The impact of schools self-administering substance abuse surveys: an evaluation

The literature suggests that administering drug surveys to public school students is best done by persons outside of the school system (or at least unfamiliar to the students). This is the approach used by the long-time Monitoring the Future project. Because of the increased costs that administration by outside research associates requires (both time and transportation), we decided to design an experiment that would compare it to administration by school personnel. Six school systems were split, and 3756 surveys were administered, about half by outside research associates and half by school personnel. The results indicate that there were minimal and non-significant differences between the two groups. On the basis of these results, we draw the conclusion that school personnel are able to administer survey instruments without affecting the quality of the results and, thus, that school districts may safely use such data in the evaluation of their drug education and drug prevention programs.     

DEALERS AND DEALING IN AN ANTIQUE MALL

This article, based on direct and participant observation, explores the world of antique malls, the occupation of antique dealer, and the role of customer. Data are based primarily on personal participation over the past six years as a buyer and consignment seller at auctions and as the co-owner of a husband/wife antique business located in three separate antique malls. These malls house approximately 170 dealers who sell a variety of antiques and collectibles. This article describes elements of the symbolic interactions that take place between sellers and shoppers in an antique mall. Strategies of sellers and shoppers are discussed. Customer-seller interactions are described and typologies of dealers and shoppers are presented.     

Lost in Translation: Language,Terminology, and Understanding of Penile–Anal Intercourse in an HIV Prevention Trial in South Africa,Uganda, and Zimbabwe

Despite efforts to use culturally appropriate, understandable terms for sexual behavior in HIV prevention trials, the way in which participants interpret questions is underinvestigated and not well understood. We present findings from qualitative interviews with 88 women in South Africa, Uganda, and Zimbabwe who had previously participated in an HIV prevention trial. Findings suggested that participants may have misinterpreted questions pertaining to penile–anal intercourse (PAI) to refer to vaginal sex from behind and subsequently misreported the behavior. Three key issues emerge from these findings: first, the underreporting of socially stigmatized sexual behaviors due to social desirability bias; second, the inaccurate reporting of sexual behaviors due to miscomprehension of research terms; and third, the ambiguity in vernacular terms for sexual behavior and lack of acceptable terms for PAI in some languages. These findings highlight methodological challenges around developing clear and unambiguous definitions for sexual behaviors, with implications not only for clinical trials but also for clinical practice and sexual risk assessment. We discuss the challenges in collecting accurate and reliable data on heterosexual PAI in Africa and make recommendations for improved data collection on sensitive behaviors.     

What Makes Single Mothers Expand or Reduce Employment?

To explore single mothers’ labor market participation we analyzed specific circumstances and dynamics in their life courses. We focused on the question which individual and institutional factors determine both professional advancement and professional descent. The German Socio-Economic Panel (1984–2010) provides all necessary information identifying episodes of single motherhood and analyzing restrictions and interruptions of employment during life courses. Since family statuses of single mothers are partially endogenous and can end in multiple ways, we used semi-parametric survival models. Competing risks estimations showed that occupational careers of single mothers are influenced by individual factors such as appointed and reliable working hours, and further by the institutional determinants childcare or welfare benefits.     

Fundamentals of Theory and Practice Revisited: Adult Clients With Mild ‘Intellectual Disability’: Rethinking Our Assumptions

There is considerable confusion surrounding the concept of ‘intellectual disability’ and great stigma attached to this label. This paper questions whether the concept is a useful one when applied to adults with mild learning difficulties and encourages less rigidity in categorisation. Some implications of a pseudo‐medical model are examined. Counselling for adults with mild intellectual disabilities has been much neglected. Some aspects of counselling these individuals are briefly discussed: expectations; communication style; exploring the client's idea of ‘disability’; accepting versus challenging ‘disability’; importance of relationships; exploring discrimination and abuse; depression and anxiety; and the danger of assuming a lack of understanding.     

A Bernoulli autoregressive moving average model applied to rainfall occurrence

Abstract

In this article, we propose a new model for binary time series involving an autoregressive moving average structure. The proposed model, which is an extension of the GARMA model, can be used for calculating the forecast probability of an occurrence of an event of interest in cases where these probabilities are dependent on previous observations in the near term. The proposed model is used to analyze a real dataset involving a series that contains only data 0 and 1, indicating the absence or presence of rain in a city located in the central region of São Paulo state, Brazil.