The Bayview Hunters Point Foundation for Community Improvement: a pioneering multi-ethnic human service organization (1971-2008)

The Bayview Hunters Point Foundation for Community Improvement is a nonprofit organization established in 1971 to defend the legal rights of African-Americans living in its community. Over the years, the agency diversified its services to include mental health and substance abuse treatment, violence prevention, youth programming, and HIV services. The organization has overcome multiple challenges during its 37-year history in relation to social, political, and economic changes that have influenced the way the organization has financed and delivered its services. The history of the organization presents a collaborative approach to community problem-solving and exemplifies the important role that external relationships play in relationship to nonprofit growth and survival.     

Perceived Stigma and Depression among Black Adolescents in Outpatient Treatment

Despite the high prevalence of depression among children and adolescents, most that need mental health treatment do not seek care. This is especially true for ethnic minority adolescents. Prior research has shown that perceived stigma may act as a barrier to the initiation of and adherence to depression treatment, yet few studies have examined the relationship between stigma and depression among Black adolescents. This exploratory study examined the relationship between Black adolescents' depression severity and their current level of perceived stigma in an outpatient sample. Face-to-face interviews were conducted with a clinical sample of adolescents referred for mental health services at a community-based outpatient clinic (n =108), participating in a prospective pilot study on adolescents' patterns of mental health service use. The analyses revealed that greater depression severity was significantly associated with higher perceived stigma (p < .05), particularly among females. The results also suggest that Black adolescents appear to exhibit an appropriate level of self-assessment regarding their need for mental health services. These results are interpreted in relation to previous literature, and limitations and directions for future research are discussed.     

Measures of occupational status in a special population

Previous research has shown that indirect measures of occupational status such as the Duncan Socioeconomic Index (SEI) are more valid than direct measures of occupational prestige, such as those developed by the National Opinion Research Center and by Treiman, for analyses of social mobility. The Professional, Technical, and Kindred (PTK) occupations available for the SEI are a biased sample of all PTK occupations. Do findings on the validity of the SEI pertaining to the general population hold for special populations, such as college graduates? Confirmatory factor analysis comparing the validities of four measures of occupational SES—the SEI, a 1960 counterpart of the SEI developed by Siegel and based on all Census occupations, the NORC prestige scale, and the Treiman international prestige scale—showed that the indirect measure developed by Siegel was clearly more valid than the other three measures. Since these findings indicate that the predictors in a regression equation are more valid than the criterion, there is some question as to what the criterion should really be.     

Counting Young Carers in Switzerland – A Study of Prevalence

An online survey of children in school grades 4–9 (mostly aged 10–15) was conducted in order to determine the prevalence of young carers in Switzerland using a 2‐stage stratified sampling approach. 4082 respondents were drawn from 230 schools. A total of 3991 respondents were included in the analysis and of these 307 (7.7%) were identified as young carers. The population estimate of prevalence was 7.9 per cent. This suggests that there are around 38 400 young carers in school grades 4–9 in Switzerland. Extrapolating to the 9–16 age group gives a figure of almost 51 500.     

Multivariate extreme-value distributions with applications to environmental data

Some parametric families of multivariate extreme-value distributions have been proposed in recent years; several additional parametric families are derived here. The parametric models are fitted, using numerical maximum likelihood, to some environmental multivariate extreme data sets consisting of extreme concentrations of a pollutant at several monitoring stations in a region. Some multivariate nonnormal data analysis techniques are proposed to aid in the likelihood analysis. The new models, together with previous models, appear to be adequate for inferences in that they cover a wide range of possible dependence patterns.     

Social security reforms in China: issues and prospects

The phenomenal success of China's market-oriented economic reforms since the 1980s has rendered the traditional employment-based social security system increasingly inadequate and inefficient. For decades, the Chinese government has been trying to develop a more pluralistic, effective and affordable social security system which will be compatible with both a thriving market economy and a flagging socialist political structure. While the emerging system is still struggling with a variety of operational problems, the entry of China into the WTO is looming as a formidable challenge to this social security system. This presentation outlines the recent reforms of the social security system undertaken by the Chinese government, and assesses the effectiveness of the results in meeting the challenge. Here, social security reforms focus on the retirement and unemployment insurance schemes and the social assistance program.     

Numerical optimization and surface estimation with imprecise function evaluations

This paper presents an investigation of a method for minimizing functions of several parameters where the function need not be computed precisely. Motivated by problems requiring the optimization of negative log-likelihoods, we also want to estimate the (inverse) Hessian at the point of minimum. The imprecision of the function values impedes the application of conventional optimization methods, and the goal of Hessian estimation adds a lot to the difficulty of developing an algorithm. The present class of methods is based on statistical approximation of the functional surface by a quadratic model, so is similar in motivation to many conventional techniques. The present work attempts to classify both problems and algorithmic tools in an effort to prescribe suitable techniques in a variety of situations. The codes are available from the authors' web site http://macnash.admin.uottawa.ca/~rsmin/.     

POLITICAL MODELS OF THE BUSINESS CYCLE SHOULD BE REVIVED

Political models of the business cycle have typically been ignored because they appear inconsistent with rational behavior and because empirical evidence is inconclusive. This paper addresses the second issue, demonstrating for U.S. real GNP, unemployment, and inflation that electoral cycles (persistent patterns across electoral terms) are significant, but apparently only for Republican incumbents, and that partisan cycles (persistent differences between parties) are also significant. These findings are consistent with the conjecture that a minority party is more constrained by electoral concerns, whereas a majority party is freer to pursue partisan objectives.