Connecting and engaging with health and social care: Exploring the core components of a telephone and web-mediated family navigation prevention service

Early engagement with health care, mental health care, and social services can promote the well-being of children and families. How practitioners can best support family engagement with these services however remains largely unknown. To address this gap in knowledge, data from a voluntary 12-week telephone and web-mediated family navigation preventive intervention called Navigate Your Way were subject to mixed-methods analysis. Twenty-nine caregivers and five family navigators contributed data to the study. Thematic analysis of weekly navigator check-ins, participant closing interviews, navigator discharge notes, and lab meeting notes was conducted and followed by quantitative analysis of navigator effort across project activities. Results were then mixed to illuminate the essential conditions for supporting family connection to health care, mental health care, and social services. Qualitative analysis identified themes related to empathic engagement and person-centred navigation as central to connecting families to needed services. Quantitative analysis of navigator effort identified participant outreach, weekly check-ins, service identification, and ongoing supervision as essential navigation activities. Together, providing an environment that is supportive, consistent, flexible, person-centred and tailored to families' specific needs are important for connecting to health and social care.     

Estimating Evacuation Shelter Deficits in the Houston–Galveston Metropolitan Area

Evacuation is frequently used by emergency managers and other officials as part of an overall approach to reducing the morbidity and mortality associated with hurricane landfall. In this study, the evacuation shelter capacity of the Houston–Galveston Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) was spatially assessed and shelter deficits in the region were estimated. These data provide essential information needed to eliminate shelter deficits and ensure a successful evacuation from a future storm. Spatial statistical methods—Global Moran's I, Anselin Local Moran's I (Local Indicators of Spatial Association [LISA]), and Hot Spot Analysis (Getis-Ord Gi*) were used to assess for regional spatial autocorrelation and clustering of evacuation shelters in the Houston–Galveston MSA. Shelter deficits were estimated in four ways—the aggregate deficit for the Houston–Galveston MSA, by evacuation Zip-Zone, by county, and by distance or radii of evacuation Zip-Zone. Evacuation shelters were disproportionately distributed in the region, with lower capacity shelters clustered closer to evacuation Zip-Zones (50 miles from the Coastal Zip-Zone), and higher capacity shelters clustered farther away from the zones (120 miles from the Coastal Zip-Zone). The aggregate shelter deficit for the Houston–Galveston MSA was 353,713 persons. To reduce morbidity and mortality associated with future hurricanes in the Houston–Galveston MSA, authorities should consider the development and implementation of policies that would improve the evacuation shelter capacity of the region. Eliminating shelter deficits, which has been done successfully in the state of Florida, is an essential element of protecting the public from hurricane impacts.     

Equality of recruitment: Gender parity in French National Assembly elections

This research centers on the effects of the newly mandated gender parity on French electoral politics. We examine the results from the 2002 National Assembly elections. Our findings suggest that this Parity Law contributed to the modest increase in the number of female deputies elected to the National Assembly, but that the electoral success rate for female candidates declined from the previous elections in 1997. This result appears to have been affected by two factors: (1) a greater-than-average number of female candidates were affiliated with the Socialist party—the party that lost control of the government in this election and (2) many female candidates were running against male incumbents. Multivariate analysis suggests that, after these two factors are controlled for, female candidates were more likely to be elected in open seat contests than were male candidates. Preliminary analysis of roll call votes in the two most recent (1997–2004) legislative sessions suggests that party, not gender, is the main determinant of voting behavior.     

Shift Work,Role Overload,and the Transition to Parenthood

This article examines how the work hours, work schedules, and role overload of working‐class couples are related to depressive symptoms and relationship conflict across the transition to parenthood. Data are from 132 dual‐earner couples interviewed 5 times across the transition. Multilevel modeling analyses revealed that working evening or night shifts, as opposed to day shifts, was related to higher levels of depressive symptoms. For mothers only, working rotating shifts predicted relationship conflict. Increases in role overload were positively related to both depression and conflict; working a nonday shift explained variance in depression and conflict above and beyond role overload. Results suggest that for new parents, working nonday shifts may be a risk factor for depressive symptoms and relationship conflict.     

