When vocabularies of motive fail: The example of fatal child abuse

Many social theorists emphasize people's capacity for empathic understanding, shared meanings, and forgiveness. They argue that norm violators can achieve social redemption by offering excuses and justifications. The findings from this study show that this is not always true. Evidence from the case records of caretakers accused of killing their children showed that the majority did not try to explain their actions by invoking excuses and justifications. They either pretended they had no idea what happened to the child or constructed a fictional cause of the child's death which made themselves appear innocent. The minority who attempted to explain why they killed a child received little or no forgiveness. These findings show that some norm violations cannot be translated into acceptable vocabularies of motive.I wish to thank Carl J. Couch for his genenous assistance.     

DIFFERENT LENSES: VARIATIONS IN CLIENTS' PERCEPTION OF FAMILY THERAPY BY RACE AND GENDER

Race and gender have been given extensive theoretical and clinical attention in family therapy in the last decade. However, little empirical work has focused on their effect on therapy. The present study examines the effect of clients' race and therapists' race and gender on male and female partners' assessments of an initial and subsequent family/marital therapy session. One hundred twenty-six individuals, comprising 63 heterosexual adult couples, evaluated both the first and the fourth therapy session using the Session Evaluation Questionnaire (Stiles, 1980). Results indicated a strong effect for race, with black females rating initial sessions more negatively than white females when seeing a white therapist. Black men, however, had a more positive response than white men to the initial session, regardless of the race of the therapist. Over time, these differences decreased. The results suggest not only that race and gender may contribute to differences in partners' perceptions of the same session, but also that these differences are not static.     

Cultural elites and the institutionalization of ideas

Members of a multidisciplinary elite, specified by their involvement in the cultural definition of a complex, moral issue, brain death, are examined in terms of (1) their biographical, demographic, and organizational characteristics; and (2) their substantive contributions to the institutionalization of the concept of brain death. Since there are as yet no formal organizations or social roles of death definers, particular attention is addressed to participants' social identities, their reasons for involvement with this issue, and their emergent and formal social formations. Their work and social structure are compared with other cultural elites, intellectuals, and scientists. It is argued that the process of redefining death was a dialectical process of organization, production, reception, and response driven by conflict and opposition among the elite, rather than by consensus.     

Adoptee Dissimilarity from the Adoptive Family: Clinical Practice and Research Implications

A review of theoretical, clinical, and empirical literature was conducted regarding the effect of adoptee dissimilarity from the adoptive family. There is empirical evidence of a relationship between dissimilarity and searching for birth parents, satisfaction with the adoption, and adjustment. A theory of an effect of identity-seeking on searching by adoptees has also been formulated. It is suggested, therefore, that an effort to establish one's identity may mediate a relationship between adoptee dissimilarity and searching. Implications are presented for social work practice and research, and for public policy and education, in instances of same race and transracial adoption.     

Cyborg anxiety: Oscar Pistorius and the boundaries of what it means to be human

Disabled people have a history of being viewed as not entirely human. In the age of spare part surgery and increasing sophistication of drugs, there are increasing concerns about what it means to be human, and, in particular, in what distinguishes people from machines. These concerns have clear resonance with anxieties about disability, and with disabled people being seen as not human. Oscar Pistorius is a disabled athlete whose wish to compete alongside able bodied competitors is causing great concern and worry that his prosthetic legs may give him an unfair - and non-human - advantage. The case of Pistorius breaks entrenched boundaries and lays bare core concerns in society about disability and the body.     

A Randomized Evaluation of Multidimensional Treatment Foster Care: Effects on School Attendance and Homework Completion in Juvenile Justice Girls

Despite growing evidence that child welfare youth are at increased risk for juvenile delinquency, little is known about gender-specific processes and effective treatment programs for girls. Multidimensional Treatment Foster Care (MTFC), an empirically validated intervention for child welfare and juvenile justice populations, has demonstrated efficacy in reducing arrest rates in delinquent boys and girls. In this study, the efficacy of MTFC on school attendance and homework completion was examined in juvenile justice girls who were referred to out-of-home care (N = 81). Results from this randomized intervention trial suggest that MTFC was more effective than group care in increasing girls' school attendance and homework completion while in treatment and at 12 months postbaseline. In addition, the previously reported effect of MTFC on reducing girls' days in locked settings was mediated by homework completion while girls were enrolled in the intervention setting. Implications for policy and practice are described.     

Decline and fall: Unemployment among Britain's non-white ethnic communities 1960–1999

The declining employment fortunes of Britain's non-white communities, relative to whites, are explained. To achieve this comparison, some historical official sources of unemployment data are reviewed. The earliest known official time series on unemployment of non-whites dates back to 1960. This historical context is explored, especially the reluctance to make the early data more widely known. An unemployment series for non-white males and females from 1970 to 1999 is derived in two separate ways by splicing together official sources. These series are compared with unemployment of whites to demonstrate a relative increase in unemployment of non-whites.     

Batch sequential designs for computer experiments

Computer models simulating a physical process are used in many areas of science. Due to the complex nature of these codes it is often necessary to approximate the code, which is typically done using a Gaussian process. In many situations the number of code runs available to build the Gaussian process approximation is limited. When the initial design is small or the underlying response surface is complicated this can lead to poor approximations of the code output. In order to improve the fit of the model, sequential design strategies must be employed. In this paper we introduce two simple distance based metrics that can be used to augment an initial design in a batch sequential manner. In addition we propose a sequential updating strategy to an orthogonal array based Latin hypercube sample. We show via various real and simulated examples that the distance metrics and the extension of the orthogonal array based Latin hypercubes work well in practice.