Preliminary evaluation of contingent meals and telephone use to improve evidence-supported family therapy session attendance in mothers referred by Child Protective Services for substance abuse

Persons referred by Child Protective Services (CPS) for substance abuse evidence high rates of nonattendance to therapy sessions, taxing systems of care and exacerbating outcomes. This study examined the influence of two telephone-based incentive programs on therapy session attendance in mothers who were referred by CPS for substance abuse. After baseline therapy session attendance was established in an evidence-based clinic that incorporated a telephone engagement intervention (Phase I), participants were provided free cellular telephones with limited minutes and permitted to order free meals delivered by the therapist during upcoming sessions (Phase II). The third phase was similar to Phase II, but participants were provided unlimited minutes. Results indicated that participants’ attendance was significantly improved when meals and cellular telephone minutes were contingent on attendance. Although the percentage of sessions attended by participants during Phase III was higher than Phase II, unlimited minutes and meals did not significantly enhance attendance relative to limited minutes and meals. Session attendance for significant others of these participants was significantly higher during Phase III as compared with Phase I. Session attendance of significant others was statistically similar between Phase I and II and between Phase II and Phase III. Study implications and recommendations for future research and practice are discussed in light of the findings.     

Religion and the Representative Anecdote: Replacement and Revenge in AMC’s The Walking Dead

The current study examines how the horror-based AMC television series The Walking Dead portrays religion in terms of a reframing of the role, if any, of faith in a higher power, and the portrayal of the faithful. The religious-themed discourse of this highly successful story about survivors of a zombie apocalypse as presented through dialogic and visual imagery serves as the text analyzed here; specifically, related episodes set in churches at two separate points in the series that combine to offer a metaphor of “structure” used to disassemble and reconstruct the role of religion. These episodes interlace religious themes to develop an overarching message that forms a representative anecdote of replacement in which the notion of “faith” becomes redefined.     

THE EFFECT AND COST OF FORECAST ERROR BIAS FOR MULTIPLE-STAGE PRODUCTION-INVENTORY SYSTEMS

This paper examines forecast error with an intention not to minimize forecast error so much as to bias the resultant error in order to achieve better managerial results. Much work has been accomplished by other researchers toward the goal of minimizing forecast error—sometimes by the use of sophisticated forecasting techniques. The results of this paper indicate that manipulating forecast error bias may be the better managerial strategy as opposed to going to great lengths to minimize forecast error. Subject Areas: Forecasting, Aggregate Planning, Capacity Planning, and Production/Operations Management.     

When Restrictive Constraints Are Nonbinding: Illustrations and Implications

For convex and concave mathematical programs restrictive constraints (i.e., their deletion would change the optimum) will always be binding at the optimum, and vice versa. Less well-known is the fact that this property does not hold more generally, even for problems with convex feasible sets. This paper demonstrates the latter fact using numerical illustrations of common classes of problems. It then discusses the implications for public policy analysis, econometric estimation, and solution algorithms.     

Vulnerabilities and risks in population and environment studies

In the study of risks , different sciences use the same category in different ways, each related to its own ontological assumptions. But many of these fields communicate very little with one another. This article seeks to approximate two of these areas of study that have shown similar concerns and that can mutually strengthen one another, namely, geography and demography. Geography was one of the first disciplines to include risk in its environmental dimension and has had broad experience in simultaneously focusing on social and natural dynamics. Demography, on the other hand, faces greater difficulties because only recently has it incorporated the environmental dimension into its scientific scope. Both have brought the concept of vulnerability into their conceptual framework as complementary to that of risk. Geographers understand vulnerability as a more symbiotic form of the relationship between society and nature, whereas demographers give it a strong socioeconomic component. In this regard, the conceptual discussion on risks and vulnerabilities, in its attempt at approximating these two fields, is a way of conceptually advancing and strengthening the different approaches to empirical work, especially in population–environment studies which is the common ground for the dialogue between the two disciplines.

