Correlates of perceived effectiveness of the Safe Schools/Healthy Students Initiative

A three-level growth-curve model was applied to estimate perceived impact growth trajectories, using multi-year data from project and school surveys on outcome and program implementation collected from 59 sites and approximately 1165 participating schools in the Safe Schools and Healthy Students Initiative. Primary interest is to determine whether and how project-level and school-level correlates affect schools’ perceptions of the Initiative's effectiveness over time when the effects of the pre-grant environmental conditions, grant operations, and near-term outcomes are considered. Coordination and service integration, comprehensive programs and activities for early childhood development, and change in school involvement were found to be significant predictors of school-perceived overall impact when the effect of poverty was considered. Partnership functioning, perceived importance of school resources, and school involvement were found to be significant predictors of school-perceived impact on substance use prevention when the effect of poverty was considered.     

Continuity of Mental Health Care Across Military Transitions

Multiple deployments, a prominent characteristic of operations Enduring Freedom, Iraqi Freedom, and New Dawn, have been linked to increased risk for various mental health conditions. It is also well known that military transitions, such as a change of duty station or discharge, are an inevitable part of military life. While military transitions can be stressful for any service member or veteran, those with mental health conditions face additional challenges. Transition stress can exacerbate a mental health condition that in turn hinders ability to manage the transition, resulting in a cycle of stress. As a result, those receiving mental health care while transitioning often experience difficulty continuing treatment post-transition. This article describes a unique and innovative transition coaching program designed to address this emerging issue.     

Walking in the shoes of others: Experimental testing of dual-interest and empathy in environmental choice

This paper further tests dual interest theory and the metaeconomics approach to environmental choice, recognizing a possible role for empathy–sympathy (the basis for an internalized, shared other-interest) in tempering and conditioning the more fundamental tendency to pursue self-interest. To test, we focus on rivers flowing through agricultural areas carrying sediments, chemicals, and fertilizers which are making their way into downstream rivers and lakes. We conduct a framed laboratory experiment modeling this problem: farmers decide on the usage of conservation technology to lessen impacts on the water quality (i.e. on the commons, the capacity to absorb these wastes) in downstream areas, which is more costly than the alternative intensive technology. The results confirm our hypotheses, demonstrating that Upstream Farmers who practice conservation are tempering profit maximization with empathy-based, environmentally conscious behavior. Such behavior better serves the farmers’ own-interest, and also helps Downstream Water Users. Environmental economics models need to explicitly include empathy–sympathy and the moral–ethical context it produces, providing a more scientific basis for conservation policy and programs.     

Testing homogeneity in semiparametric mixture case–control models

Parametric and semiparametric mixture models have been widely used in applications from many areas, and it is often of interest to test the homogeneity in these models. However, hypothesis testing is non standard due to the fact that several regularity conditions do not hold under the null hypothesis. We consider a semiparametric mixture case–control model, in the sense that the density ratio of two distributions is assumed to be of an exponential form, while the baseline density is unspecified. This model was first considered by Qin and Liang (2011 Qin, J., Liang, K.Y. (2011). Hypothesis testing in a mixture case–control model. Biometrics 67(1):182–198.[Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar], biometrics), and they proposed a modified score statistic for testing homogeneity. In this article, we consider alternative testing procedures based on supremum statistics, which could improve power against certain types of alternatives. We demonstrate the connection and comparison among the proposed and existing approaches. In addition, we provide a unified theoretical justification of the supremum test and other existing test statistics from an empirical likelihood perspective. The finite-sample performance of the supremum test statistics was evaluated in simulation studies.     

The Relation of Negative Career Thoughts to Depression and Hopelessness

Although some research literature focuses on the integration of mental health and career counseling, there has been little that examines both areas in relation to depression and hopelessness. This study investigated the relationship among dysfunctional career thinking, depression, and hopelessness in a sample of 139 undergraduate and graduate students seeking drop‐in or individual career counseling services at a university career center. The authors found that two aspects of dysfunctional career thinking, decision‐making confusion and commitment anxiety, accounted for a significant amount of variance in depression. Decision‐making confusion also accounted for a significant amount of variance in hopelessness. Implications for counseling practice include the need for more careful screening of career clients who present with high levels of anxiety and negative thinking. Future research could involve more diverse client populations, such as unemployed adults, and explore the use of additional screening measures to assess the intersection of career and mental health issues.     

TWO-PIECE VON NEUMANN-MORGENSTERN UTILITY FUNCTIONS*

Thirty empirically assessed utility functions on changes in wealth or return on investment were examined for general features and susceptability to fits by linear, power, and exponential functions. Separate fits were made to below-target data and above-target data. The usual “target” was the no-change point. The majority of below-target functions were risk seeking; the majority of above-target functions were risk averse; and the most common composite shape was convex-concave, or risk seeking in losses and risk averse in gains. The least common composite was concave-concave. Below-target utility was generally steeper than above-target utility with a median below-to-above slope ratio of about 4.8. The power and exponential fits were substantially better than the linear fits. Power functions gave the best fits in the majority of convex below-target and concave above-target cases, and exponential functions gave the best fits in the majority of concave below-target and convex above-target cases. Several implications of these results for decision making under risk are mentioned.     

Gay and lesbian partnership: Evidence from California

Much recent research on sexual minorities has used couples-based samples, which--by construction--provide no information on nonpartnered individuals. We present the first systematic empirical analysis of partnership and cohabitation among self-identified gay men and lesbians using two independent, large, population-wwbased data sources from California. These data indicate that 37%-46% of gay men and 51%-62% of lesbians aged 18-59 are in cohabiting partnerships (compared with 62% of heterosexual individuals in coresidential unions at comparable ages). Unlike previous research, we find that white and highly educated gay men and lesbians are more likely to be partnered, and we confirm that same-sex cohabiting partners in our data have demographic characteristics that are similar to California same-sex couples from Census 2000. We also present the first detailed analysis of officially registered domestic partnerships in California. We find that almost half of partnered lesbians are officially registered with the local or state government, while less than a quarter of partnered gay men are officially registered. We conclude with implications of our findings for couples-based research on gay men and lesbians, as well as recommendations for survey data collection.     

Are Father’s or Mother’s Socioeconomic Characteristics More Important Influences on Student Performance? Recent International Evidence

Since the early 1970s the importance of mothers’ socioeconomic characteristics on their children’s educational and occupational attainment has been acknowledged. However, it is not clear if fathers’ characteristics have a stronger influence because men usually have stronger attachments to the labour market, or alternatively mothers’ characteristics are more important because of their greater role in children’s socialization. This study addresses this question by comparing the influence of father’s and mother’s education and occupation on student performance in literacy and numeracy using data from 30 countries. The impact of mother’s education is usually greater or comparable to that of father’s education. In contrast, substantially stronger effects for mother’s occupational status compared to father’s were rare. In most countries the impact of mother’s socioeconomic characteristics (education plus occupation) on student performance is comparable to that for father’s. Of the four indicators of socioeconomic background, father’s occupational status and mother’s educational attainment tend to have stronger effects, although many countries do not conform to this pattern. There are indications that the relative importance of mother’s characteristics have increased over time.

Characterization of Unacceptable Solutions in LP Discriminant Analysis*

Many linear programming models have been proposed for performing discriminant analysis. Partial characterizations for unacceptable solutions have been presented and new models proposed to circumvent these problems. In this paper those conditions leading to unacceptable solutions for all two-group models are characterized.