Stakeholder perceptions of contextual factors related to PBIS implementation in high need schools

Positive behavior intervention and supports (PBIS) is a thoroughly researched three-tiered framework for preventing and treating challenging behavior in schools. While more than 20 years of research contribute to the literature base, less is known about PBIS implementation in high-needs school settings, particularly those that serve students predominantly from low-income families and majority minority student populations across urban and rural districts. This study investigated the critical contextual factors of PBIS implementation from the stakeholder perspective. Specifically, we surveyed 161 participants including teachers, school staff members, and administrators who were PBIS team members and had received technical assistance in PBIS implementation. The completed surveys were analyzed with participants and their schools coded for district type, Title I funding, and position in order to determine how the perceptions of issues such as buy-in, administrator support, PBIS in secondary school settings, and poverty affect PBIS implementation and team needs. The factor analysis and resulting structure along with statistically significant results for each factor are presented along with implications.     

The Impact of In-Home Services Utilization on the Institutionalization of Older People in Korea

As a result of aging populations, institutionalization of older people is creating an increasing financial burden in many countries. The purpose of the present study was to explore the impact of in-home service utilization on institutionalization. The subjects were newly certified as eligible for long-term care insurance between January and February 2009 in Korea. The follow-up period was 40 months, to April 2012. We used logistic regression models to identify factors influencing the transition to institutional service, adjusting for gender, age, living status, income level, activities of daily living, and chronic disease. The institutionalization rate was estimated to be 17.3% over 40 months. The interval from transitional living to institutionalization was 36 ± 8 months. Risk factors of transition to institutional services are being female, having advanced age, living with friends or cousins, getting dementia, and not using in-home services. We determined that institutionalization is mitigated by use of in-home services. Therefore, supplying appropriate in-home services to current nonusers would help to greatly reduce the rate of institutionalization of older people.     

A content analysis of BP's press releases dealing with crisis

This study aims to analyze what kinds of frames have been used in British Petroleum's (BP's) press releases, which dealt with the Gulf oil spill crisis that occurred in April 2010. A content analysis was conducted to explore the different frames used by BP in its press releases to deal with the crisis. The main and sub themes are also analyzed through a content analysis of press releases. This study attempts to examine BP's crisis communication strategy through press release usage by closely analyzing the frames and themes that were used. This study found that BP attempted to update the public on what the company was doing to resolve the oil spill crisis, and that they made every effort to manage the crisis by using the company's official update frame. In addition, by using the social responsibility frame, BP aimed to show the public that they had intentions of taking responsibility for the oil spill. Finally, BP used a minimal number of defensive frames as a way of showing the public that they did not want to flee from the responsibility of the oil spill crisis.     

Performative family: homosexuality,marriage and intergenerational dynamics in China

Using in‐depth interview data on nominal marriages – legal marriages between a gay man and a lesbian to give the appearance of heterosexuality – this paper develops the concept of performative family to explain the processes through which parents and their adult children negotiate and resolve disagreements in relation to marriage decisions in post‐socialist China. We identify three mechanisms – network pressure, a revised discourse of filial piety and resource leverage – through which parents influence their gay offspring's decision to turn to nominal marriage. We also delineate six strategies, namely minimizing network participation, changing expectations, making partial concessions, drawing the line, delaying decisions and ending the marriage, by which gay people in nominal marriages attempt to meet parental expectations while simultaneously retaining a degree of autonomy. Through these interactions, we argue that Chinese parents and their gay adult children implicitly and explicitly collaborate to perform family, emphasizing the importance of formally meeting society's expectations about marriage rather than substantively yielding to its demands. We also argue that the performative family is a pragmatic response to the tension between the persistent centrality of family and marriage and the rising tide of individualism in post‐socialist China. We believe that our findings highlight the specific predicament of homosexual people. They also shed light on the more general dynamics of intergenerational negotiation because there is evidence that the mechanisms used by parents to exert influence may well be similar between gay and non‐gay people.     

