Mixture of latent trait analyzers for model-based clustering of categorical data

Model-based clustering methods for continuous data are well established and commonly used in a wide range of applications. However, model-based clustering methods for categorical data are less standard. Latent class analysis is a commonly used method for model-based clustering of binary data and/or categorical data, but due to an assumed local independence structure there may not be a correspondence between the estimated latent classes and groups in the population of interest. The mixture of latent trait analyzers model extends latent class analysis by assuming a model for the categorical response variables that depends on both a categorical latent class and a continuous latent trait variable; the discrete latent class accommodates group structure and the continuous latent trait accommodates dependence within these groups. Fitting the mixture of latent trait analyzers model is potentially difficult because the likelihood function involves an integral that cannot be evaluated analytically. We develop a variational approach for fitting the mixture of latent trait models and this provides an efficient model fitting strategy. The mixture of latent trait analyzers model is demonstrated on the analysis of data from the National Long Term Care Survey (NLTCS) and voting in the U.S. Congress. The model is shown to yield intuitive clustering results and it gives a much better fit than either latent class analysis or latent trait analysis alone.     

Assessing outcomes in an English authority (The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea)

The local authority has used the Looking After Children materials to develop needs-led and outcome-oriented services at both individual and strategic planning levels. A specific study used data from the Assessment and Action Records to identify priority needs and desired outcomes for young people leaving care.     

Predicting Children's Prosocial and Co‐operative Behavior from Their Temperamental Profiles: A Person‐centered Approach

The goal of this study was to examine how aspects of self‐regulation and negative emotionality predicted children's co‐operative and prosocial behavior concurrently and longitudinally using the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development. Mothers completed measures of children's temperamental proneness to negative emotionality and self‐regulation at 54 months. Teachers and parents completed measures of children's co‐operative and prosocial behavior at 54 months, first grade, and third grade. A latent profile analysis of the temperamental variables revealed four profiles of children: those high in regulation and low in negative emotionality, those moderate in regulation and moderate in negative emotionality, those low in regulation and high in negative emotionality, and finally those who were very low in regulation but high in anger emotionality. Generally, children with profiles that were high or moderate in terms of regulation and low or moderate in terms of negative emotionality were rated as the most prosocial and co‐operative. Children with profiles that were less well regulated and who were high in negative emotionality (particularly anger proneness) were rated as less co‐operative and prosocial by parents and teachers.     

The Symbolic Dilemmas of Suburban Poverty: Challenges and Opportunities Posed by Variations in the Contours of Suburban Poverty1

Poverty has increased significantly in U.S. suburbs since the 1990s. What we know about suburban poverty is largely limited to demographic and economic information. Building off the organizational perspective approach, I use in‐depth interviews with nonprofit, antipoverty organizations in eight Pennsylvania suburbs to better understand the suburban poverty experience. My focus is on how organizations compete for external resources. By working directly with the poverty problem while also working in broader metropolitan political and economic fields of decision making, this “middleman” role ( Marwell, 2007 ) gives us insights into contemporary poverty dynamics for suburbs. I find that how suburban organizational leaders perceive the challenges they face, and what strategies they adopt to confront such difficulties, revolves around symbolic dilemmas posed by the history, distribution, and politics of poverty in the suburbs. Symbolic dilemmas cluster around three different situational contexts of poverty in the suburbs. I use this to develop a three‐part typology of suburban poverty: symbiotic suburbs, skeletal suburbs, and overshadowed suburbs. This typology has implications for future research and for policymakers interested in developing tools to appropriately address this pressing issue.     

A Qualitative Analysis of College Women's Leaving Processes in Abusive Relationships

Abstract

Objective: This study assessed the process of leaving an abusive dating relationship utilizing a qualitative design. Methods: Participants included 123 college women in abusive dating relationships who participated at the beginning and end of a 10-week academic quarter. Results: Qualitative content analyses were used to analyze the transcribed responses to an open-ended question about women's leaving processes over the interim period. A variety of categories and themes emerged for women in different stages of the leaving process, consistent with the Transtheoretical Model of Change and Investment Model. Data also underscored women's lack of acknowledgment, minimization, and normalization of abuse. Conclusions: These data demonstrate the importance of dating violence intervention and prevention programming on college campuses and offer information that may be useful to college health providers who assist women in abusive dating relationships.     

The Caliban Codex: mud,blood and spurious issues

The internationally known and respected Cherokee Indian artist Jimmie Durham created the conceptual mixed-media installation The Caliban Codex in anticipation of the 1992 quincentennial Columbian celebrations that were held throughout the Americas. He used Shakespeare's The Tempest as a vehicle by which to critique colonialism's appropriation of language and its power to assert colonial authority. He also addressed physiognomy as it was employed during the nineteenth century in a pseudo-scientific endeavour to ‘prove’ the biological legitimacy of racism. In each case Durham employed the methods of mimicry and mockery to address the ambivalent relationship between the coloniser and the colonised as it continues to be experienced.     

DESENSITIZING HERBERT BLUMER'S WORK ON RACE RELATIONS

Recent applications of Herbert Blumer's group position model to the study of contemporary race prejudice have misrepresented the ongoing process of definition and accommodation that, according to Blumer, mediates race relations. By conforming to the canons of research design and using standard sample surveys, public opinion polls, variables analysis, and statistical techniques to study perceptions of group threat, group hostility, and prejudicial attitudes, Blumer's dynamic social imagery, as well as the socially grounded methodology he sought to promote, are undermined. The result is a static depiction of race relations that has nothing to do with the variegated experiential complexities that Blumer claimed underlie all human group life.