Sexually transmitted disease services at US colleges and universities

The authors' objectives in this study were to describe the proportion of schools providing and the percentage of students with access to HIV and sexually transmitted disease (STD) education, treatment, and prevention services at 2-year and 4-year US colleges and universities. The authors mailed self-administered questionnaires to a stratified random sample (n = 910) of the 2,755 US schools with an enrollment of more than 500 students; 736 (81%) returned the survey. Four hundred seventy-four schools (60%) had a health center, representing 73% of students. Schools with a health center or housing for students were more likely to provide STD education; 52% of the schools made condoms available to students. Sixty percent of schools with health centers could test for both Chlamydia trachomatis and Neisseria gonorrhoeae, but only 67% of these schools screened women for these infections. Although most schools provided some prevention education, access to prevention, testing, and education should be increased at schools where these services are possible but not available.     

Fathers' encounters with the Child Welfare Service

In this article, we examined fathers who were or had been in contact with the Child Welfare Services in Norway. All of the fathers included in this study had children with women who were unable to take care of them, either because of substance abuse or mental health problems. Hence, the fathers had the primary responsibility for the children. We looked at how these fathers experienced being met and assessed as caregivers by the Child Welfare Service, as well as how they experienced their own competency as caregivers. To explore these themes, seven fathers who were in contact with or had recently been in contact with the Child Welfare Service were interviewed. The discourses on fatherhood, inspired by Scourfield (2003), were used as a framework for the analysis, and interpretive phenomenological analysis (IPA) was used to analyse the interviews. We found the fathers' experiences to be considered within the discourses on “fathers as a threat”, “fathers as irrelevant” and “fathers as better than mothers”. In addition, we shed light on topics such as the cultural lag, being single-handedly responsible for the children, and the fathers' views on what is important in their contact with the children.Our goal was to increase awareness about fathers who are in contact with the Child Welfare Service so that they are met in a way that helps to support them in their role as fathers for the benefit of their children.     

Fear management: How child protection workers engage with non-citizen immigrant families

Drawing on in-depth, semi-structured interviews with a sample of 24 child protection workers in the northeastern United States, we analyze how workers engage with non-citizen immigrant families. Confirming findings from previous scholarship on immigrants' fears when interacting with Child Protection Services (CPS), workers reported encountering different fear factors—the organizations, events, or people that instill fear in immigrant families. These included fear of deportation, fear of CPS workers as the people who remove children, and fear of CPS as a potentially repressive government agency. We also found that workers seek to minimize or leverage these fears in the engagement process—we refer to this process as fear management. Most of the workers interviewed seek to minimize immigrant families' fears, and we show that they employ four strategies to do so: providing knowledge, brokering services, doing dignity and status work, and learning culture.     

Patterns of positivity: Positive affect trajectories among infants of mothers with a history of depression

This study examined positive affect (PA) trajectories over the first year of life among infants of mothers with a history of depression (N = 191) as well as predictors (i.e., maternal prenatal and postpartum depression symptoms, maternal parenting behaviors) of those trajectories. Infant PA was observed in play and feeding tasks during laboratory visits at 3, 6, and 12 months of age; parenting behaviors were observed at 3 months. Mothers completed questionnaires regarding their symptoms of depression throughout the prenatal period and during the first 3 months postpartum. Growth curve analyses indicated that infant PA increased across time, and this finding replicated across both the play and feeding tasks, though increases slowed over time. Neither maternal prenatal nor postpartum depression symptoms predicted infants' PA trajectories, but mothers' PA, positive parenting, and disengaged parenting were associated with infant PA during the play task. Our finding that infant PA increased over the first year postpartum suggests PA trajectories among infants of mothers with a history of depression may be indices of resilience, despite risks associated with their mothers' history of depression. Furthermore, this study highlights parenting behaviors that may be important targets of prevention and early intervention efforts to bolster infant PA.     

