Deploying an Ecological Model to Stem the Rising Tide of Firearm Suicide in Older Age

A central objective of the Surgeon General’s National Strategy for Suicide Prevention is to focus on older adults. We review individual risk-factors for suicide in late life and then introduce an ecological model to expand conceptualization of elder suicide. We first look at the role of firearms, providing evidence that firearm availability increases the means of elder suicide and gun access policies can contribute to reducing risk. Next, we focus on primary care providers, documenting how older adults often come into contact with these professionals before ending their lives and how these providers could take a more active role in mediating individual-level risk factors. We then turn our attention to the intersection between gun access and primary care and consider how advancing standards of care concerning gun access and suicide risk might be an effective policy alternative for blocking the pathway to suicide among older adults.     

The changing relationship between the Chinese Government and Non-governmental Organisations in social service delivery: approaching partnership?

Using the Guangzhou social governance reform pilot as a case, this paper aims to explore the transformation of Chinese governments in managing collaborative non-governmental organisation (NGO) relationships. Local governments have adopted multiple new governance tools, and the expansion of the NGO sector with genuine grassroots development has been observed. However, valuable principles of New Public Management (NPM) paradigm have not been followed, and strong authoritarian and bureaucratic practices have been revealed. The state–NGO relationship has moved from a typical statist to a state-corporatist model. Findings indicate distinctive features of Asian public administration and the limitations of applying Westernized NPM models.     

Comparing the effectiveness of I-BMS-informed self-help interventions in alleviating psychosocial distress for women awaiting the outcome of IVF treatment

Women undergoing in vitro fertilisation experience enormous emotional distress while waiting to find out if they are pregnant; yet their intention to seek help remains low. Interventions that can be easily self-administered may provide a promising alternative. This randomised trial compares psychosocial outcomes of 207 women who received a self-help education booklet containing either spiritually reflective exercise and relaxation techniques, spiritually reflective exercises only, or information about body-mind wellness. Results suggest that knowledge on body-mind wellness protected the women from deteriorating in a range of psychosocial well-being domains that would otherwise have occurred during the waiting period prior to the pregnancy test.     

A Comparison of Psychometric Properties and Normality in 4-, 5-, 6-, and 11-Point Likert Scales

ABSTRACT

The Likert scale is very popular, but the question as to the number of scale points is still controversial. This article studies the differences among 4-, 5-, 6-, and 11-point Likert scales with a sample of 1,217 students in Macau, using the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale as the measuring instrument. There is no major difference in internal structure in terms of means, standard deviations, item–item correlations, item–total correlations, Cronbach's alpha, or factor loadings. Findings indicate that having more scale points seems to reduce skewness, and the 11-point scale, ranging from 0 to 10, has the smallest kurtosis and is closest to normal. Only the 6- and 11-point scales follow normal distributions from Kolmogorov–Smirnov and Shapiro–Wilk statistics. Results on predictive validity are inconclusive. This article discusses future applications and suggests the use of an 11-point scale as it increases sensitivity and is closer to interval level of scaling and normality. Recommendations for social workers and teachers are made to better assist when using self-reported measurement scales.     

Identity work of welfare service users in participatory spaces

The popularizing user participation agenda has encouraged the creation of discursive spaces for collaborative decision‐making with the welfare service users. Despite the claim of partnership with the service users, these participative spaces do not always promise parity of participation. Based on a qualitative study conducted in Hong Kong, this paper discusses the manifestation and constitution of identity among the welfare service users who took part in organizational spaces for participatory management. The analysis uncovers the tensions and promises in participatory management with the welfare service users.     