Designing a campus support program for foster care alumni: Preliminary evidence for a strengths framework

Campus support programs for foster care alumni (FCA) have emerged in an attempt to improve higher education outcomes for former foster youth. However, these programs have little empirical or theoretical literature to guide their development. We present a case study of a newly developed campus support program for FCA which utilizes a strengths perspective. We analyze quantitative and qualitative data collected before and during the first two years of program operation to explore whether a strengths perspective can be successfully applied to the unique needs of FCA in higher education. Results reveal that the strengths perspective has potential and identifies three areas in which this approach appears to effectively intersect with challenges faced by FCA, a) promoting positive identities as survivors, b) respecting autonomy, and c) mobilizing assets of resilience, perseverance, and community. We discuss the benefits and challenges of helping students address these issues. Our findings also reveal that the strengths perspective is not redundant with traditional higher education retention models, and in the three areas identified, is diametrically opposed to the students' previous experiences with the foster care system.     

A Review and Proposal for a New Measure of Poll Accuracy

This article proposes a new measure of the predictive accuracy(A) of election polls that permits examination of both accuracyand bias, and it applies the new measure to summarize the resultsof a number of preelection polls. We first briefly review pastmeasures of accuracy, then introduce the new measure. Afterthe new measure is described, the general strategy is to applyit to three presidential elections (1948, 1996, and 2000) andto compare the results derived from it to the results obtainedwith the Mosteller measures. Then, the new measure is appliedto the results of 548 state polls from gubernatorial and senatorialraces in the 2002 elections to illustrate its application toa large body of preelection polls conducted in "off-year" raceswith different outcomes. We believe that this new measure willbe useful as a summary measure of accuracy in election forecasts.It is easily computed and summarized, and it can be used asa dependent variable in multivariate statistical analyses ofthe nature and extent of biases that affect election forecastsand to identify their potential sources. It is comparable acrosselections with different outcomes and among polls that varyin their treatment or numbers of undecided voters.     

Examining the impact of gender, race/ethnicity, and family factors on mental health issues in a sample of court-involved youth

Faced with anywhere between one half and two thirds of its youth having a diagnosable mental illness, the identification and treatment of mental health concerns is a critically important endeavor for professionals working with youth who have contact with the juvenile justice system. In addition, the literature suggests that factors related to both the family and to the gender of the adolescent must be incorporated into any approach to assessment and intervention within this special population. Further, prior work that has documented the interaction of gender and family issues with adolescent race/ethnicity warrants further empirical attention, as does the intermediary role that the family may play in the development of both internalizing and externalizing behaviors. The present study extends this literature by examining factors related to gender, race/ethnicity, family factors, and mental health issues in a sample of 2,549 Caucasian and African American youth coming to the attention of juvenile courts. Multivariate analysis of variance results indicated significant main effects for gender and race/ethnicity, as well as a significant gender x race/ethnicity interaction for the family and externalizing variables. A multiple group structural equation modeling procedure was employed in order to test the hypothesis that family environment mediates the relationship between gender and mental health problems, as well as to test for potential differences in these relationships as a function of race/ethnicity. Results indicated support for the mediation model in the sample of African American youth but not in the sample of Caucasian youth.     

Construct redundancy in leader behaviors: A review and agenda for the future

Leadership remains a popular and heavily researched area in the social sciences. Such popularity has led to a proliferation of new constructs within the leadership domain. Here, we argue that such construct proliferation without pruning is unhealthy and violates the principle of parsimony. Our purpose was to examine construct redundancy via a comprehensive review of task-oriented, relational, passive, and inspirational leader behaviors as well as values-based and moral leadership behaviors. Our findings, as indexed via meta-analytic correlations, reveal that construct redundancy remains problematic for the leadership literature. In addition, many of the values-based and moral behavior models correlated heavily with constructs traditionally examined as outcome variables (e.g., trust, LMX, justice). Implications for future research are discussed in regards to construct redundancy and how to avoid endogeneity bias in primary studies in the leadership literature.