Perceived Autonomy Support From Parents and Best Friends: Longitudinal Associations with Adolescents' Depressive Symptoms

According to the self‐determination theory, experiencing autonomy support in close relationships is thought to promote adolescents' well‐being. Perceptions of autonomy support from parents and from best friends have been associated with lower levels of adolescents' depressive symptoms. This longitudinal study examines the relative contribution of perceived autonomy support from parents and best friends in relation to adolescents' depressive symptoms and changes in these associations from early to late adolescence. Age and gender differences were also investigated. Questionnaires about mother, father, and a best friend were filled out by 923 early adolescents and 390 middle adolescents during five consecutive years, thereby covering an age range from 12 to 20. Multi‐group cross‐lagged path analysis revealed concurrent and longitudinal negative associations between perceived parental autonomy support and adolescents' depressive symptoms. No concurrent and longitudinal associations were found between perceived best friends' autonomy support and adolescents' depressive symptoms. Results were similar for early and middle adolescent boys and girls. Prevention and treatment programs should focus on the bidirectional interplay during adolescence between perceptions of parental autonomy support and adolescents' depressive symptoms.     

Moral distress among social workers: The role of insufficient resources

The present study examined moral distress among Finnish social workers and the role of perceived resource insufficiencies in explaining it. The aim was to shed light on this understudied phenomenon in the field of social welfare. The study focused on work‐related moral distress, defined as impaired wellbeing that is connected to the continual inability to implement actions that one considers morally appropriate. The survey data were collected with an electronic questionnaire between the years 2011 and 2012. The respondents (n = 817) were social workers in the public social welfare services and the overall response rate was 46.5 per cent. Nearly 11 per cent of the respondents reported experiencing moral distress and perceived resource insufficiencies strongly explained this experience. Moreover, social workers with moral distress reported that they were less willing to continue in their post, were more frequently on sick leave and had positive work‐related experiences less often than their colleagues who did not experience moral distress. Key Practitioner Message: ● The concept of moral distress is useful in describing the experiences of social welfare workers when they are unable to practise their profession according to their moral code and the emotional burden related to this inability; ● Perceived resource insufficiencies are strongly associated with experiences of moral distress among frontline social workers; ● Social workers experiencing moral distress are less willing to continue in their work, take sick leave more often and less frequently have positive experiences related to their work.     

Mixture models in measurement error problems, with reference to epidemiological studies

Summary. The paper focuses on a Bayesian treatment of measurement error problems and on the question of the specification of the prior distribution of the unknown covariates. It presents a flexible semiparametric model for this distribution based on a mixture of normal distributions with an unknown number of components. Implementation of this prior model as part of a full Bayesian analysis of measurement error problems is described in classical set-ups that are encountered in epidemiological studies: logistic regression between unknown covariates and outcome, with a normal or log-normal error model and a validation group. The feasibility of this combined model is tested and its performance is demonstrated in a simulation study that includes an assessment of the influence of misspecification of the prior distribution of the unknown covariates and a comparison with the semiparametric maximum likelihood method of Roeder, Carroll and Lindsay. Finally, the methodology is illustrated on a data set on coronary heart disease and cholesterol levels in blood.     

Density of the quotient of non-negative quadratic forms in normal variables with application to the F-statistic

The density of the quotient of two non-negative quadratic forms in normal variables is considered. The covariance matrix of these variables is arbitrary. The result is useful in the study of the robustness of theF-test with respect to errors of the first and second kind. An explicit expression for this density is given in the form of a proper Riemann-integral on a finite interval, suitable for numerical calculation.     

Strategic Management of Public Interest Organizations

This paper argues that strategic management of a public interest organization not only needs to be aimed at the interests it represents, but it also has to incorporate the organization's internal workings. The functioning of a public interest organization is seen to suffer from a primary dilemma of membership and influence and a secondary dilemma of representation and control. If these dilemmas are not handled adequately, the public interest organization will suffer from a vicious circle of contradiction and conflict, eventually threatening the organization's long-term viability. A case study is elaborated to empirically underpin this proposition.     

Efficacy of a group therapy for sexually abused adolescent girls

The effects of a group therapy program for teenage girls reporting child sexual abuse were evaluated by means of a pretest/ post-test design with a control group. The psycho-educational intervention consisted of an average of 20 weekly two-hour meetings. Results of the repeated analyses of variance (ANOVA) revealed a significant improvement in youth participating in the therapy when compared with the control group on measures of post-traumatic stress, internalizing and externalizing behavior problems, coping strategies, relationship with the mother, and sense of empowerment. The findings suggest that the group therapy offered by the Centre d'Intervention en Abus Sexuels pour la Famille (CIASF) was effective in reducing symptoms for sexually abused teenagers.     

The Two-interval Line-segment Problem

In this paper we define and study the non-parametric maximum likelihood estimator (NPMLE) in the one-dimensional line-segment problem, where we observe line-segments on the real line through an interval with a gap which is smaller than the two remaining intervals. We define the self-consistency equations for the NPMLE and provide a quick algorithm for solving them. We prove supremum norm weak convergence to a Gaussian process and efficiency of the NPMLE. The problem has a geological application in the study of the lifespan of species     

The professional role of social work in a market environment

One argument often heard in garnering support for the reorganisation of the welfare state in the Netherlands is that the safety net which it was intended to form has become something of a hammock, whereas a genuine safety net ought to act more like a trampoline. Nowadays sometimes also known as the activating welfare state, it aims to reduce apathetic response and increase the participation of its citizens in society. More and more, social workers are enlisted to help achieve these goals. Activation, however, is also associated with the introduction of a market environment in the social sector.

In 1992, the management of the social work organisation in The Hague concluded a controversial agreement with the municipal social services. Under this contract, clients referred to the social work organisation by the municipal social services would be made eligible for regular jobs on the labour market. The clients who were referred had obligations of their own: their benefits would be reduced if they did not cooperate. The social work organisation guaranteed contractually a success rate of 60% within a pre-determined period. For this ‘product’, the municipal social services paid a fixed amount of money each year.

The article describes the professional manner in which the social workers in The Hague dealt with the contract.     

The Disconnect Between Observers’ Male and Masculine Judgments from Sparse Gait Cues Conveying Gender: Perceiving Precarious Manhood

Although universal definitions are by no means agreed upon, the terms sex—male and female—and gender—femininity and/or masculinity—are semantically dissociable. The aim with the current study was to explore whether and to what extent they may be dissociable in perceptual terms. A comparison of sex judgments and gender judgments from point light walker (PLW) stimuli offered possibilities for obtaining a finer-grained picture of the basis or bases of these types of social judgments. In this study PLWs were used explicitly to examine the pattern of responses to questions of sex (male/female) and gender (masculine/feminine). Observers perceived targets to be feminine at the same rate as female, but perceived a subset of targets significantly more often to be male than masculine. Thus, a disconnect was demonstrated between male and masculine perceptions with no such uncoupling evident for perceptions of female and feminine. This pattern of responding accords with the idea—often described as Precarious Manhood—that manhood, or masculinity, may be a more difficult mantle to earn than mere ‘maleness’, with femininity considered closer to an essential aspect of being female.