An analysis of how children adapt to residential care

This research analyses the personal, social and educational adaptation of 74 children, aged between 6 and 18, under measures of protection in residential care centres. The Autoevaluative Multifactorial Child Adaptation Test (TAMAI) was applied to evaluate the children's level of adaptation. The study also aims to determine the relationship between the different levels of competence and/or functioning in the different areas of adaptation. The results indicate that institutionalised children show a high level of failure to adapt in both personal and social aspects. The fact that children show dissociative maladjustment, negative thoughts and mechanisms for escaping from reality (dreaming, negative opinion of self and undervaluing) is confirmed. There is evidence of the negative effects of neglect on children's perceptions, especially a poor opinion of self and inadequate self esteem. Worthy of note are a maladjusted opinion of self and of reality which makes them pile the tension, fear and uneasiness they live through upon their own shoulders, something which can lead to undervaluing. An inability to adapt to school life manifests itself in a low work level and low motivation to learn and a general dissatisfaction with their schooling situation.     

The Social and Policy Predictors of Driving Mobility Among Older Adults

This research was designed to identify the impact of state driver's license renewal requirements on the driving mobility (i.e., the reduction or cessation of driving) of older (70 years or older) drivers in the United States. Nationally representative data from four waves (1993–2000) of the Asset and Health Dynamics of the Oldest Old study were linked to state policies on relicensing and used in a longitudinal logistic regression analysis. The author assessed the driving behaviors of a sample of 9,638 men and women. The findings demonstrate that the driving mobility of older people is influenced by state relicensing policies. The analysis indicates that five policies—accelerated renewal, mental testing, peripheral vision testing, renewal in person at age 70+ (as opposed to renewal by mail or online), and restricted licensing—have a significant effect on an older driver's decision to reduce or cease driving. The driving patterns of older adults are influenced not only by their health and socioeconomic backgrounds, but also by state relicensing policies. In terms of public policy, this result shows that there is a mechanism for extending the years of independent mobility for older people: restricted licensing.     

The Blame Index: Exploring the Change in Social Work Students’ Perceptions of Poverty

ABSTRACT

This study reports the development of a new Blame Index to determine attributions of the causes of poverty along a single structural-to-individual dimension. A multisite pre-/post-group design tested the degree of change in social work students’ (N = 177) perception of poverty as a result of taking a single BSW social policy course or an MSW foundation social policy course. Student respondents reported a significant shift toward structural and away from individual attribution of the causes of poverty, more support for government antipoverty benefit programs, increased awareness of the inadequacy of existing government antipoverty programs, and increased awareness of the difficulty in accessing government antipoverty benefits. Linear regression explained 17% of the change in the Blame Index with only race/ethnicity and the change in adequacy of benefits as significant predictors.     

Giving from the Heart or from the Ego? Motives behind Remittances of the Second Generation in Europe

The aim of this article is to investigate the remittance behavior of host country‐born children of migrants – the second generation – in various European cities. We address the following question: Are second‐generation remitters driven more by altruism or by self‐interest? Data from “The Integration of the European Second Generation” (TIES) survey are utilized and encompass individuals with at least one migrant parent from Morocco, Turkey, or former Yugoslavia. Using logistic models, we test different classical theories on microeconomic determinants of remittances and add some additional expectations for the second generation. The results show that those second‐generation Moroccans, Turks, and former Yugoslavs who send money are motivated by two main reasons: Emotional attachment to their parents' home country (altruism motive) or to pay people who look after their investments or other material assets that are likely to be part of their preparation for “returning” (self‐interest – exchange motive). These two motives are not necessarily exclusive: As part of a well‐prepared return, to integrate easily once back “home,” it is not only relevant to ensure that people take care of one's investments and other material assets, but also to strengthen social ties and be well informed about the situation in the country of origin. This interpretation fits closely with the return model, which deserves more attention in the theoretical literature on remittances.     

