Response Agreement Rates Between Child Welfare–Involved Youth and Their Caregivers

ABSTRACT

Data were collected from 40 youth and 37 caregivers, which represented 57 distinct youth and 20 youth–caregiver dyads to measure the level of agreement between youth self-report and their caregivers on a variety of topics. Topics included: the youth's past placements, service use and needs, experiences in the child welfare system, and the youth's emotional problems and social behaviors. Results indicated high agreement between youth and caregiver proxy related to placement history, service use, the restrictiveness of the current environment, and community safety; results indicated low levels of agreement for youth emotional difficulties and prosocial behaviors. Qualitative data were used to further identify some of the differences noted. Overall, the findings support prior research that shows higher agreement within youth–caregiver dyads for objective measures as opposed to subjective and private ones. Implications for future research are discussed, and methodological challenges related to this study are identified.     

Facing Age: Women Growing Older in an Anti-Aging Culture,by Laura H. Clarke

This is a pilot study exploring intimacy and self esteem in older black women. Twenty six married, urban, non-institutionalized African American women over the age of 60 were interviewed in this investigation. Information concerning their intimate relationships with their spouses and its relationship to their self esteem was gathered. Subjective passages are examhed to accent these relationships. These women were, generally, open about the quality of the relationship between themselves and their spouses. They reported relatively high levels of intimate relations. In particular they described the sub-factors of intimacy such as affection, friendship and a sense of empathy to be positively associated with self esteem. Interestingly, higher frequency of sexual intercourse was seen to be negatively associated with self esteem for these older women. Implications of these findings are discussed.     

Common Factors That Enhance the Quality of Life for Women Living in Their Own Homes or in Aged Care Facilities

A qualitative study of older women living in their own homes and older women living in aged care facilities found that the concerns of the women living in their own homes were the realities of life for the residents in the aged care facilities. Twenty-five female residents across two facilities and 11 older women living in their own homes were interviewed. The positive outcomes of aging at home are relevant and desirable for residents of aged care facilities. A smooth transition from community living to residential aged care involves retaining some of these positive aspects of their lives.     

A Multilevel Analysis of the Compositional and Contextual Association of Social Capital and Subjective Well-Being in Seoul, South Korea

The purpose of this study is to examine the association between social capital and subjective well-being (life satisfaction) by using multilevel analysis considering both individual and area-level social capital while adjusting for various control variables at multiple-levels in Seoul, South Korea. The data was from the 2010 (Wave 2) Seoul Welfare Panel Study, conducted by Seoul Welfare Foundation. The final sample for this study consisted of 5,934 individuals aged 18 years or older in 2,847 households within 25 administrative areas. Three-level multilevel linear regression analyses, with random intercept models, were applied. Our results provide evidence that various dimensions of social capital both at the individual and area-level are positively associated with subjective life satisfaction, even after controlling for various factors at the individual, household, and area-levels. All of individual-level social capital variables including organizational participation, perceived helpfulness, trust in authorities were positively associated with subjective life satisfaction. Except for trust in authority, area-level organizational participation and perceived helpfulness were positively associated with subjective life satisfaction. These results suggest that decision makers should consider both individual and area-level social capital targeting to enhance one’s well-being.     

A Comparative Analysis of the Validity of US State- and County-Level Social Capital Measures and Their Associations with Population Health

The goals of this study were to validate a number of available collective social capital measures at the US state and county levels, and to examine the relative extent to which these social capital measures are associated with population health outcomes. Measures of social capital at the US state level included aggregate indices based on the Annenberg National Health Communication Survey and the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS), Petris Social Capital Index (PSCI), Putnam’s index, and Kim et al.’s scales. County-level measures consisted of PSCI, Rupasingha et al.’s social capital index, and a BRFSS-derived measure. These measures, except for the PSCI, showed evidence of acceptable validity. Moreover, we observed differences across the social capital measures in their associations with population health outcomes. The implications of the findings for future research in this area were discussed.     

