Preventing child abuse; a review of community-based projects 1. Intervening on processes and outcome of reviews

Recent theories advocating ecological and developmental perspectives on child abuse and neglect are summarized. Reviews of community prevention programmes underline the importance of focusing on processes and viewing the developing child and their family in a broad context. The conclusions of the reviews are reported. Although the reviews suggest that some programmes to prevent physical and sexual abuse and bullying are at least to some degree effective, their impact has been reduced by a failure to encompass adequately the various influences that operate across difference domains of the child's life at different stages of their development. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

‘Privacy does not interest me’. A comparative analysis of photo sharing on Instagram and Blipfoto

Photo sharing online has become immensely popular and is a central aspect of modern visual culture. Yet it creates a number of privacy issues, both in relation to other individuals and corporate surveillance. The purpose of this study was to investigate users’ understanding of privacy issues in photo sharing, based on a comparative study of two contrasting platforms: Instagram and Blipfoto. The study combined netnography and in-depth interviewing. It was found that Instagram users had a greater awareness of how the platform might use their data, but saw this loss of privacy as inevitable in return for a free service. Blipfoto users were more trusting of what they experienced as a very community minded platform. Any concerns felt by both groups of users were out-weighed by the sense that photo sharing was highly meaningful and their fascination with watching and being watched. Both groups main approach to privacy was through restricting certain types of image of people and not revealing the location of certain personal spaces. Notions of privacy thus remained primarily personal and ignored corporate dataveillance.     

Relations Among Intimate Partner Violence,Maternal Depressive Symptoms,and Maternal Parenting Behaviors

The authors examined the relations among intimate partner violence (IPV), maternal depressive symptoms, and maternal harsh intrusive parenting. Using a cross‐lagged, autoregressive path model, they sought to clarify the directionality of the relations among these 3 variables over the first 2 years of the child's life. The results indicated that, in this diverse sample of families living in predominantly low‐income rural communities (N = 705), higher levels of early IPV were associated with increases in maternal depressive symptoms, which in turn were associated with increases in maternal harsh intrusive parenting behaviors. These findings suggest that interventions aimed at improving the parenting of women exposed to domestic violence may want to simultaneously target IPV and depressive symptomatology.     

Personal resilience and identity capital among young people leaving care: enhancing identity formation and life chances through involvement in volunteering and social action

This study explored identity capital and personal resilience among care leavers and young people in care engaging in social activities through volunteering. Care leavers and young people in care are disadvantaged developmentally by lack of identity resources and an accelerated transition to independence. This study analysed material from semi-structured interviews to explore the Identity Capital Model and theories of individualisation, agentic identity development and resilience in explaining the identity resources of young people transitioning out of care. The analysis identified links between the exploration opportunities of volunteering with the development of agentic individualisation and enhanced identity capital. The findings indicate that developmental processes may be enhanced through supported and personalised volunteering opportunities to aid vulnerable young people transitioning out of care. Young people leaving care can make substantial gains particularly in social capital, personal resilience and identity capital. This study indicates that volunteering opportunities for this group of vulnerable young people may assist in compensating for the lack of resources often experienced by care leavers when transitioning to adulthood.     

Silencing the Call to Action: A Bird’s Eye View of Minority Language Media and Political Participation in Eurasia

Do citizens living in linguistically diverse countries without benefit of diverse media outlets find this to be a barrier to civic engagement? This study considers the interrelated effects of media access and social capital on political engagement in 15 Eurasian countries as that region continues to transition to an open economy and democracy. Drawing upon individual-level survey data, and controlling for relevant political and socioeconomic factors, regression analyses suggest a significant impact of media plurality, interpersonal trust, and government confidence on both voting turnout and unconventional political participation. The effect of social capital is mixed. Results indicate that higher levels of trust contribute to participation, while greater confidence in government is associated with less participation. These preliminary tests also show that collective action is generally lower in countries having greater linguistic diversity, but suggest that having access to political news in one’s own language can indeed contribute to more activism.     

Bovine TB in cattle and badgers

The link between tuberculosis in cattle and in badgers has long been contentious. The Independent Scientific Group (ISG) on Cattle TB, a group containing some of the country's top statisticians, investigated it. In June this year, after 9 years of work, it reported to Ministers that a cull of badgers would be unlikely to contribute usefully to the control of TB in cattle. In October, however, the Government's Chief Scientific Adviser, Sir David King, effectively discounted the report, and recommended culling of badgers. Here Christl Donnelly and David Cox of the ISG describe the work that led to their conclusions.     

Detecting Overdispersion in Large Scale Surveys: Application to a Study of Education and Social Class in Britain (with Comments)

A practical problem with large scale survey data is the potential for overdispersion. Overdispersion occurs when the data display more variability than is predicted by the variance–mean relationship for the assumed sampling model. This paper describes a simple strategy for detecting and adjusting for overdispersion in large scale survey data. The method is primarily motivated by data on the relationship between social class and educational attainment obtained from a 2% sample from the 1991 census of the population of Great Britain. Overdispersion can be detected by first grouping the data into a number of strata of approximately equal size. Under the assumption that the observations are independent and there is no variability in the parameter of interest, there is a direct relationship between the nominal standard errors and the empirical or sample standard deviation of the parameter estimates obtained from each of the separate strata. With the 2% sample from the British census data, quite a discernible departure from this relationship was found, indicating overdispersion. After allowing for overdispersion, improved and more realistic measures of precision of the strength of the social class–education associations were obtained.     

Examining Associations between Occupation and Health by using Routinely Collected Data

When examining a large number of associations simultaneously, as happens when routinely collected data are used to assess associations between occupation and health, it is not obvious how best to identify associations requiring further investigation since some risks may be high, or low, by chance alone. We have developed an approach to deal with this problem which is relatively easy to apply and appropriate to applications where data are not too sparse. Observed to expected ratios are estimated using an empirical Bayes procedure. Anomalous associations can be seen as outliers in a normal probability plot of the log-ratios. The method is illustrated in the analysis of 252 000 cancers registered in men in England during 1981–87.     

Linear sensitivity measures in statistical disclosure control

The mathematical properties of a class of functions called linear sensitivity measures are investigated. These measures are applied to the problem of maintaining the statistical confidentiality of respondents to a census or statistical survey such as an establishment-based economic survey. Sensitivity criteria in practical use are cast in this setting.