Coparenting and nonresident fathers’ involvement with young children after a nonmarital birth

We use data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study to investigate the association between coparenting quality and nonresident fathers' involvement with children over the first five years after a nonmarital birth. We find that about one year after a nonmarital birth, 48% of fathers are living away from their child, rising to 56% and then to 63% at three and five years, respectively Using structural equation models to estimate cross-lagged effects, we find that positive coparenting is a strong predictor of nonresident fathers' future involvement, whereas fathers' involvement is only a weak (but significant) predictor of future coparenting quality. The positive effect of coparenting quality on fathers' involvement is robust across several techniques designed to address unobserved heterogeneity and across different strategies for handling missing data. We conclude that parents' ability to work together in rearing their common child across households helps keep nonresident fathers connected to their children and that programs aimed at improving parents' ability to communicate may have benefits for children irrespective of whether the parents' romantic relationship remains intact.     

Health care issues among lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) populations in the United States: Introduction

This supplemental issue of the Journal of Homosexuality presents research that explores a variety of health care issues encountered by lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) population groups in the United States over the 10-year period from 1993 to 2002. Topics include access to health care, utilization of care, training of medical and mental health providers, and the appropriate preparation of clinical offices and waiting areas. Authors used a variety of community-based public health research methods, including participant and provider surveys and retrospective chart reviews of patients, to develop this body of research, providing a recent-historical perspective on the complex health care and health-related needs of sexual and gender minorities. Particularly for transgender and intersex populations, the state of research describing their health care needs is in its infancy, and much remains to be done to design effective medical and mental health programs and interventions.     

Testing the proportional odds model for interval-censored data

This paper discusses the goodness-of-fit test for the proportional odds model for K-sample interval-censored failure time data, which frequently occur in, for example, periodic follow-up survival studies. The proportional odds model has a feature that allows the ratio of two hazard functions to be monotonic and converge to one and provides an important tool for the modeling of survival data. To test the model, a procedure is proposed, which is a generalization of the method given in Dauxois and Kirmani [Dauxois JY, Kirmani SNUA (2003) Biometrika 90:913–922]. The asymptotic distribution of the procedure is established and its properties are evaluated by simulation studies     

民族高校新闻实践教育的模式创新——基于中国高校传媒联盟的运作研究

民族高校的办学目标和定位有较为明显的特点。但所处地域等客观因素也会造成一定的发展限制,并投射到新闻实践教育中。《中国青年报》创办的中国高校传媒联盟在开展高校学生新闻实践教育方面有着卓有成效的运作模式,本文将从民族高校新闻实践教育的实际需求出发,结合校媒联盟运作模式的分析,探讨建立民族高校新闻实践教育的模式创新机制。     

Management competencies required in ambulatory care settings

A study was conducted to identify the most important competencies physician executives in medical groups and other ambulatory settings will need to have in the next five years. The specific job skills, knowledge, and abilities (SKA) that physician executives will need to acquire these competencies were also explored. The Delphi techniques were used to analyze responses from two surveys from members of the American College of Medical Practice Executives. The most important competencies were grouped into 13 management domains, each with specific SKAs. "Managing health care resources to create quality and value" and "fundamentals of business and finance" were rated as the most important competencies. The most frequently rated SKA was the "ability to build and maintain credibility and trust."     

中国进入国际市场带来的机会和风险

1978年12月在十一届三中全会上作出的重大决策标志着中国进入了一个新的发展阶段。对这个决策应当如何来理解?中国以往的三十多年来(即从1949年10月1日全国解放以后)从事了一个空前规模的建设工作。中国在1949年这场革命主要目的是要改变社会,国家的生产资料所有制,从而使生产关系与生产力作了相应的调整。虽然中国的学者与政治家对中国革命和社会改革的发展有明显的阶段性并无异议。但对如何具体划分阶段则意见很不一致。因为解放三十年来,每个阶段都有激烈的政治运动,有人就建议用这些政治运动来作为区分阶     

如何加快浏览器的速度

要加快速度,方法是很多的,现在介绍给大家的只是通过设置浏览器本身来达到加快速度的目的,就给大家带来最流行的两种浏览器Netscape Navigator和MicrosoftInternet Explorer吧,看看是怎样来提高WWW浏览速度的? 一个最简单、最直接的方法就是使用“纯文本方式”。在WWW中您所查找的页面多数是附有图像的。虽然图像看上去很美观,但它们需要花去不少的传输时间。如果不是真正需要,可以把图像关闭,从而不再因下载它们而浪费时间。这样虽然只能看到文字性的东西,但可使浏览速度加快很多。在原本应看到     

A simple two-stage design for quantitative responses with application to a study in diabetic neuropathic pain

Two-stage designs offer substantial advantages for early phase II studies. The interim analysis following the first stage allows the study to be stopped for futility, or more positively, it might lead to early progression to the trials needed for late phase II and phase III. If the study is to continue to its second stage, then there is an opportunity for a revision of the total sample size. Two-stage designs have been implemented widely in oncology studies in which there is a single treatment arm and patient responses are binary. In this paper the case of two-arm comparative studies in which responses are quantitative is considered. This setting is common in therapeutic areas other than oncology. It will be assumed that observations are normally distributed, but that there is some doubt concerning their standard deviation, motivating the need for sample size review. The work reported has been motivated by a study in diabetic neuropathic pain, and the development of the design for that trial is described in detail.     

Nonparametric Tests for Stratum Effects in the Cox Model

Thispaper considers the stratified proportional hazards model witha focus on the assessment of stratum effects. The assessmentof such effects is often of interest, for example, in clinicaltrials. In this case, two relevant tests are the test of stratuminteraction with covariates and the test of stratum interactionwith baseline hazard functions. For the test of stratum interactionwith covariates, one can use the partial likelihood method (Kalbfleischand Prentice, 1980; Lin, 1994). For the test of stratum interactionwith baseline hazard functions, however, there seems to be noformal test available. We consider this problem and propose aclass of nonparametric tests. The asymptotic distributions ofthe tests are derived using the martingale theory. The proposedtests can also be used for survival comparisons which need tobe adjusted for covariate effects. The method is illustratedwith data from a lung cancer clinical trial.     

Metropolitan influences on migration into poor and nonpoor neighborhoods

Data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics and three decennial US censuses are used to examine the influence of metropolitan-area characteristics on black and white households’ propensity to move into poor versus nonpoor neighborhoods. We find that a nontrivial portion of the variance in the odds of moving to a poor rather to a nonpoor neighborhood exists between metropolitan areas. Net of established individual-level predictors of inter-neighborhood migration, black and white households are more likely to move to a poor or extremely poor tract rather than to a nonpoor tract in metropolitan areas containing many poor neighborhoods and a paucity of recently-built housing in nonpoor areas. Blacks are especially likely to move to a poor tract in metropolitan areas characterized by high levels of racial residential segregation and in which poor tracts have a sizeable concentration of blacks. White households are more likely to move to a poor than to a nonpoor tract in metropolitan areas that have comparatively few African Americans.