Fertility Decline in Prussia, 1875–1910: A Pooled Cross-Section Time Series Analysis

Marital fertility level and decline are examined in 407 small areas in Prussia using quinquennial data for the period 1875 to 1910 from an unusually rich and detailed data set, and pooled cross-section time-series methods. Religion, ethnicity, and prevalence of mineworkers are the only statistically significant factors associated with marital fertility level. However, none of these are important predictors of marital fertility decline. Marital fertility decline in nineteenth-century Prussia is better predicted by increased women's labour force participation in non-traditional occupations, the growth of financial institutions, the development of a transport-communications infrastructure, reduction in infant mortality and improvements in education.     

On the estimators and tests for the semiparametric hazards regression model

In the accelerated hazards regression model with censored data, estimation of the covariance matrices of the regression parameters is difficult, since it involves the unknown baseline hazard function and its derivative. This paper provides simple but reliable procedures that yield asymptotically normal estimators whose covariance matrices can be easily estimated. A class of weight functions are introduced to result in the estimators whose asymptotic covariance matrices do not involve the derivative of the unknown hazard function. Based on the estimators obtained from different weight functions, some goodness-of-fit tests are constructed to check the adequacy of the accelerated hazards regression model. Numerical simulations show that the estimators and tests perform well. The procedures are illustrated in the real world example of leukemia cancer. For the leukemia cancer data, the issue of interest is a comparison of two groups of patients that had two different kinds of bone marrow transplants. It is found that the difference of the two groups are well described by a time-scale change in hazard functions, i.e., the accelerated hazards model.     

An alternative to unrelated randomized response techniques with logistic regression analysis

The randomized response technique (RRT) is an important tool that is commonly used to protect a respondent’s privacy and avoid biased answers in surveys on sensitive issues. In this work, we consider the joint use of the unrelated-question RRT of Greenberg et al. (J Am Stat Assoc 64:520–539, 1969) and the related-question RRT of Warner (J Am Stat Assoc 60:63–69, 1965) dealing with the issue of an innocuous question from the unrelated-question RRT. Unlike the existing unrelated-question RRT of Greenberg et al. (1969), the approach can provide more information on the innocuous question by using the related-question RRT of Warner (1965) to effectively improve the efficiency of the maximum likelihood estimator of Scheers and Dayton (J Am Stat Assoc 83:969–974, 1988). We can then estimate the prevalence of the sensitive characteristic by using logistic regression. In this new design, we propose the transformation method and provide large-sample properties. From the case of two survey studies, an extramarital relationship study and a cable TV study, we develop the joint conditional likelihood method. As part of this research, we conduct a simulation study of the relative efficiencies of the proposed methods. Furthermore, we use the two survey studies to compare the analysis results under different scenarios.     

A joint optimization of data ferry trajectories and communication powers of ground sensors for long-term environmental monitoring

Recently, various hybrid wireless sensor networks which consist of several robotic vehicles and a number of static ground sensors have been investigated. In this kind of system, the main role of the mobile nodes is to deliver the messages produced by the sensor nodes, and naturally their trajectory control becomes a significant issue closely related to the performance of the entire system. Previously, several communication power control strategies such as topology control are investigated to improve energy-efficiency of wireless sensor networks. However, to the best of our knowledge, no communication power control strategy has been investigated in the context of the hybrid wireless sensor networks. This paper introduces a new strategy to utilize the communication power control in multiple data ferry assisted wireless sensor network for long-term environmental monitoring such that the lifetime of the sensor network is maximized. We formally define the problem of our interest and show it is NP-hard. We further prove there exists no approximation algorithm for the problem which can produce a feasible solution for every possible problem instance even though there is a feasible solution. Then, we propose heuristic algorithms along with rigorous theoretical performance analysis for both the single data ferry case and the multiple data ferry case under certain condition.