A Preliminary Analysis of Procedures to Teach Children with Autism to Report Past Behavior

The Analysis of Verbal Behavior - Deficits in reporting past behavior may have implications for a child’s social development and safety. Behavioral interpretations of memory and research on...     

Asking the Question: Childhood Sexual Abuse in Adults with Mental Illness

Enquiry about childhood sexual abuse (CSA) is not routine practice for mental health practitioners undertaking client assessment. This study audited 100 patient charts to determine rates of enquiry and response by mental practitioners around CSA. Fifty-seven mental health staff also completed a subsequent questionnaire exploring factors that influence practice in regard to sexual abuse. Staff lacked confidence in how to ask and effectively respond to sexual abuse disclosure. Mandatory training focusing on trauma informed care could improve staff confidence and capacity to identify and effectively address not only sexual abuse, but childhood trauma and abuse more generally.     

Cross-Consortial Collaboration: Expanding Capacity for Law Libraries

ABSTRACT

In our digital information era, libraries have increasingly joined forces to act cooperatively through library consortia. Through membership in a consortium, a library can capitalize on programs like advocacy, joint purchasing, e-resource licensing, shared discovery platforms, etc. Resources saved through such efforts, including staff time and money, can then be deployed back into the library for other, mission-critical activities. Following the economic collapse of 2008, libraries needed more than ever to maximize exceedingly scarce budgets. In response, consortia began to push the envelope, exploring even deeper collaborations in an effort to minimize redundancies and maximize efficiencies. This article will look at some examples of cross-consortial collaboration and focus specifically on the ongoing efforts among the Legal Information Preservation Alliance (LIPA), the Mid-America Law Library Consortium (MALLCO), and the NELLCO Law Library Consortium (NELLCO) to achieve more robust cooperation across the three organizations. The authors are the three executive directors of the named organizations.     

Humanizing the homeless: Does contact erode stereotypes?

This paper employs a field experiment to assess whether interpersonal contact changes domiciled individuals’ attitudes of the homeless. Volunteers for Project Homeless Connect—a one-day event that provides social services to the homeless—were asked to complete a pre- and post-survey. The results provide mixed support for the contact hypothesis. After volunteering, respondents were far less likely to see homelessness as the result of individual characteristics, such as substance abuse or work aversion. However, opinion was remarkably stable when it came to policy preferences. The results cast doubt on the conventional wisdom that individuals’ perceptions of the causes of homelessness track closely with their preferences for governmental policy.     

The definition of start time in cancer treatment studies analysed by non-mixture cure models

Non-mixture cure models are derived from a simplified representation of the biological process that takes place after treatment for cancer. These models are intended to represent the time from the end of treatment to the time of first recurrence of the cancer in studies when a proportion of those treated are completely cured. However, for many studies, other start times are more relevant. In a clinical trial, it may be more natural to model the time from randomisation rather than the time from the end of treatment and in an epidemiological study, the time from diagnosis might be more meaningful. Some simulations and two real studies of childhood cancer are presented to show that starting from time of diagnosis or randomisation can affect the estimates of the cure fraction. The susceptibility of different parametric kernels to errors caused by using start times other than the end of treatment is also assessed. Analysing failures on treatment and relapse after completing the treatment as two processes offers a simple way of overcoming many of these problems.     

A discrete choice model for labor supply and childcare

A discrete choice model for labor supply and childcare for mothers of preschoolers is presented. The mothers are assumed to make choices from a finite set of job possibilities and from a finite set of childcare options. Options in the markets for childcare are characterized by opening hours, fees and quality attributes. Similarly, jobs are characterized by a fixed wage rate, working hours and a number of variables related to job satisfaction. In the estimation of the model, we take into account that the number of options available might vary across work/care combinations and that some mothers are rationed in the market for care at day care centers. The model is employed to simulate the female labor supply effects of the Norwegian home care allowance reform.

Maternal Regulation of Daughters' Emotion During Conflicts From Early to Mid‐Adolescence

Primary caregivers play an important role in emotion socialization. Real‐time mother–daughter emotion socialization was examined in 45 mother–daughter dyads with early‐adolescent daughters (age M = 11.80, SD = .27) at the first observation point. Maternal supportive emotion regulation and daughters' emotions were coded during two conflict discussions, 2 years apart. With multilevel survival analysis, the likelihood of maternal supportiveness was predicted both over time, between early and mid‐adolescence, and by daughters' pubertal status. Mothers were more likely to respond to daughters' negative and positive emotions with supportiveness for daughters whose pubertal maturation occurred relatively early. Results suggest that mothers adjust their socialization of daughters' emotions according to their daughters' pubertal development.     

The Impact of High-Profile Sexual Abuse Cases in the Media on a Pediatric Emergency Department

High-profile media cases of sexual abuse may encourage disclosures of abuse from victims of unrelated assaults and also influence parental concerns, leading to increased emergency department visits. In the region of the study authors’ institution, there are two recent high-profile sexual abuse cases with media coverage: Earl Bradley, a Delaware pediatrician, and Jerry Sandusky, a Pennsylvania college football coach. This is a retrospective cohort study of children evaluated for sexual abuse at a pediatric emergency department. Patients were classified as either presenting during a media period or non-media period. The media periods were one-month periods immediately following breaking news reports, when the cases were highly publicized in the media. The non-media periods were the 12-month periods directly preceding the first reports. The median number of emergency department visits per month during a non-media period was 9 visits (interquartile range 6–10). There were 11 visits in the month following the Sandusky case and 13 visits following the Bradley case. There was no statistical difference in number of emergency department visits for sexual abuse between the periods (p = .09). These finding have implications regarding use of resources in pediatric EDs after high-profile sexual abuse cases.