Closed doors everywhere? A meta-analysis of field experiments on ethnic discrimination in rental housing markets

Discrimination is long seen as a meaningful factor for ethnic inequalities on rental housing markets. Yet empirically, the extent of discrimination is still debatable. For the first time, this article provides a quantitative meta-analysis of field experiments (in person audits and correspondence tests) that were run over the last four decades in the United States, Canada and Europe (N?=?71). Special focus is given to a possible inflation of effect sizes by publication bias; to time trends; and to evidence for statistical discrimination. Taken together, nearly all experiments document the occurrence of ethnic discrimination. Effect sizes are inflated by publication bias, but there is still substantial evidence left once the bias is removed. The analysis reveals a consistent decline in the extent of discrimination over time, from moderate levels of discrimination in the 1970s and 1980s, up to only small but still statistically significant levels in the 1990s and 2000s. A significant part of the discriminatory behaviour can be attributed to missing information about the social status of applicants, which supports theories on statistical discrimination. It is discussed how future research could move our knowledge on the underlying mechanisms forward.     

Education for the love of the world: Hannah Arendt’s philosophy of education and communication studies

Amidst a challenging moment of transition in American higher education, this article uses Arendt’s examination of American educational institutions and her reflections on the human condition to develop a philosophy of education that speaks to communication studies. Sharply critical of the unreflective emphasis on newness and normalization that she saw in American schools, Arendt suggests an alternative philosophy of education grounded simultaneously in the contemplation of tradition and the pursuit of natality through the active life of labor, work, and action. Together, tradition and natality open a new approach to communication education in the liberal arts tradition that challenges educators and students alike not only to understand the world around them but also to take responsibility for its renewal.     

On estimands and the analysis of adverse events in the presence of varying follow‐up times within the benefit assessment of therapies

The analysis of adverse events (AEs) is a key component in the assessment of a drug's safety profile. Inappropriate analysis methods may result in misleading conclusions about a therapy's safety and consequently its benefit‐risk ratio. The statistical analysis of AEs is complicated by the fact that the follow‐up times can vary between the patients included in a clinical trial. This paper takes as its focus the analysis of AE data in the presence of varying follow‐up times within the benefit assessment of therapeutic interventions. Instead of approaching this issue directly and solely from an analysis point of view, we first discuss what should be estimated in the context of safety data, leading to the concept of estimands. Although the current discussion on estimands is mainly related to efficacy evaluation, the concept is applicable to safety endpoints as well. Within the framework of estimands, we present statistical methods for analysing AEs with the focus being on the time to the occurrence of the first AE of a specific type. We give recommendations which estimators should be used for the estimands described. Furthermore, we state practical implications of the analysis of AEs in clinical trials and give an overview of examples across different indications. We also provide a review of current practices of health technology assessment (HTA) agencies with respect to the evaluation of safety data. Finally, we describe problems with meta‐analyses of AE data and sketch possible solutions.     

Anatomy of A Crisis: Relations Between the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and the Federal Republic of Germany from the 1970s to the 1980s

This analysis takes for its starting point an internal UnitedNations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) memorandum, whichcriticized West German asylum practices in rather strong terms,leaked, and generated considerable controversy in the FederalRepublic of Germany (FRG), internationally and within UNHCR.The article inscribes these events within the broader evolutionof the relationship between UNHCR and the FRG to present themas one of several initiatives envisaged within the refugee agencyin order to bend West Germany's increasingly restrictive stanceon asylum issues. In this sense, UNHCR's attempts to use confrontationas a diplomatic tool shed light on an international organization'savenues for influence and their limits. Tracing the emergenceof the UNHCR's chosen course of action and attempting to assessits repercussions, the study emphasizes the interaction betweenvarious members of UNHCR staff in the organization's branchoffice in Bonn and its headquarters in Geneva, as well as betweenpolitical factions within the FRG. Calling to mind that neitherUNHCR nor the FRG are unitary actors, this opens the way foran analysis of the role individual agency may play within largercollective actors.     

Intercultural training requirements for virtual assignments: results of an explorative empirical study

Virtual assignments are characterized by the spatial separation of private and business life. The virtual delegate lives and interacts in one culture, yet he or she works together mainly with people from another culture. Since face-to-face contacts with colleagues, customers or suppliers are reduced to a minimum, firsthand experience of foreign cultures does not take place. As a result, intercultural training becomes essential. The study suggests that virtual delegates are faced with several intercultural management problems such as different time zones and communication styles as well as language barriers. These problems are increased by the lack of face-to-face communication and common trust-building mechanisms. Intercultural training may be an instrument for overcoming these challenges. However, they have to be adapted to the specific requirements of virtual expatriates. Moreover, intercultural training should not only be offered to the virtual delegates themselves, but also to the individuals with whom they interact in the host country.