Addressing the disproportionate representation of children of color: a collaborative community approach

The state of Indiana recommended a committee be formed to address the disproportional representation of black youth in out-of-home placements. In response, the Indiana Disproportionality Committee (IDC) was established. This article presents the development, objectives and future of the IDC. One of the objectives, research, will be offered as an example of the committee's collaborative strategies. The IDC, in partnership with another organization, has begun exploring relationships between ethnicity, risk factors and treatment outcomes. The results of this research effort have examined disproportion and disparity, leading the IDC to identify needs for change within the state. Barriers and successes of the IDC will be shared, so that others can use these efforts to guide their own strategies to reduce disproportionality.     

American Ebola Story: frames in U.S. National Newspapers

The 2014 Ebola epidemic saw the first symptomatic and fatal cases of Ebola in the United States. Concurrently, news coverage in U.S. media about Ebola increased. Research has shown that media’s framing of events influences public perception and understanding. To address framing of the Ebola epidemic in the U.S. media, researchers conducted a content analysis of newspaper articles reporting on the Ebola epidemic during the U.S. contact tracing period from September 30 to December 2, 2014 (n = 718). The top three circulating U.S. national newspapers were used in the analysis. The results show that the human interest, conflict, and action frames had the highest presence across newspaper articles, whereas the presence of attribution of responsibility, morality, and economic frames was lower. This study furthers knowledge of U.S. news media framing and coverage of new public health emergencies, and how newspapers may drive audience understanding and perception of the 2014 Ebola epidemic. This study also discusses implications of the findings and suggests directions for future research.     

A Multidimensional Framework for the Meanings of the Sexual Double Standard and its Application for the Sexual Health of Young Black Women in the U.S

There has been debate in the literature as to whether a sexual double standard (SDS) currently exists in the United States. Studies vary greatly in how the SDS is operationalized, making it difficult to interpret findings across studies and translate academic literature into applied fields such as public health. To advance academic and applied research, we propose a multidimensional framework for the SDS that can accommodate complex and nuanced meanings, is flexible enough to allow for the dynamic nature of social ideologies, and is grounded in an understanding of social systems of inequality. In this article, we describe three dimensions that define the broad elements of the SDS: (a) polarized (hetero)sexualities, (b) active male and passive female roles, and (c) the power struggle narrative. To illustrate the use of the framework, we contextualize each dimension in terms of the intersection of race and gender for young Black women in the United States. And finally, to apply the framework, we explore the effects the SDS can have on sexual health and suggest some directions for public health interventions. These analyses lay the groundwork for more complex and comprehensive investigations of the SDS and its effects on sexual health.     

Racial inequality and the recognition of racial discrimination in Jamaica

A growing body of literature posits that a population’s denial of the salience of racial discrimination acts as a mechanism of its perpetuation. Moreover, scholars locate a population’s propensity to deny racial discrimination in contemporary ideologies of racial mixing or ethnic fusion. Most quantitative studies of public opinion on these issues are limited to Latin America and the Spanish-speaking Caribbean. This study examines the case of Jamaica. We first (1) examine the extent of Jamaica’s contemporary racial inequality using national census data. We then (2) use nationally representative data from the AmericasBarometer social survey to determine the extent to which a recognition of racial discrimination characterizes Jamaican public opinion. Finally, we (3) explore the salience of an ideology of racial mixing in Jamaica and (4) test whether that ideology affects the likelihood that Jamaicans acknowledge contemporary racial discrimination. Our findings document dramatic social inequality by skin colour in Jamaica and suggest that a majority embrace an ideology that racial mixing is negatively associated with Jamaicans’ recognition of racial discrimination. We discuss our findings and their implications for understanding ideologies of racial mixing and racial inequality in the Americas.     

“A Very Dangerous Battleground”: How Abstinent Christian Men Select and Navigate Media in the Presence of Sexual Media Content

Abstinent Christian men are frequently challenged when selecting and navigating media due to the presence of sexual content that presents images and ideas not aligned with their sexual self-concept. In this study, we explored themes that emerged from qualitative in -depth interviews of abstinent Christian men to understand their media selection, navigation, and sexual self-concept in the context of the sexual media practice model (Shafer, Bobkowski, & Brown, 2013). Participants’ media selection and navigation were influenced by faith, and participants often attempted to control or avoid situations where sexual media content were present.     

Good decision vs. good results: Outcome bias in the evaluation of financial agents

Theory and Decision - We document outcome bias in situations where an agent makes risky financial decisions for a principal. In three experiments, we show that the principal’s evaluations and...     

Physical activity patterns in healthy middle-aged women

ABSTRACT

Exercise in healthy female adults around the menopausal transition has been routinely examined in leisure activities alone, potentially discounting the physical activity (PA) that is accumulated in household and outdoor domains. The purpose of this study was to quantify PA in healthy middle-aged women and to examine the extent to which the Center for Disease Control (CDC) PA guidelines were met through leisure, household, and outdoor activities. Methods: 440 healthy women, 51–64 years old, BMI ≥18.5 or < 40 kg/m², participated in the study using the Lifetime Physical Activity Questionnaire (LPAQ) to quantify PA. Results: 25.91% met the CDC PA guidelines if leisure time alone was examined. When multiple domains were included, 73.41% of the women met the PA guidelines. This percentage is much higher than the reported 20.6% of U.S. adults who met the guidelines in 2011. PA in women may be underrepresented in data limited to leisure time PA.     

Discretizing a compound distribution with application to categorical modelling

Many probability distributions can be represented as compound distributions. Consider some parameter vector as random. The compound distribution is the expected distribution of the variable of interest given the random parameters. Our idea is to define a partition of the domain of definition of the random parameters, so that we can represent the expected density of the variable of interest as a finite mixture of conditional densities. We then model the mixture probabilities of the conditional densities using information on population categories, thus modifying the original overall model. We thus obtain specific models for sub-populations that stem from the overall model. The distribution of a sub-population of interest is thus completely specified in terms of mixing probabilities. All characteristics of interest can be derived from this distribution and the comparison between sub-populations easily proceeds from the comparison of the mixing probabilities. A real example based on EU-SILC data is given. Then the methodology is investigated through simulation.