I'm Not for Sale: Teaching About Human Trafficking

Even though slavery is illegal in all countries, it is still practiced in the form of human trafficking. In fact, there are about twenty-five million men, women, and children who are victims of human trafficking, a 150-billion-dollar industry that affects every country across the globe. Modern communications, such as the Internet and cell phones, exacerbate the problem of human trafficking and law enforcement faces enormous challenges in detecting, arresting, and prosecuting human traffickers. Victims, fifty percent of whom are children, are sold into prostitution, forced marriages, and forced labor in sweatshops, agriculture, and mining. Additionally, some victims are forced into armed conflicts as children; others are killed and their organs are harvested and sold on the black market. It is estimated that 50,000 victims are brought into the United States annually. Human trafficking is a moral outrage, as well as a violation of American and international law. Social studies education must teach about this egregious human rights violation and encourage students to become involved in stopping this modern-day slavery. By incorporating lessons into their curricula, all teachers can help produce young citizens dedicated to protecting human rights for all people.     

The Times They are A’changing: Multigenerational Family Simulations

Multigenerational households are increasingly affecting both the individual and family as well as community organizations and social policies. Social work and other family studies students can profit from educational modalities that use adult learning applications through a systems life-course perspective, the whole family aging over time. Family simulation software—addressing multigenerational families, such as two or more adult generations living together—builds on a previous paper (Marriage & Family Review, Feb. 2015). Social class, among other demographic and environmental variables, is emphasized. Agent-based family social network simulation of multigenerational families can facilitate experiential learning. An automatically generated life events report, based on both factual data and specific family characteristics, can be used as a classroom case study for role playing and assessing.     

Implementing School Based Youth Courts in a Rural Context: The Impact on Students’ Perceptions of School Climate,Individual Functioning,and Interpersonal Relationships

The Youth Court in Schools Project was implemented in two low-income, violent, racially/ethnically diverse rural counties. This study examined if the presence of Youth Court impacted students’ perceptions of school danger, individual functioning, and interpersonal relationships. Data were gathered from 3454 youth; following multiple imputation, data were analyzed using paired samples t tests. Results indicated that perceptions of school danger increased significantly and self-esteem decreased significantly in the control schools pretest to posttest. Violent behavior, anxiety, friend rejection, and bullying victimization decreased significantly in the Youth Court intervention schools pretest to posttest, but did not change significantly in the control schools. Findings provide preliminary evidence that Youth Court is an effective way of improving school climate, individual functioning, and interpersonal relationships.     

From Foster Care to Adoption and Guardianship: A Twenty-First Century Challenge

For nearly four decades, child welfare policy and practice have focused on the achievement of legal permanence for children in foster care. Although federal child welfare policy has resulted in the movement of children from state custody to legally permanent adoptive or guardianship families, little is known about the quality and enduring nature of these placements. A significant challenge of the twenty-first century child welfare system is how to ensure the well-being of children currently living with adoptive parents or guardians. This paper discusses child welfare policy and trends related to post-permanency well-being, including the decrease in Title IV-E foster care caseloads nationwide and the simultaneous increase in Title IV-E adoptive and guardianship caseloads. We highlight the needs of a twenty-first century child welfare system, including increased federal efforts to ensure child permanence and well-being after legal adoption or guardianship has been achieved, as well as more rigorous longitudinal and interdisciplinary research focused on the post-permanency adjustment of children and their families.     

R×C ecological inference: bounds, correlations, flexibility and transparency of assumptions

Summary.  Despite its potential pitfalls, ecological inference is an unavoidable part of some quantitative settings, including US voting rights litigation. In such applications, the analyst will typically encounter two-way tables with more than two rows and columns. Although several ecological inference methods are currently available for 2×2 tables, there are fewer options for analysing general R × C tables, and virtually none that model counts as opposed to fractions. We propose a count R × C method that respects the bounds deterministically, that allows for complex relationships between internal cell quantities, that is easily extensible and that results from transparent assumptions. We study the method via simulation, and then apply it to an example that is drawn from the state of Texas relevant to recent redistricting litigation there.     

