Evaluating a multiple-family group access intervention for refugees with PTSD

The purpose of this study was to analyze the effects of a multiple-family group in increasing access to mental health services for refugees with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). This study investigated a nine-session multiple-family group called Coffee and Families Education and Support with refugee families from Bosnia-Herzegovina in Chicago. Adults with PTSD (n = 197) and their families were randomly assigned to receive either the intervention or a control condition. The results indicated that a multiple-family group was effective in increasing access to mental health services and that depression and family comfort with discussing trauma mediated the intervention effect. Further well-designed studies of family interventions are needed for developing evidence-based interventions for refugee families.     

Private placements in social work education: Opportunity or oppression?

This article examines the issues arising from student placements in the private or commercial sector. It focuses on private residential care for adults, as the most developed area of private provision in the UK, and explores the background to this form of provision. The article then considers the private sector placement from the viewpoints of the student, the private sector agency and the educational institution. A checklist for social work educators considering placements in the private sector draws together some of the key issues. The article ends with a discussion of the pragmatic, moral, logistic and educational perspectives which influence attitudes towards the private sector.     

Dan O'Meara's Afrikaner nationalism

Volkskapitalisme: Class, Capital and Ideology in the Development of Afrikaner Nationalism, 1934–1948 by Dan O'Meara, Johannesburg, Ravan Press, 1983 xvi+ 281 pp, bibliography.     

Location optimization of strategic alert sites for homeland defense

This research uses a location analysis approach for selecting aircraft alert sites for the defense of important national areas of interest identified by the US Department of Defense. Solutions are generated in a two step approach where the minimum number of sites is first identified using the location set covering problem and then the result is improved by finding the minimum aggregate network distance or p-median solution from the alternate optimal solutions to the LSCP. This approach also identifies the p-center solution to the problem ensuring equitable response to all areas of interest. Sensitivity analysis is performed to determine the impact of altering aircraft launch and flying times on the number of required alert sites and the amount of coverage provided by selecting fewer locations. Results indicate a significant increase in the number of alert locations needed in comparison to original military estimates. The research points out significant implications about future military base closure decisions and the trade-offs between cost and required response times of aircraft in a defense emergency.     

The Jewish dead in the great war as an indicator for the location,size and social structure of Anglo‐Jewry in 1914

Use of statistics of Jewish war dead from the Great War throws some light on the Jewish community in Great Britain at a time when the mass immigration from Eastern Europe had more or less run its course. The statistics show some discrepancies with commonly quoted figures from the ‘Jewish Year Book’, as Year Book data outside the smaller immigrant communities were often little more than guesses and had sharp underestimates for more anglicized communities. The picture at 1916 shows a similar distribution to the Jewish population today.     

Parents' Marital Status, Conflict, and Role Modeling: Links With Adult Romantic Relationship Quality

This study investigated three parental marital statuses and relationship quality among unmarried, but dating adults ages 18 to 35 (N = 1153). Those whose parents never married one another tended to report the lowest relationship quality (in terms of relationship adjustment, negative communication, commitment, and physical aggression) compared to those with divorced or married biological parents. In addition, those with divorced parents reported lower relationship adjustment and more negative communication than those with married parents. Parental conflict and the degree to which participants rated their parents' relationship as a healthy model for their own relationships partially explained the associations between parental marital status and relationship outcomes. We suggest that this particular family type (i.e., having parents who never marry one another) needs greater attention in this field in terms of research and intervention.     

A Tale of Two Matrix Factorizations

In statistical practice, rectangular tables of numeric data are commonplace, and are often analyzed using dimension-reduction methods like the singular value decomposition and its close cousin, principal component analysis (PCA). This analysis produces score and loading matrices representing the rows and the columns of the original table and these matrices may be used for both prediction purposes and to gain structural understanding of the data. In some tables, the data entries are necessarily nonnegative (apart, perhaps, from some small random noise), and so the matrix factors meant to represent them should arguably also contain only nonnegative elements. This thinking, and the desire for parsimony, underlies such techniques as rotating factors in a search for “simple structure.” These attempts to transform score or loading matrices of mixed sign into nonnegative, parsimonious forms are, however, indirect and at best imperfect. The recent development of nonnegative matrix factorization, or NMF, is an attractive alternative. Rather than attempt to transform a loading or score matrix of mixed signs into one with only nonnegative elements, it directly seeks matrix factors containing only nonnegative elements. The resulting factorization often leads to substantial improvements in interpretability of the factors. We illustrate this potential by synthetic examples and a real dataset. The question of exactly when NMF is effective is not fully resolved, but some indicators of its domain of success are given. It is pointed out that the NMF factors can be used in much the same way as those coming from PCA for such tasks as ordination, clustering, and prediction. Supplementary materials for this article are available online.