Parenting Coordination as an Antidote for High-Conflict Divorce and Court Relitigation

The effects of high-conflict divorce and parental separation on couples and their children are explored along with the costs of ongoing relitigation of these cases in the family court system. Parenting coordination is discussed as an intervention to assist high-conflict divorcing and separating parents to effectively communicate and parent their children following marriage dissolution. It is also presented as an alternative to reduce instances of recurring legal battles. According to the literature reviewed, positive outcomes of decreased relitigation include less expense for the divorcing and separating parents, the family court system, and society as a whole. Implications for practice and research are presented.     

Challenges of Depression and Suicidal Ideation Associated With Aging With HIV/AIDS: Implications for Social Work

As the number of older adults with HIV/AIDS increases, new challenges are emerging that threaten their ability to age with this disease. Threats of particular concern are depression and suicidal ideation. Studies show that those aging with HIV/AIDS have a number of stressors that tax their coping mechanisms, increasing vulnerability to depression and suicidal ideation. These stressors can be categorized into three areas. First, there are psychosocial stressors that can contribute to depression. Second, there are health and biochemical stressors that can contribute to depression, as well as compromise cognitive abilities needed to adapt to such stressors. Third, cognitive stressors may create predispositions to depression. In particular, certain cognitive abilities needed to cope with depression and suicidal ideation may be compromised by aging with HIV/AIDS. A model of these stressors is provided for didactic purposes, as well as to suggest implications for social work practice and research.     

Explaining the High False Positive Rate of the South Oaks Gambling Screen

The South Oaks Gambling Screen (SOGS) has been used extensively in estimating the prevalence of pathological gambling but produces a large number of false positive classifications. Ladouceur et al. (, Journal of Gambling Studies, 16, pp. 1–24) claim that misunderstanding of SOGS items is responsible for the high false positive rate. However, their study is open to a number of methodological criticisms. The current study, where clinical and non-clinical gamblers complete the SOGS with and without clarification, overcomes these problems. Results suggest that clarification does not have a significant overall effect on SOGS scores. This implies that item misunderstanding is not responsible for the false positive rate of the SOGS.     

Whose Streets? Our Streets! Activist Perspectives on the Australian Anti-capitalist Movement

The purpose of this paper is to provide a summary of the Australian anti-capitalist movement of 2000/01 as seen through the eyes of its activists. On the basis of thirty-five interviews conducted in mid-2002 we examine the background of the activist layer, the nature of the social networks and connective structures which shaped the Australian anti-capitalist movement, the character of the mobilizing structures that were used to organize the protest movement, the degree to which the Australian movement was connected to international activity or learned from international political theorizing, the tactics that were used at the protests, and the political frameworks that shaped the thinking of key activists. We conclude with some considerations as to the strengths and weaknesses of the movement.     

Demanding hosts and ungrateful guests – the everyday drama of public transportation in three acts and academic prose

In their own view, public transportation companies make a very hospitable offer to commuters: if you are ready to travel with us, we will take you for a reasonable price nearly anywhere, every day and almost at any time of the day, under good conditions of comfort and safety. Please, step onboard. But commuters resist being reduced to the thankful guests of their commuting service providers. Commuting is an experience whose rhythm structures daily lives. It is not an innocuous in-between-doors passage, but a social practice intertwined with the routines bound to the home, workplace, and places of leisure which they commute to and from. Commuting routines are a constitutive part of commuters’ lives. Correspondingly, commuters own their commuting space. They do not own it in terms of legal ownership, although they possess a valid ticket; they own it via the degree to which they are at home in their routines and intuitively know through the senses and feelings produced through the normal flow of daily practices, that they are on their own home turf. Home is more than the physical space of the house; it is an embodied perception of a familiar cultural space which is organized in such a way that one has some control and responsibility over. Because commuters grant transportation companies daily access to the intimacy of their homes, they are hosting the companies, not the opposite. Public transportation hospitality is thus a tension-filled drama, co-produced by transportation companies and commuters. In this drama managerial routines meet routines of daily life, legal definitions of ownership meet practice-based ones, and organizational hospitality stands against individual hospitality. Our claim is that the fact that each party considers itself to be the host of the other, the prevailing situation consequently frames the provision and experience of public transportation services as a drama: the drama of hospitality.     

“J.”, or: the Black Holes of Hillis le mal

This essay examines Hillis Miller's recent critical use of terms from physics (black holes) and mathematics (the zero) as a theoretical strategy that recasts our understanding of his performative aims. It proposes an other Miller to the familiar explicator and pedagogic disseminator of literary deconstruction he is often taken for, putting his work in contact not only with Benjaminian practices but coming horizons in global esthetic politics.     

Addressing Ethnicity in Social Care Research

This article surveys recent developments in relation to the dimensions of ethnicity and ethnic disadvantage in social policy research and practice, with a focus on social care. While there has been limited increase in attention to ethnicity within general policy discussion and increasing sophistication within specialist debates, advances in theory and methodology have largely failed to penetrate the research mainstream, let alone policy or practice. This is a long‐standing problem. We advocate more focused consideration of ethnicity and ethnic disadvantage at all levels. Failure to do so creates the risk of social policy research being left behind in understanding rapid changes in ethnic minority demographics and patterns of migration, with increasing disadvantage to minorities.     

Admissible two-stage designs for phase II cancer clinical trials that incorporate the expected sample size under the alternative hypothesis

two‐stage studies may be chosen optimally by minimising a single characteristic like the maximum sample size. However, given that an investigator will initially select a null treatment e?ect and the clinically relevant di?erence, it is better to choose a design that also considers the expected sample size for each of these values. The maximum sample size and the two expected sample sizes are here combined to produce an expected loss function to ?nd designs that are admissible. Given the prior odds of success and the importance of the total sample size, minimising the expected loss gives the optimal design for this situation. A novel triangular graph to represent the admissible designs helps guide the decision‐making process. The H ₀‐optimal, H ₁‐optimal, H ₀‐minimax and H ₁‐minimax designs are all particular cases of admissible designs. The commonly used H ₀‐optimal design is rarely good when allowing stopping for e?cacy. Additionally, the δ‐minimax design, which minimises the maximum expected sample size, is sometimes admissible under the loss function. However, the results can be varied and each situation will require the evaluation of all the admissible designs. Software to do this is provided. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Location, Location, Location: Does Place of Work Really Matter?

This paper examines the work attitudes of home- and office-based workers. A review of the existing literature finds both pessimistic and optimistic accounts of the impact of homeworking on employee attitudes and behaviours. Drawing on a survey of 749 managerial and professional employees in knowledge-intensive industries, the study finds more support for the optimistic perspective. The findings suggest that homeworking is positively associated with employee well-being and a more balanced work–home relationship. There is no evidence that organizational citizenship behaviours are reduced by homeworking but there is some support for homeworking undermining employees' perception of the organization as supporting their careers and personal development.