. In conclusion, we find very weak support for the risk-neutralizing procedure. We caution other researchers to run calibration tests of the procedure in the particular context they are studying to assess its reliability.     

The effect of verbal content on children's encoding of paralinguistic affect

This study examines the accuracy with which 6th-grade children communicate affect as a function of consistency and inconsistened between the verbal and paralinguistic channels. Accuracy was determined by comparing the level of affect that children intended to encode with ratings made by judges. Two independent variables were manipulated: (1) literal content of the child's verbal message (positive/negative), and (2) encoder's intended level of vocal intonation (extremely unfriendly, moderately unfriendly, neutral, moderately friendly, and extremely friendly). The hypothesis that paralinguistic encoding would be more accurate when literal content and intended affect are consistent (rather than inconsistent) was confirmed. The hypothesis that positive verbal/negative paralinguistic inconsistenc would bet more accurately encoded than negative verbal/positive paralinguistic inconsistency was also confirmed. Also, male children were more accurate encoders than female children.The authors appreciate the assistance of Linda B. Brideau in dealing with statistical problems in this study.The research was supported by the Wisconsin Research and Development Center for Cognitive Learning of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, by funds from the National Institute of Education, Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (Center Contract No. NE-00-3-0065).     

Who Takes Care of Education 18 months on? A follow‐up study of looked after children's perceptions of support for educational progress

This paper represents a follow‐up publication to the findings of a previous paper by documenting the views of a follow‐up sample of 56 young people, aged 12–19 years, looked after in three English local authorities. Young people were interviewed on two separate occasions, 18 months apart, to assess their perceptions of educational progress and identify factors that might support or hinder their education. The interviews took place as part of an ongoing evaluation of the Taking Care of Education project, a development programme designed to facilitate improvements in the education of looked after children. Most young people were aware of individual project‐related activities and a number of these were seen to contribute towards educational progress. Perceptions of educational progress were significantly higher at follow‐up interview and an increased proportion of young people reported that being looked after had had a positive impact upon their education. Carers and teachers continued to be the most frequently mentioned providers of educational support, but the proportion of comments relating to educational support from social workers increased at follow‐up. The most consistent explanation given for improved educational progress was the availability of support and encouragement for educational progress and acknowledgement of young people's achievements.     

HIV/AIDS Knowledge Sources and Risk Behavior among Adolescent African American Males: Toward Developing HIV/AIDS Pedagogy

Black male adolescent HIV incidence and prevalence account for a disproportionate number of AIDS cases. Their cultural experiences are significantly different than other sectors of the U.S. population. Among adolescents, they constitute 37 percent of the cases, which is more than double their representation in the general adolescent population. The authors ask where do African American males receive information about HIV/ AIDS.     

Sociological competencies and business careers: Toward an expanded dialogue

We use a cross-disciplinary approach and multiple sources of data to investigate and outline sources of comparative advantage that undergraduate sociological study provides to students who are preparing for careers in business. We identify and discuss three core competencies that sociology specifically develops in students—structural consciousness, scientific thinking, and appreciation for diversity. We argue that sociology contributes unique value by combining these three competencies. We also offer thoughts on ways in which sociologists could further enhance undergraduate curricula, such as through emphasizing aspects of these contributions in a more explicit fashion. Both authors contributed equally to the development of this article. We thank Jennifer Corbin for her libray assistance and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments.