Youth in Foster Care and Social Media: A Framework for Developing Privacy Guidelines

Although youth in foster care most likely use social media websites, there appears to be a lack of policy guidelines related to this use. When one considers youth in foster care, the state's mandate to provide safety, and foster parents' rights to exercise parenting responsibilities, the notion of privacy and the use of social media becomes complex. Critical Systems Heuristics will be introduced as a tool in developing policy recommendations. An application of this framework will be provided which can serve as a guide for an agency or workgroup tasked with developing policy guidelines for social media use by youth in foster care.     

Teaching accountability: using client feedback to train effective family therapists

The AAMFT Task Force on Core Competencies (Nelson et al., 2007) proposed that marriage and family therapy (MFT) educators teach and provide evidence of trainee competence beyond coursework and accrued clinical hours. This article describes the integration of a systematic client feedback protocol into an MFT-accredited program's curricula to address the call for outcome-based learning. Outcome management (OM) provides a framework for teaching and assessing trainee effectiveness. Continuous incorporation of client feedback embodies collaborative, strengths-based, integrative, and diversity-centered program values. Students learn a system for being accountable to clients, the profession, and service communities.     

Sickness Absence,Sick Leave Pay,and Pay Schemes

Utilizing Norwegian linked register and survey data, while exploiting a discontinuity in public sick pay legislation, I show that the public sick pay compensation level causally affects male performance pay workers' sick leave days. Both male and female performance pay workers experience longer sick leaves when provided private supplementary sick pay compared with those being eligible for public sick pay only. This differential impact of the replacement rate on workers' sick leave rates reveals heterogeneous behavioural changes following public sick pay cuts, and this heterogeneity will be reinforced by the provision of employer‐provided sick pay to attractive worker groups.     

Estimating pareto quantiles using two order statistics

Asymptotically best linear unbiased estimators of the population quantiles for the location-scale Pareto distribution with fixed shape parameter are obtained using two suitably chosen order statistics. Formulae for the appropriate order statistics, coefficients, variances, and asymptotic relative efficiencies (relative to the usual non-parametric estimator for quantiles) are given     

Toward a new paradigm for youth development

Although practitioners and researchers continue to shape the emerging field of youth development, we have still not found a clear and compelling way to talk about our work to family members, the public, and policymakers. The diet-and-exercise analogy presented here compares features essential for good health with comparable features affecting positive youth development. The effects of the inputs or nutrients of a healthy diet are magnified when the individual makes a commitment to exercise. Likewise, the impact of teaching and developmental supports is magnified when young people become actively engaged in their own learning and development.     

Economic Models for Single Sample Acceptance Sampling Plans,No Inspection,and 100 Percent Inspection

Once a process is stabilized using control charts, it is necessary to determine whether this process is capable of producing die desired quality, as determined by the specifications, without the use of some additional inspection procedure such as 100 percent inspection or acceptance sampling. One common method of making this determination is the use of process capability ratios. However, this approach may lead to erroneous decisions due to the omission of economic information. This paper attempts to remedy this situation by developing economic models to examine the profitability of different inspection policies. These models employ the quadratic loss function to represent the economic cost of quality from external failures, which is commonly omitted or overlooked. Moreover, assuming a normal distribution for the quality characteristic allows the use of simplified formulas that are provided. Thus the calculations can be made using standard normal tables and a calculator. Additionally, these economic models may be used to determine if additional inspection procedures should be reinstated if the quality of the process was to decline, to make capital budgeting decisions involving new equipment that produces parts of a higher quality, and to determine the preferred 100 percent inspection plan or acceptance sampling plan.     

Examining links between affective empathy,cognitive empathy,and peer relationships at the transition to school

The current study aimed to (i) examine associations across features of affective and cognitive empathy, and (ii) explore their independent role for children's peer relationships at the transition to school. Affective empathy was measured using both observations of children's facial affect during an empathy-eliciting event and dispositional affective empathy to peer distress via teacher report. Cognitive empathy was measured using an index of children's proclivity to engage in perspective taking when witnessing the distress of another. Children's theory of mind was also assessed given close links with cognitive empathy. Participants were 114 Australian children (M_age = 67 months, SD = 5 months) assessed across two sessions during their first year of formal schooling. Findings showed that features of children's affective and cognitive empathy were unrelated, but both showed independent associations with children's positive peer relationships (assessed via peer-reported social preference and teacher-rated peer social maturity). The current study provides support for the delineation between features of affective and cognitive empathy in early school-age children, and the importance of understanding both affective and cognitive empathy for children's peer relationships at the transition to school. These findings have implications how we understand both the nature of empathy in childhood and the role it plays in supporting children's positive peer relationships.     

The Effect of Legislated Minimum Wage Increases on Employment and Hours: A Dynamic Analysis

We present a dynamic policy simulation analysing what would have happened to wages, employment, and total hours had the federal minimum wage increased in September 1998, a year after the last actual increase in our data. Prior work suggests that employment responses take 6 years to play out. Using a time‐series model for 23 low‐wage industries, we find a positive response of average wages over 54 months following an increase in the minimum wage, but neither employment nor hours can be distinguished from random noise. Ignoring confidence intervals, the adjustment of hours is complete after 1 year, the adjustment of employment after no more than two and one half years.