Reports of childhood sexual abuse by adolescents and young adults: Stability over time

The consistency of childhood sexual abuse (CSA) reporting was explored in this study. Two‐hundred seventeen adolescents and young adults (ages 14–24) enrolled in urban health care clinics completed self‐report questionnaires assessing CSA and other problem behaviors at enrollment and at 7 months. Results indicated that the stability of CSA self‐report at two time points was poor (58% consistent nonreporters of CSA, 20% consistent reporters, 22% inconsistent reporters). Consistent and inconsistent reporters were differentiated on risk measures. Adolescents who endorsed more items from the CSA scale were five times more likely to be consistent reporters. In sum, adolescent CSA reporting was quite inconsistent over time. Using multi‐item scales and assessing CSA at two time points enhances accuracy of reporting.     

Deriving the Normal and Exponential Densities Using EDA Techniques

This paper shows how students in an introductory statistics course discover mathematical expressions for the normal and exponential density functions. Techniques of exploratory data analysis (EDA) are applied to large data sets, the key idea being a straight-line fit to an appropriate reexpression of the histogram.     

A Retrievable Recipe for Inverse t

Although the percentage points of the Student-t distribution have been widely tabulated, a simple approximation is given and derived in this article. The approximation can be re-derived easily, since it is based on the percentage points from the Gaussian distribution, and can thus be used for applications requiring non-integer degrees of freedom (e.g., Welch's two-sample t test) and for arbitrary significance levels (e.g., for Bonferroni multiple comparison procedures). Comparisons between this approximation and others suggested in the literature indicate three-digit accuracy for even small degrees of freedom and tail areas.     

Modeling the Public Health System Response to a Terrorist Event in the Food Supply

We have developed a simulation model to quantify and characterize the response of the public health system and the impact of public health advisories in the event of an intentional contamination of the food supply. The model has three components: (1) definition of individual exposure over time and the outcomes of exposure, (2) definition of the geographical dispersal of exposures, and (3) response of the public health authorities to symptomatic individuals. The model explicitly considers the variation in the multiple interrelated facets of the response system, including differences among individuals' responses to exposure, variation between health care providers, and the subsequent processing of samples and confirmation of cases. To illustrate use of the model, case studies with  Escherichia coli  O157:H7 and  Salmonella  spp. in three categories of food vehicle were compared. The level of detail required to run the public health component of the model is not trivial. While some data may not be available for hazards of particular interest in potential bioterrorism events, the application of expert judgment permits comparisons between different agents, different system reactions, and other assumptions within the system. The model provides the capacity to study the impact of system changes, to compare scenarios and to quantify the benefits of improvement in terms of averted exposures and risk reduction, and constitutes a significant aid to understanding and managing these threats. Essentially, the model provides an explicit valuation of time saved in the identification and intervention in terrorist events in the food supply.     

TELSQA and the Mainstreamed LD Social Studies Student

The content of social studies curricula make studying abroad during the summer months a win-win for social studies teachers. During these experiences, teachers have the opportunity to develop their knowledge of global history and other cultures and to see a bit of the world. That said, the most dangerous assumption one can make is that simply going abroad will automatically lead to the ambitious expectations often associated with such experiences. Using data drawn from the experiences of four social studies teachers who engaged in international professional development and observations of their learning abroad, this article provides strategies for making the most of what may be a once-in-a-lifetime experience.     

Operationalizing hunger in rural America: A reexamination of McMurry

The Harvard Physician Task Force report Hunger Counties 1986 evoked several critical responses, including Dan McMurry's (1991) in this journal. McMurry maintained that the Harvard report incorrectly identifies hunger counties in the United States: It is an invalid study that measures economic dependence rather than hunger and malnutrition. In this reexamination of McMurry, it is argued that his field observations lack ethnographic validity and thus draw erroneous conclusions from the data. McMurry, in addition, made false assumptions about the voting behavior of rural residents, which further weakens his arguments against the Harvard Physician Task Force. Finally, it is suggested that researchers find a more inclusive method of measuring rural hunger in America.     

Supreme Court Auditing of the US Courts of Appeals: An Organizational Perspective

Using an aggregate-level model of Supreme Court–circuitcourt interactions, this study assesses the extent to whichthe Court's auditing process of circuit court outputs is shapedby organizational dynamics such as structural capacity, institutionalization,and demographic characteristics. Principals in organizationalhierarchies must audit the behavior of their agents to ensurethat the agents are faithfully complying with the principals'preferences. In the case of the Supreme Court, such auditingactivities must take place in the face of very limited institutionalcapacity on the Court's part. We propose that the Court considerscertain broad organizational and institutional characteristicsat the circuit level when performing this task. In particular,we find that the Court strategically allocates its limited institutionalresources to audit decisions to respond to its recent interactionswith individual circuits in past terms, the circuits' internaldecision-making dynamics (including dissent and reversal rates),and goal conflict between the circuit and the Supreme Court.