Disability and Adult Education - the consumer view

Developments in recent years have shown an increasing interest in the educational needs and aspirations of disabled adults. There is still, however, limited research information representing the disabled person's voice. This paper describes the outcomes from a survey of the educational experiences of 44 physically disabled adults in the North West of England. The findings indicated that, usually, the earlier someone had acquired a disability, the less likely they were, as adults, to have achieved professional or higher qualifications, and that the level of qualifications reached among women being surveyed was particularly low. Barriers to course attendance reflect both attitudinal and practical access issues, with underachievement often the result of oppression from a variety of sources. Both positive and negative experiences from disabled adults form the basis of recommendations for an equal opportunities approach to adult education for disabled people around the themes of integration, self worth, empowerment and consultation.     

Subjective Well-Being, Societal Condition and Social Policy – The Case Study of a Rich Chinese Society

The article looks at whether or not social policy and other societal-condition variables contribute to the subjective well-being of life satisfaction. It firstly argues that social policy needs to pay more attention to the study of subjective well-being. Then, it reviews the literature and finds that people in rich societies generally have higher levels of life satisfaction. But the findings of a social survey on the level of and variance in life satisfaction in a rich Chinese society reveal the contrary. The empirical data reflects a life satisfaction pattern along strong income and class lines. It also confirms that social policy and other societal-condition variables have different degrees of impact on life satisfaction. At last, implications of the findings for social policy are discussed.     

Unaffordable healthcare amid phenomenal growth: the case of healthcare protection in reform China

This article provides an up-to-date assessment of China's reformed urban healthcare system. It illustrates that, in the Chinese case, economic growth does not automatically bring equitable healthcare protection; policy and system designs are also important. The article finds that the reformed urban healthcare system is financially sustainable, but that individual citizens contribute the largest share of healthcare costs, whilst the state is reducing its financial commitment. It also reports the views of two principal stakeholder groups. The survey findings indicate the endorsement of an old ethos for a strong state in healthcare protection. But a substantial minority view is also unveiled, which supports access to healthcare on the basis of insurance contributions. In sum, affordability remains a critical issue for the Chinese despite the fact that they have a new healthcare system and a strong economy.     

African American Gay Family Networks: An Entry Point for HIV Prevention

Gay families are constructed support networks that gay, bisexual, and transgender individuals of color form, often in response to societal marginalization and rejection from biological families. Research on these family structures has been scarce, with little focus on the experience of African American gay family networks in the South. The current grounded theory qualitative study focused on the experiences of 10 African American male and transgender individuals between the ages of 18 and 29 from gay families in the Mid-South, and explored the ways these families addressed safe-sex issues and human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) risk prevention. Results revealed that families can play a role in either increasing HIV risk (e.g., ignoring HIV issues, encouraging such unsafe behaviors as exchanging sex for money or drugs, stigmatizing HIV-positive people) or decreasing it (e.g., intensive, family-level prevention efforts at safe-sex practices and family support for HIV treatment adherence). The potential of these family networks for HIV prevention and adherence efforts is considered.     

Self‐Help Career Services: A Case Report

Self‐help career services represent an important form of career intervention rarely described in the literature. Using a case‐report approach, the author describes this type of career intervention, which was guided by cognitive information processing theory and Holland's ( 1997 ) typological theory. The report offers an example of appropriately identifying client readiness to engage in career counseling using a 3‐tier model for service delivery composed of direct, brief, and self‐help interventions. It also demonstrates an effective method for translating theory to practice, a particularly critical need in the career development field. The outcome of the intervention supports a differentiated model of career services that increases client accessibility to those services.     

Sexual professionalism: for whom? The case of sexual facilitation in Swedish personal assistance services

Sexuality is a taboo subject in disability services, leading to insecurity for both service users and personnel about how to handle upcoming situations. In Sweden, there is also a lack of policy in this area, highlighting the need to study sexuality both as an individual and a political, and in this case also, depoliticized issue. A critical feminist policy analysis reveals that norms around disability, sexuality and professionalism in a particular legal, political and cultural context strongly influence the willingness to recognize disabled people’s sexual rights. The Swedish case indicates a need for increased transnational work to develop ethical, professional and non-discriminatory rights-based approaches to sexual facilitation.     

Robust two parameter ridge M-estimator for linear regression

The problem of multicollinearity and outliers in the data set produce undesirable effects on the ordinary least squares estimator. Therefore, robust two parameter ridge estimation based on M-estimator (ME) is introduced to deal with multicollinearity and outliers in the y-direction. The proposed estimator outperforms ME, two parameter ridge estimator and robust ridge M-estimator according to mean square error criterion. Moreover, a numerical example and a Monte Carlo simulation experiment are presented.     

Exploring school ethos: an investigation of children’s human rights in two secondary institutions in Hong Kong

From 2009 to 2011, the authors launched the Basic Law Education Project: Education for Human Rights and the Rule of Law in Hong Kong. This article focuses on a subset of the overarching data-set and discusses the findings that resulted from a comparative analysis of two participating schools. A survey was deployed to assess the extent to which a human rights friendly ethos existed in several institutions. Randomly selected students and all teachers from both schools were invited to participate. The collected data revealed noteworthy trends in mean scores between teachers and students in areas such as equal and fair treatment; protection of and appeal for rights; and feelings of being loved, respected, and blessed. School mission and leadership style appeared to account for significant differences. Additionally, we offer recommendations for practices that may improve human rights ethos in schools.     

Joint coverage probability in a simulation study on continuous-time Markov chain parameter estimation

Parameter dependency within data sets in simulation studies is common, especially in models such as continuous-time Markov chains (CTMCs). Additionally, the literature lacks a comprehensive examination of estimation performance for the likelihood-based general multi-state CTMC. Among studies attempting to assess the estimation, none have accounted for dependency among parameter estimates. The purpose of this research is twofold: (1) to develop a multivariate approach for assessing accuracy and precision for simulation studies (2) to add to the literature a comprehensive examination of the estimation of a general 3-state CTMC model. Simulation studies are conducted to analyze longitudinal data with a trinomial outcome using a CTMC with and without covariates. Measures of performance including bias, component-wise coverage probabilities, and joint coverage probabilities are calculated. An application is presented using Alzheimer's disease caregiver stress levels. Comparisons of joint and component-wise parameter estimates yield conflicting inferential results in simulations from models with and without covariates. In conclusion, caution should be taken when conducting simulation studies aiming to assess performance and choice of inference should properly reflect the purpose of the simulation.