Efficient Heuristics for Orientation Metric and Euclidean Steiner Tree Problems

We consider Steiner minimum trees (SMT) in the plane, where only orientations with angle , 0 i – 1 and an integer, are allowed. The orientations define a metric, called the orientation metric, , in a natural way. In particular, ₂ metric is the rectilinear metric and the Euclidean metric can beregarded as metric. In this paper, we provide a method to find an optimal SMT for 3 or 4 points by analyzing the topology of SMT's in great details. Utilizing these results and based on the idea of loop detection first proposed in Chao and Hsu, IEEE Trans. CAD, vol. 13, no. 3, pp. 303–309, 1994, we further develop an O(n²) time heuristic for the general SMT problem, including the Euclidean metric. Experiments performed on publicly available benchmark data for 12 different metrics, plus the Euclidean metric, demonstrate the efficiency of our algorithms and the quality of our results.     

Prediction of vocational outcome of people with brain injury after rehabilitation: a discriminant analysis

Due to advancements in emergency evacuation procedures and neurosurgical techniques, more patients with brain injury (BI) can survive cerebral injury and regain a satisfactory degree of recovery through rehabilitation. Their improvement in physical and cognitive functions can facilitate their reintegration into the community, especially their return to work (RTW). Different factors were reported to affect this rate of RTW in previous studies. This retrospective study thus aimed to investigate the role of demographic data, the severity of injury, residual physical deficits, activities of daily living, and cognitive function using a stepwise discriminant function analysis (DFA). Data sets for 79 persons with BI were retrieved so as to identify predictors of their vocational outcomes upon discharge and during a follow-up period. The stepwise DFA revealed that the discharge score on the Disability Rating Scale (DRS), the attention-subtest of the Neurobehavioral Cognitive Status Examination (NCSE) or Cognistat, and pre-morbid occupation were significant predictors that correctly classified 65.8% of the subjects.     

Quality of Life in Older Adults: Benefits from Caring Services in Hong Kong

Many older adults are in need of care. Therefore, older people would generally benefit from the use of caring services, notably including home care, residential care, nursing, and medical services. The contributory factors underlying caring services tend to be a caring perspective that aspires to sustain older people’s social relationships and real-life involvement. To gauge the benefits from various social and health services, the present study relies on a large-scale survey of 3000 older adults in Hong Kong, using quality of life as a criterion. Results showed that an older adult who had used (ordinary or enhanced) home care services for a longer time turned out to have appreciably more improvement in quality of life. Besides, those who joined an interest group more frequently were higher in quality of life, including the health domain. On the other hand, frequent use of medical and meal-to-home services were signals that reflected problems detrimental to the older user’s quality of life. Despite this, the quality of clinics or hospitals, as perceived by the older adult, was the most beneficial. As such, caring services that foster older adults’ interests, cater to their health care needs, and embody quality can have principal contribution to their users’ quality of life.     

Housing concerns of elderly homeowners

This article examines the subjective perceptions of low-income elderly homeowners about their housing situation, by using a nonstandardized and unobtrusive interview method and a thematic content analysis. Five housing areas were investigated: shelter quality, neighborhood quality, accessibility and mobility, benefit and burden of homeownership, and social support network. The findings corroborated the study by O'Bryant on the importance of subjective variables in explaining housing satisfaction. Two themes emerged: questionable housing “needs” and ambiguity perceptions.     

Factorial experiments in the analysis of assembly systems

Assembly systems are a key tool for mass production and are increasingly being implemented in the manufacturing industry. Since the performance of such systems depends on the levels of many design variables, they are not well understood. In this paper, the performance of free transfer automatic assembly systems with closed inspection and repair loops is studied via factorial experiments of a simulated system. Five factors were identified that affect the throughput of the system: buffer size, number of pallets in the system, number of repair stations, repair time of jammed assembly machines, and subcomponent defect rate. Initially, two levels of each factor were considered, so that a full 2 5 factorial design of the experiment was used to study the system. Next, to develop a deeper understanding of the linear or non-linear effect of each factor, additional levels were investigated. Finally, a predictive model is proposed. Engineers and system designers can use this predictive model to estimate the performance of the system, given a combination of levels of each of the five factors that we studied.