Ageing Society Issues in Korea*

Korean society is facing unprecedentedly higher population ageing, particularly in the first half of the 21st century. The implications of population ageing have a much wider effect than the welfare of the elderly. From a broader and long‐term perspective, understanding population ageing may require a new paradigm. Korea has attempted to model its policies for ageing society on those of advanced welfare states, but as these no longer seem viable, Korean policy‐makers are searching for more effective and efficient measures to deal with its rapid ageing population. Reflecting a broader and long‐term perspective, the Korean government recently produced a comprehensive national policy plan to deal with the consequences of rapid population ageing. This article outlines the phenomenon of population ageing in Korea and the recent development of national policies for population ageing, describing the Korean comprehensive national policy plan for responding to it and examining major issues and problems related to developing and implementing the plan. This article finally suggests a new, age‐integrated social system approach to an ageing society.     

Testing non-nested log-linear models with pseudo estimator

As the number of random variables for the categorical data increases, the possible number of log-linear models which can be fitted to the data increases rapidly, so that various model selection methods are developed. However, we often found that some models chosen by different selection criteria do not coincide. In this paper, we propose a comparison method to test the final models which are non-nested. The statistic of Cox (1961, 1962) is applied to log-linear models for testing non-nested models, and the Kullback-Leibler measure of closeness (Pesaran 1987) is explored. In log-linear models, pseudo estimators for the expectation and the variance of Cox's statistic are not only derived but also shown to be consistent estimators.     

Determinants of engagement in paid work following social security benefit receipt among older women

Work behavior among older men approaching or following retirement has received considerable research attention over the past two decades, but research on older women's work behavior is still in its incipient stage. Based on data from the 1982 New Beneficiary Survey (NBS) and the 1991 New Beneficiary Follow-up (NBF), this study analyzes the extent and determinants of employment among women who received their first Social Security benefits between 1980 and 1981. More than one fourth of the women continued to work or rejoined the labor force following their first Social Security benefit receipt. Financial need was found to be the primary reason for and the most significant determinant of women's continuing work or (re)entry into the labor force. But the level of education, health, spouse's work status, and previous work history were also found to be significant determinants of the likelihood and duration of their employment following Social Security receipt.     

Bootstrap confidence regions computed from autoregressions of arbitrary order

Given a linear time series, e.g. an autoregression of infinite order, we may construct a finite order approximation and use that as the basis for confidence regions. The sieve or autoregressive bootstrap, as this method is often called, is generally seen as a competitor with the better-understood block bootstrap approach. However, in the present paper we argue that, for linear time series, the sieve bootstrap has significantly better performance than blocking methods and offers a wider range of opportunities. In particular, since it does not corrupt second-order properties then it may be used in a double-bootstrap form, with the second bootstrap application being employed to calibrate a basic percentile method confidence interval. This approach confers second-order accuracy without the need to estimate variance. That offers substantial benefits, since variances of statistics based on time series can be difficult to estimate reliably, and—partly because of the relatively small amount of information contained in a dependent process—are notorious for causing problems when used to Studentize. Other advantages of the sieve bootstrap include considerably greater robustness against variations in the choice of the tuning parameter, here equal to the autoregressive order, and the fact that, in contradistinction to the case of the block bootstrap, the percentile t version of the sieve bootstrap may be based on the 'raw' estimator of standard error. In the process of establishing these properties we show that the sieve bootstrap is second order correct.     

Minimizing makespan in an ordered flow shop with?machine-dependent processing times

We consider a generalization of the proportionate flow shop problem with the makespan objective. Each job has a processing requirement and each machine has a characteristic value. In our case, we assume that the time a job occupies a machine is equal to the processing requirement of the job plus a setup time that is equal to the characteristic value of that machine. In this paper, we consider permutation schedules and show that the problem is solvable in polynomial time when the number of machines is fixed.