Individual and ecological assets and positive developmental trajectories among gang and community-based organization youth

The Search Institute framework for conceptualizing developmental assets was used in a longitudinal study of African American male youth involved in gangs or in community-based organizations (CBOs) serving youth. Analyses of intraindividual change indicated that individual and ecological assets are linked to positive developmental trajectories among these youth.     

Log-Multiplicative Association Models As Latent Variable Models For Nominal and/or Ordinal Data

Associations between multiple discrete measures are often due to collapsing over other variables. When the variables collapsed over are unobserved and continuous, log-multiplicative association models, including log-linear models with linear-by-linear interactions for ordinal categorical data and extensions of Goodman's (1979, 1985) RC(M) association model for multiple nominal and/or ordinal categorical variables, can be used to study the relationship between the observed discrete variables and the unobserved continuous ones, and to study the unobserved variables. The derivation and use of log-multiplicative association models as latent variable models for discrete variables are presented in this paper. The models are based on graphical models for discrete and continuous variables where the variables follow a conditional Gaussian distribution. The models have many desirable properties, including having schematic or graphical representations of the system of observed and unobserved variables, the log-multiplicative models can be read from the graphs, and estimates of the means, variances, and covariances of the latent variables given values on the observed variables are a function of the log-multiplicative model parameters. To illustrate some of the advantageous aspects of these models, two examples are presented. In one example, responses to items from the General Social Survey (Davis and Smith 1996) are modeled, and in the other example, panel data from two groups (Coleman 1964) are analyzed.     

The Impact of Family of Origin on Social Workers from Alcoholic Families

This study draws on the experience of six social workers who are adult children of alcoholics, to demonstrate that childhood learned responsibility and the capacity for attachment are translated into later professional acuity. The place of resilience in developing an understanding of the linkages between the experiences of adult children of alcoholics and social workers is examined and the consequences for social work practice and the education of social workers is outlined. Undeniably, prior life experience impacts on practice. Less well understood is the positive impact of negative experience. In the case of social workers who are adult children of alcoholics we argue that being part of an alcoholic family may significantly contribute to, rather than detract from, later practice competence.     

Analysis of exacerbation rates in asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease: example from the TRISTAN study

Recurrent events in clinical trials have typically been analysed using either a multiple time-to-event method or a direct approach based on the distribution of the number of events. An area of application for these methods is exacerbation data from respiratory clinical trials. The different approaches to the analysis and the issues involved are illustrated for a large trial (n = 1465) in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). For exacerbation rates, clinical interest centres on a direct comparison of rates for each treatment which favours the distribution-based analysis, rather than a time-to-event approach. Poisson regression has often been employed and has recently been recommended as the appropriate method of analysis for COPD exacerbations but the key assumptions often appear unreasonable for this analysis. By contrast use of a negative binomial model which corresponds to assuming a separate Poisson parameter for each subject offers a more appealing approach. Non-parametric methods avoid some of the assumptions required by these models, but do not provide appropriate estimates of treatment effects because of the discrete and bounded nature of the data.     

Laziness or liberation? Labor market policies and workers' attitudes toward employment flexibility

This study examined the relationship between labor market policies and employees' willingness to make concessions in order to avoid unemployment. In contrast to previous work that analyzed the behavior of employers and the unemployed, we examined how labor market policies influence employees' flexibility. Multilevel modeling techniques were applied to a data set that was created by combining individual‐level data from the International Social Survey Program (ISSP) with country‐level information from the Organization for Cooperation and Economic Development. The main findings of our analyses were that dismissal protection and unemployment benefits do make a difference to employees' willingness to make concessions, and that the relationships between the willingness to make concessions and labor market policies are nonlinear. Substantively, these nonlinear relationships suggest that employees' willingness to be flexible is negatively associated with both “too much” and “too little” social protection.     

Contested Rights: The Pedagogy and Logistics of Hosting Constitution Day

Research in global education has turned toward global citizenship education and the fostering of a more critical reading of the tenets of “soft” global education laid out over four decades ago in Hanvey's (1976) “An Attainable Global Perspective.” Interested in skill building and informed application of concepts forwarded within critical approaches to global education, this article brings the NCSS C3 inquiry arc together with standards for Global Competence Education within social studies education. Using food insecurity as an example, the conceptualization provided demonstrates how coupling the C3 with the Global Competence standards creates a framework that social studies educators can use to prepare students to participate as informed, responsible, and critically minded change agents within complex and unequal global systems.     

The Strehler–Mildvan correlation from the perspective of a two-process vitality model

The Strehler and Mildvan (SM) general theory of ageing and mortality provides a mechanism-based explanation of Gompertz's law and predicts a log-linear relationship between the two Gompertz coefficients, known as the SM correlation. While the SM correlation is supported by data from developed countries before the second half of the twentieth century, the recent breakdown of the correlation pattern in these countries has prompted demographers to conclude that SM theory needs to be reassessed. In this paper we use a newly developed two-process vitality model to explain the SM correlation and its breakdown in terms of asynchronous trends in acute (extrinsic) and chronic (intrinsic) mortality factors. We propose that the mortality change in the first half of the twentieth century is largely determined by the elimination of immediate hazards to death, whereas the mortality change in the second half is primarily driven by the slowdown of the deterioration rate of intrinsic survival capacity.