Multi-Item Grouping Algorithm Yielding Near-Optimal Logistics Cost

This article describes an algorithm used to formulate an inbound consolidation strategy when multi-items are replenished in groups and when total logistics cost is to be minimized. The importance of this algorithm is threefold (1) no optimal procedure exists for grouping multi-items when minimizing total logistics cost, (2) a complete enumeration of all possible groups (from which the optimal grouping set can be identified) is impractical due to the combinatorial nature of the grouping problem, and (3) no other heuristics have been developed that adequately reflect shipping cost in the analysis like this one does. We report the experience of using this algorithm to group and reorder 75 selected ensembles containing a total of 517 inventory items of a retail merchandising firm.     

Perceived Parenting Styles and Values Development: A Longitudinal Study of Adolescents and Emerging Adults

This study explored parenting styles and values internalization. Perceived parenting styles were measured in Grade 7 (n = 749) and Grade 12 (n = 468), and values were measured in Grade 12 (n = 271) and one year postschool (n = 291). We measured three aspects of valuing: priority (extrinsic, intrinsic importance); regulation (controlled, autonomous); and successful enactment of values (success). Mothers’ authoritative parenting in Grade 7 predicted increased importance and autonomous regulation of values one year postschool. Fathers’ authoritative parenting in Grade 7 predicted decreased importance of extrinsic values. Fathers’ permissive parenting in Grade 7 predicted decreased importance of intrinsic values. Authoritarian parenting in Grade 12 predicted more controlled values regulation postschool, particularly for extrinsic values. Parenting in early and late adolescence predicts values internalization in emerging adulthood.     

Using the Shapley Decomposition to Disentangle the Impact of Circumstances and Efforts on Health Inequality

Following previous work on inequality in health opportunity, this paper attempts to determine the contribution of circumstances, efforts and lifestyle, and demographic variables to the overall inequality in health in Luxembourg. Health is measured via the answers given to a question on self-assessed health and is considered as an ordinal variable. The educational level of each parent, the financial situation of the family during childhood, the area of birth of the individual, and of his/her parents, and the year of immigration are considered as circumstances. Effort and lifestyle variables are proxied by information on the educational level of the individual, whether he/she smoked and whether he/she had a physical activity on a regular basis. Sex and age are considered as demographic variables. To solve the issue of correlation between circumstances and effort and lifestyle the estimation is implemented in two stages. In the first stage, each effort and lifestyle variable is regressed in a separate equation against the vector of circumstances and demographic variables and, in a second stage, the individual health status is regressed against the vector of circumstances and demographic variables along with the estimated residuals of the effort equations described previously. The respective impacts of the three categories of explanatory variables (circumstances, effort and lifestyle and demographic variables) on health inequality are derived via a Shapley decomposition of the likelihood ratio of the health ordered logit regression. It appears that differences in circumstances and effort and lifestyle explain each around a quarter of this likelihood ratio.     

Cigarette Smoking and All-Cause and Cause-Specific Adult Mortality in the United States

This study illuminates the association between cigarette smoking and adult mortality in the contemporary United States. Recent studies have estimated smoking-attributable mortality using indirect approaches or with sample data that are not nationally representative and that lack key confounders. We use the 1990–2011 National Health Interview Survey Linked Mortality Files to estimate relative risks of all-cause and cause-specific mortality for current and former smokers compared with never smokers. We examine causes of death established as attributable to smoking as well as additional causes that appear to be linked to smoking but have not yet been declared by the U.S. Surgeon General to be caused by smoking. Mortality risk is substantially elevated among smokers for established causes and moderately elevated for additional causes. We also decompose the mortality disadvantage among smokers by cause of death and estimate the number of smoking-attributable deaths for the U.S. adult population ages 35+, net of sociodemographic and behavioral confounders. The elevated risks translate to 481,887 excess deaths per year among current and former smokers compared with never smokers, 14 % to 15 % of which are due to the additional causes. The additional causes of death contribute to the health burden of smoking and should be considered in future studies of smoking-attributable mortality. This study demonstrates that smoking-attributable mortality must remain a top population health priority in the United States and makes several contributions to further underscore the human costs of this tragedy that has ravaged American society for more than a century.