历史分析与比较政治

本文讨论了比较政治学中历史研究的主要分析方法.第一类是因果分析法,包括横截面分析法和样本内分析法.第二类是时序分析法,包括对路径依赖和发展顺序的分析.本文认为,历史分析与众不同的分析方法使它成为比较政治研究中有力的分析工具.     

Active‐controlled,non‐inferiority trials in oncology: arbitrary limits,infeasible sample sizes and uninformative data analysis. Is there another way?

In oncology, it may not always be possible to evaluate the efficacy of new medicines in placebo-controlled trials. Furthermore, while some newer, biologically targeted anti-cancer treatments may be expected to deliver therapeutic benefit in terms of better tolerability or improved symptom control, they may not always be expected to provide increased efficacy relative to existing therapies. This naturally leads to the use of active-control, non-inferiority trials to evaluate such treatments. In recent evaluations of anti-cancer treatments, the non-inferiority margin has often been defined in terms of demonstrating that at least 50% of the active control effect has been retained by the new drug using methods such as those described by Rothmann et al., Statistics in Medicine 2003; 22:239-264 and Wang and Hung Controlled Clinical Trials 2003; 24:147-155. However, this approach can lead to prohibitively large clinical trials and results in a tendency to dichotomize trial outcome as either 'success' or 'failure' and thus oversimplifies interpretation. With relatively modest modification, these methods can be used to define a stepwise approach to design and analysis. In the first design step, the trial is sized to show indirectly that the new drug would have beaten placebo; in the second analysis step, the probability that the new drug is superior to placebo is assessed and, if sufficiently high in the third and final step, the relative efficacy of the new drug to control is assessed on a continuum of effect retention via an 'effect retention likelihood plot'. This stepwise approach is likely to provide a more complete assessment of relative efficacy so that the value of new treatments can be better judged.     

Person, Perception, and Place: What Matters to Health and Quality of Life

Interest in understanding how characteristics associated with where people live, in addition to the characteristics of the people themselves, affect health outcomes has risen sharply in recent years. While much of the research examining this question focus on teasing apart effects of place and individual on outcomes, less attention has been paid to examining how individuals’ perceptions of where they live may provide some clues to better understanding the influence of place on outcomes. We present findings from analysis undertaken that incorporate the subjective responses of individuals, residing in three socially contrasting neighbourhoods, to their local environment. Our first question addressed whether perceptions related to neighbourhood and city of residence matter to self rated health and quality of life independent of individual characteristics, while the second question examined whether the perceptions and individual characteristics are modified by the neighbourhood socio-economic context. Our results show that perceived neighbourhood characteristics, in addition to individual sociodemographic factors, are significant correlates of self rated health and quality of life. Moreover, we show that the type of perceived neighbourhood characteristics and the magnitude of their influence on self rated health and quality of life vary depending on whether they live in high- versus low-socioeconomic status neighbourhoods.

A Bayesian Approach for Analyzing Results of Vehicle Collision Tests

Certain motor vehicle safety standards stipulate a collision test speed and a set of performance criteria that vehicles must satisfy during or after the collision test. For example, Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard 301 requires a 30 mile per hour (mph) barrier collision and specifies a certain maximum allowable limit on the total spillage of fuel. Vehicle designs are required to meet this standard; however, when collision tests are conducted at speeds higher than the standard, vehicles do not always satisfy the performance criteria. This paper develops a mathematical model for estimating the probability of meeting the standard by using a Bayesian framework to incorporate engineering judgment with collision test results. The model is based on the idea that there are random features to a vehicle's ability to meet performance standards in a collision, especially at such elevated speeds. Example calculations are included to illustrate the estimation of the probability of meeting the standard and to compare it with a maximum likelihood approach.