Low‐Income Students and College Attendance: An Exploration of Income Expectations*

Objectives. Some have hypothesized that unrealistic expectations regarding their futures may explain the weak link between expectations and realizations among low‐income (particularly minority) youth. Unfortunately, there is little evidence characterizing students' expectations around the time that they make college decisions that would allow one to study this hypothesis. Methods. In this exploratory article, I analyze data on income expectations from a small sample of low‐income minority high school seniors in Baltimore City, MD; and use data from Dominitz and Manski's sample of higher‐income white students in Madison, WI, and the NELS88 for comparisons. Results. I find little evidence that the income expectations of lower‐income minority students are so different from those of higher‐income students. Rather, the expected returns to postsecondary education appear similar between the two samples of high school seniors. Analysis of a nationally representative sample of high school seniors suggests that lower‐income students do not place less weight on expected economic returns to college when making their plans than do more advantaged students, although low‐income students are less able to translate their college plans into actual college attendance. Conclusions. These results suggest that differing income expectations do not explain the weaker relationship between expectations and educational attainment among low‐income students.     

A general concept of scoring rules: general definitions,statistical inference,and empirical illustrations

We develop the general conceptual, mathematical and statistical foundations of behavioral social choice for scoring rules. Traditional scoring rules are difficult to assess empirically because one rarely observes the deterministic complete linear orders that they require as input. We provide a general concept of scoring rules in terms of a broad range of mathematical representations of preference or utility, namely arbitrary finite binary relations, probability distributions over such relations, real valued multi-criteria utility vectors and real valued random utility representations. We extend Regenwetter et al.’s (Behavioral social choice. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2006) statistical framework to a more general setting. We illustrate the general modeling and statistical tools by applying them to four well known sets of survey data. We illustrate two potential problems that have previously received little attention and that deserve systematic study in the future: (1) Scoring rule outcomes can suffer from model dependence in that the social welfare functions computed from ballot, survey, or hypothetical data may depend on implicit or explicit modeling assumptions. (2) Scoring rule outcomes may suffer from low statistical confidence in that the correct assessment of social orders from empirical data can be far from certain. We also illustrate the empirical congruence among conceptually competing social choice methods.     

Preaching to the Choir: Are the Commission’s Recommendations Already Applied?

As we have seen, the Commission’s final report outlines a comprehensive framework by defining some guidelines by: (a) identifying the limits of GDP as an indicator of economic performance and social progress, including measurement problems; (b) considering what additional information might be required for the production of more relevant social progress indicators; and (c) assessing the feasibility of alternative measurement and presentation tools. The report argues that GDP should not be completely eliminated by the options for measuring progress, but must be integrated with other information. In particular, the Committee defines three major areas in which indicators should be developed: economic conditions, quality of life and sustainability. In the European scene, but not only, there are many initiatives that aim at measuring the progress of countries and well-being through different conceptual frameworks and by using several indicators. This work intends to analyze some of those relevant initiatives by comparing and confronting them to the Commission’s recommendations, in order to check what already fits the commission recommendations and what still needs to be defined in that perspective.     

A New Goodness-of-Fit Test for Censored Data with an Application in Monitoring Processes

In this article, we propose a new goodness-of-fit test for Type I or Type II censored samples from a completely specified distribution. This test is a generalization of Michael's test for censored data, which is based on the empirical distribution and a variance stabilizing transformation. Using Monte Carlo methods, the distributions of the test statistics are analyzed under the null hypothesis. Tables of quantiles of these statistics are also provided. The power of the proposed test is studied and compared to that of other well-known tests also using simulation. The proposed test is more powerful in most of the considered cases. Acceptance regions for the PP, QQ, and Michael's stabilized probability plots are derived, which enable one to visualize which data contribute to the decision of rejecting the null hypothesis. Finally, an application in quality control is presented as illustration.     

Individual Differences in Infants' Emotional Resonance to a Peer in Distress: Self–Other Awareness and Emotion Regulation

In this study, relations between emotional resonance responses to another's distress, emotion regulation, and self‐other discrimination were investigated in infants three‐, six‐, and nine‐months‐old. We measured the emotional reactions to the pain cry of a peer, along with the ability to regulate emotions and to discriminate between self and other body movements. We found evidence that infants do regulate their emotional resonance responses to another's distress. This relation is age specific, with younger infants using more primitive self‐soothing behaviors, while in older participants attentional based strategies relate to affect sharing reactions. Only nine‐month‐old infants have shown self‐other differentiation abilities, and these were significantly connected to their emotions in response to a peer's distress. These findings have implications for our understanding of early empathy development.