Facilitating Mental Health Service Use for Caregivers: Referral Strategies among Child Welfare Caseworkers

Unmet needs for mental health care are common among caregivers involved in the child welfare system. Although child welfare caseworkers are well positioned to identify service needs and refer caregivers to treatment, little is known about the types of referral strategies used in practice, or their effectiveness for promoting mental health service use. The current study examined child welfare caseworkers' use of different referral strategies and the extent to which these strategies are associated with caregivers' receipt of mental health services within a national sample of child welfare cases. Analyses of the second cohort of families from the National Survey of Child and Adolescent Well-Being suggest that child welfare workers more often use informational strategies for referring caregivers, including suggesting treatment or providing information about treatment options. However, social referral strategies such as providing caregivers with direct assistance in completing applications and making and attending appointments were associated with a greater likelihood of caregivers receiving mental health services. Findings support evidence from other service contexts that service use is facilitated by caseworkers' direct support for arranging services. Implications for research and for child welfare managers and administrators are discussed.     

Unfair to Me or Unfair to My Spouse: Men's and Women's Perceptions of Domestic Equity and How They Relate to Mental and Physical Health

Research examining the relationship between household labor and health has not sufficiently considered perceptions of domestic equity, physical health, or potential gender differences in these relationships. Using survey data from 1,234 lawyers, we examine how perceptions of domestic equity are related to mental and physical health and whether these relationships differ by gender. The results indicate that perceiving the division of household labor as unfair to oneself is related to poorer mental health, whereas perceiving the division as unfair to one's spouse is related to poorer physical health, regardless of gender. This article demonstrates the importance of treating perceptions of unfairness to oneself and one's spouse as distinct experiences, while also considering the wider context wherein these relationships exist.     

Blurring the lines for learning: the role of out-of-school programs as complements to formal learning

As debates continue over the effectiveness of after-school programs, we need to create stronger links between schools and out-of-school activities. Where do such connections begin? How can we integrate skill-building and academic competence into the out-of-school-time context?     

Where Are the Babies? Labor Market Conditions and Fertility in Europe

Cross-country differences in both the age at first birth and fertility are substantial in Europe. This paper uses distinct fluctuations in unemployment rates across European countries during the 1980s and the 1990s combined with broad differences in their labor market arrangements to analyze the associations between fertility timing and the changing economic environment with close to 50,000 women from 13 European countries. First, it employs time-varying measures of aggregate market conditions in each woman??s country as covariates and second, it adds micro-measures of each woman??s labor market history to the models. High and persistent unemployment in a country is associated with delays in childbearing (and second births). The association is robust to diverse measures of unemployment and to controls for family-friendly policies. Besides moderate unemployment, a large public employment sector (which provides security and benefits) is coupled with faster transitions to all births. Women with temporary contracts, mostly in Southern Europe, are the least likely to give birth to a second child.     

Geometric Ergodicity and Scanning Strategies for Two-Component Gibbs Samplers

In Markov chain Monte Carlo analysis, rapid convergence of the chain to its target distribution is crucial. A chain that converges geometrically quickly is geometrically ergodic. We explore geometric ergodicity for two-component Gibbs samplers (GS) that, under a chosen scanning strategy, evolve through one-at-a-time component-wise updates. We consider three such strategies: composition, random sequence, and random scans. We show that if any one of these scans produces a geometrically ergodic GS, so too do the others. Further, we provide a simple set of sufficient conditions for the geometric ergodicity of the GS. We illustrate our results using two examples.     

A Nonparametric Test for Deviation from Randomness with Applications to Stock Market Index Data

The proposed test detects deviations from randomness, without a priori distributional assumption, when observations are not independent and identically distributed (i.i.d.), which is suitable for our motivating stock market index data. Departures from i.i.d. are tested by subdividing data into subintervals and then using a conditional probability measure within intervals as a binomial test. This nonparametric test is designed to detect deviations of neighboring observations from randomness when the dataset consists of time series observations. Simulation results and a comparison with Lo and MacKinlay's (1988 Lo, A. W. and MacKinlay, A. C. 1988. Stock market prices do not follow random walks: Evidence from a simple specification test. The Review of Financial Studies, 1: 41–66. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) variance ratio test showed that our proposed test is a competitive alternative.     

Detecting Randomness: A Review of Existing Tests with New Comparisons

In this article we review and compare a number of existing tests for detecting randomness in time series data, with emphasis on stock market index data. By comparing variance ratio tests with traditional statistical tests, we have the most extensive simulation comparison of such procedures. The investigated tests are compared over a diverse group of distributions, models, and stock market applications. In our stock market data analysis, the choice of data transformation can have a noticeable effect on test results. This study provides the reader with a guide as to which test and transformation is most appropriate for their use.     

Parenting and child-caretaking among black men who have sex with men and associated sexual and reproductive health factors: a brief report

Abstract

The purpose of this exploratory study was to examine the prevalence of parenting and child-caretaking among a sample of black men who have sex with men (MSM), as well as associations between parenting roles and sexual and reproductive health (SRH) factors. Parenting and SRH data were derived from a survey of 199 black MSM. Nearly half of the sample reported being a father or father-figure (44.4%), almost a third indicated serving as caretaker of a child (29.1%), and one in five have a biological child (20.1%). Over half of the sample reported at least one of these three parenting/child-caretaking roles (52.5%). Two significant differences were observed for sexual health variables: men with biological children were significantly more likely to report using condoms inconsistently (55.0% vs. 35.7%, p = .026) and engaging in transactional sex work (36.8% vs. 21.0%, p = .041). Given the observed prevalence, parenting and child-caretaking among black MSM warrant further inquiry as factors that may influence SRH outcomes and care utilization. Services and interventions tailored to black MSM should consider these men’s potential roles and responsibilities as parents and caretakers of children.     

Fertility changes in Latin America in periods of economic uncertainty

We explored the relation between fertility and the business cycle in Latin America. First, we used aggregate data on fertility rates and economic performance for 18 countries. We then studied these same associations in the transitions to first, second, and third births with DHS individual data for ten countries. The results show that in general, childbearing declined during economic downturns. The decline was mainly associated with increasing unemployment rather than slowdowns in the growth of gross domestic product, although there was a positive relationship between first-birth rates and growth. While periods of unemployment may be a good time to have children because opportunity costs are lower, in fact childbearing was reduced or postponed, especially among the most recent cohorts and among urban and more educated women. The finding is consistent with the contention that, during this particular period in Latin America, income effects were dominant.