Effects of Homelessness and Child Maltreatment on the Likelihood of Engaging in Property and Violent Crime During Adulthood

The current study employs data from the U.S. National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (N = 10,818; 56% female; 21% African American) to test how experiencing homelessness through emerging adulthood and child maltreatment predict adult property crime and violent crime. Unlike many published studies on homelessness, we used propensity score matching to correct for selection bias between homeless and nonhomeless individuals. Logistic regression models were run to predict violent and property crime in adulthood, controlling for child maltreatment. Participants who experienced homelessness by age 26 were 1.6 times more likely to commit violent crime in adulthood and almost 30% more likely to commit property crime. Those who were victims of child maltreatment were 15 times more likely to commit property crime, but no more likely to commit violent crime. Findings show that comparing statistically equivalent groups, homelessness through emerging adulthood significantly predicted adult criminality while child maltreatment showed more variable results. Greater prevention efforts aimed at children and adolescents at high risk of experiencing homelessness, as well as more intensive outreach services to homeless youth, may moderate exposure and reduce reliance on criminal survival behaviors.     

BSW students and interviewing: physiological,psychological, and pedagogical perspectives from Canada

The acquisition of interviewing skills is a hallmark of social work education; however, few studies have examined the experience of learning these skills from the students’ perspective. This qualitative study undertaken in Ontario, Canada, examined Bachelor of Social Work (BSW) students’ perceptions of interviewing. Individual interviews were conducted with second-year BSW students (n = 17) following their completion of an interviewing course. The following six themes emerged as to how students perceived learning interviewing skills: 1) emotional responses; 2) physiological responses; 3) psychological responses; 4) coping strategies; 5) the need for constructive criticism; and 6) the role of the course instructor. The study suggests that instructors normalize the presence of negative emotions and provide more structure and instructions for giving and receiving feedback when using role-plays.     

Assisted Living Facility Administrator and Direct Care Staff Views of Resident Mental Health Concerns and Staff Training Needs

This community needs assessment surveyed 21 administrators and 75 direct care staff at 9 larger and 12 smaller assisted living facilities (ALFs) regarding perceptions of resident mental health concerns, direct care staff capacity to work with residents with mental illness, and direct care staff training needs. Group differences in these perceptions were also examined. Both administrators and directcare staff indicated that direct care staff would benefit from mental health-related training, and direct care staff perceived themselves as being more comfortable working with residents with mental illness than administrators perceived them to be. Implications for gerontological social work are discussed.     

The Search for a New OPAC: Selecting an Open Source Discovery Layer

Abstract

In early 2011, an Indiana University Libraries task force was charged with selecting an open source discovery layer to serve as the public interface for IU's online catalog, IUCAT. This process included creating a rubric of core functionality and rating two discovery layers based on criteria in four main categories: general features and functionality; authentication and account management; export and share; and search functionality and results display. The article includes information about our rubric and the two discovery layers reviewed, Blacklight and VuFind, as well as a discussion of the priorities of the task force. The article concludes with future steps and anticipated highlights for IUCAT.     

Exploring Multiracial Individuals' Comfort with Intimate Interracial Relationships

This article explores the relationship between a heightened awareness of race as a social construct and comfort in interracial relationships across varying levels of intimacy among multiracial and monoracial individuals. Study 1 finds that multiracial individuals express higher levels of comfort in intimate interracial relationships than monoracial White and minority individuals. Study 2 finds that belief in race as a social construction mediates the differences between monoracial and multiracial individuals in their comfort in intimate interracial relationships. Implications of these findings for interracial relationships are discussed.     

USING MANAGEMENT GAMES AS AN AID IN TEACHING MIS DESIGN

As an approach to teaching management information systems, students are required to play a management game. The students become aware of information needs through participation in the decision process of the game. The student then develops an integrated system to assist in playing this management game. This new approach, the gaming method, is considered an effective way of teaching integrated systems because the intimate interrelationships between decision-making processes and information systems can be easily illustrated.     

Effects of Exogenous and Endogenous Distracters on Immediate and Long‐Term Recall in Toddlers

We explored the role that exogenous and endogenous competitors for attention play in infants’ abilities to encode and retain information over a 6‐month period. Sixty‐six children visited the laboratory at 15 months, and 32 returned for a second visit at 21 months. Children observed models of conventional‐ relation and enabling‐relation action sequences. Half the children were distracted by a “Mister Monkey” mechanical toy during the conventional‐relation sequence, while the other half was distracted during the enabling‐relation sequence. The Early Childhood Behavior Questionnaire indexed endogenous factors at both ages. Immediate postmodel production of target actions indexed encoding efficiency, and 6‐month production of target actions indexed long‐term recall. The exogenous distracter impacted encoding efficiency (i.e., immediate recall), but not long‐term recall. Endogenous factors (i.e., temperament) were primarily associated with long‐term recall. Of special interest was our finding that endogenous factors, especially surgency, moderated the effect of the exogenous distracter. It appears that when learning conventional‐relation sequences in the presence of exogenous distracters, surgency mobilizes attentional resources toward the learning objective; however, when learning enabling‐relation sequences under the same conditions, surgency either boosts the saliency of the distracters or boosts children’s susceptibility to them.     

Private woodland owners’ perspectives on multifunctionality in English woodlands

Increasing emphasis is being placed in forest policies to deliver public goods such as biodiversity, recreation, landscape and carbon sequestration, alongside timber production. In light of this, it is important to understand how woodland owners themselves perceive their role in delivering these multiple benefits. With up to 80% of woodland in some areas in England in private ownership, and with an increasing number of owners with non-financial objectives for their woodland, the private sector may offer opportunities for delivering public goods. The purpose of this study was to investigate the perceptions and attitudes of private woodland owners to multifunctional woodland management in three study areas in England: Cornwall, the Lake District and the High Weald Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB). Q Methodology was used to identify four perspectives of woodland ownership and management, which can be described as: the Hobby Conservationist; the Individualist; the Custodian and the Multifunctional Owner. The implications of the findings for forest policy are discussed.     

Informal Care Intensity and Caregiver Drug Utilization

Providing informal care has negative health consequences for informal caregivers. If these health consequences increase drug utilization among caregivers, estimates of health care savings from informal care—mainly realized through reductions in utilization among care recipients—should consider the increased drug costs incurred by informal caregivers. This paper evaluates whether more intensive informal caregivers have higher drug utilization than less intensive caregivers, controlling for initial health status and other factors. We find that informal care intensity is associated with higher drug consumption. An increase of 10% of total informal care per day is associated with a 0.7% increase in drugs. The small magnitudes indicate that, in this application, it is not important to consider caregiver drug utilization when quantifying the net savings to the health care system of informal care. For individual caregivers, such as those who take multiple drugs per month and/or have no drug coverage, the increase in drug utilization associated with intensive caregiving is likely to be costly.