Recruiting fathers to parenting programs: Advice from dads and fatherhood program providers

The benefits of high-quality father–child relationships for fathers and children alike are well documented. While evidence suggests parenting programs can improve the quality of father–child relationships, few fathers participate in such programs. This qualitative study aims to fill the gap in knowledge on best practices for recruiting urban African American fathers, a group of fathers with unique parenting challenges, to parenting programs. Focus groups were conducted with 29 fathers to gain their perspectives on recruitment strategies. Semi-structured interviews were also conducted with a nationwide sample of 19 fatherhood program providers to learn about their most successful recruitment strategies. Recruitment strategies based on emergent themes from the focus groups and interviews are presented here. Themes included using word-of-mouth recruitment, increasing advertising, targeting advertising specifically to urban African American fathers, providing transportation and incentives, recruiting through the courts, collaborating with other community agencies, and offering parenting programming along with other programming valued by fathers such as employment assistance. Implications for developing strategies for recruiting urban African American fathers to parenting programs are discussed.     

Two-Person and majority continuous aggregation in 2-good space in Social Choice: a note

Impossibility theorems for 2-person and majority continuous games on the unit circle are presented. The emphasis is on simple methods, albeit generating new results, to offer insights into the sophisticated results of theorists in topological social choice.     

Literature and the Therapeutic Imagination

Summary The therapeutic imagination is closely related to the literaryimagination and is concerned with similar issues of the relationshipof the self to society. The study of literature needs to bean integral part of social work education if workers are tobe helped to confront the dilemmas faced by the social worksensibility.     

Robust models in probability sampling

In the estimation of a population mean or total from a random sample, certain methods based on linear models are known to be automatically design consistent, regardless of how well the underlying model describes the population. A sufficient condition is identified for this type of robustness to model failure; the condition, which we call 'internal bias calibration', relates to the combination of a model and the method used to fit it. Included among the internally bias-calibrated models, in addition to the aforementioned linear models, are certain canonical link generalized linear models and nonparametric regressions constructed from them by a particular style of local likelihood fitting. Other models can often be made robust by using a suboptimal fitting method. Thus the class of model-based, but design consistent, analyses is enlarged to include more realistic models for certain types of survey variable such as binary indicators and counts. Particular applications discussed are the estimation of the size of a population subdomain, as arises in tax auditing for example, and the estimation of a bootstrap tail probability.     

Using dialogue to build organization–public relationships,engage publics,and positively affect organizational outcomes

The study and practice of public relations continues to explore the many benefits accrued when organizations adopt a relational approach to public relations management. One area that is relatively unexplored in the relationship management literature is the role of dialogue in organization–public relationships. Historically, scholars have focused dialogic research on either interaction – where an organization and a public exchange information – or a debate – where organizations and public engage in a process of statement counterstatement. The current investigation explores the notion of dialogue and examines the ways in which relationship attitudes and dialogue may positively affect key public member evaluations and behavioral intent. The results suggest that both relationship attitudes and dialogue positively affect respondent evaluations of and intended behaviors toward an organization. The implications of the findings are presented and suggestions for managing organization–public relationships are considered.     

Parenting Behavior as Mediator and Moderator of the Association Between Marital Problems and Adolescent Maladjustment

The present study examines the mediating and moderating effects of parenting behavior on the relation between marital problems and adolescent maladjustment. Extending earlier studies by using a prospective, longitudinal research design and multi‐informant methods, this study of 451 adolescents and their families from the Iowa Youth and Families Project demonstrates that parenting behavior mediates the relation between marital problems and adolescent outcomes. The results also suggest that both marital conflict and distress are harmful for adolescents. Furthermore, not just one aspect, but a broad range of parenting behaviors links marital problems to adolescent maladjustment. Finally, there was limited evidence that parenting behavior moderates the influence of marital problems on adolescent adjustment by intensifying the adverse impact of marital difficulties.