Exploring gender and elder abuse from the perspective of professionals

We conducted an online survey of professionals working in two Canadian provinces to learn about their knowledge of elder abuse from a gender-based perspective. A total of 169 professionals (90% women) completed a survey in either French or English. Five topic areas emerged from the analysis: the influence of gender on the risk of abuse; types of abuse detected; knowledge gaps; capacity to respond to gender-based abuse; and awareness of resources. To gain further insight into these results, we conducted three focus groups with a total of 24 professionals. Professionals held relatively little recognition of, or knowledge about, gender related to elder abuse. Our results indicate the need to develop educational and awareness raising opportunities for professionals who work with abused older adults in both French and English to identify and respond to the unique needs of older women and men.     

Socio-economic status and fertility decline: Insights from historical transitions in Europe and North America

The timings of historical fertility transitions in different regions are well understood by demographers, but much less is known regarding their specific features and causes. In the study reported in this paper, we used longitudinal micro-level data for five local populations in Europe and North America to analyse the relationship between socio-economic status and fertility during the fertility transition. Using comparable analytical models and class schemes for each population, we examined the changing socio-economic differences in marital fertility and related these to common theories on fertility behaviour. Our results do not provide support for the hypothesis of universally high fertility among the upper classes in pre-transitional society, but do support the idea that the upper classes acted as forerunners by reducing their fertility before other groups. Farmers and unskilled workers were the latest to start limiting their fertility. Apart from these similarities, patterns of class differences in fertility varied significantly between populations.     

Spherical radial approximation for nested mixed effects models

We consider a likelihood approximation in generalized linear mixed-effects models (GLMM) with multilevel nested random effects. Likelihood evaluation in such models is difficult, hindered by the need for high dimensional integration, where the dimension is proportional to the number of units per level and the number of random effects per unit. Various integration approaches have been proposed, including the penalized quasi-likelihood method, Laplace approximation, quadrature approximation, simulation, and MCMC algorithms. We propose a new quadrature approximation method, which is based on the spherical radial integration approach of Monahan and Genz (J Am Stat Assoc 92:664–674 1997), and at the same time takes advantage of the hierarchical structure of the integration. Our new hierarchical spherical radial method has a time complexity that is linear in the number of units per level and the number of random effects per unit, in contrast to the exponential complexity of the adaptive Gaussian quadrature method of Pinheiro and Chao (J Comput Graph Stat 15:58–81 2006) for the same problem. Using a spline approximation, the generalized additive mixed models (GAMM) are GLMMs with two levels of nested random effects. We apply our method to estimation of GAMMs. We compare it with competing methods through simulations and apply our method to analyze virologic and immunologic responses in an AIDS clinical trial. An R package is written and available at http://?users.?wpi.?edu/?~jgagnon/?software.?html.     

CLASSIFICATION AND PROPORTION ESTIMATION

Assume that a number of individuals are to be classified into one of two populations and that, at the same time, the proportion of members of each population needs to be estimated. The allocated proportions given by the Bayes classification rule are not consistent estimates of the true proportions, so a different classification rule is proposed; this rule yields consistent estimates with only a small increase in the probability of misclassification. As an illustration, the case of two normal distributions with equal covariance matrices is dealt with in detail.     

The Road to Gang Membership: Characteristics of Male Gang and Nongang Members from Ages 10 to 14

This study examined the stability of belonging to a gang in early adolescence, the behaviour profiles, family characteristics, and friendships of nongang and gang members. The subjects in the present study were originally part of a larger sample of boys. One hundred and forty‐two boys who had a complete data set at ages 11, 12, 13, and 14 were selected for the present study. Loglinear analyses indicated that gang membership was stable from ages 13 to 14, but not at earlier ages. Boys were divided into three groups: stable gang members (children who belonged to a gang at ages 13 and 14); unstable gang members (children who belonged to a gang at either age 13 or 14) and nongang members. Repeated analyses of variance indicated that stable gang members had significantly higher scores than nongang members on teacher ratings of fighting behaviour, hyperactivity, inattention and oppositional behaviour, and self‐reported delinquent activities (drug and alcohol use, stealing and vandalism). Peers rated gang members as more aggressive than nongang members. The results are discussed from a developmental perspective.