Allegations of maltreatment and delinquency: Does risk of juvenile arrest vary substantiation status?

There exists a healthy debate about the process and value of substantiation in child welfare. Much of this debate focuses on understanding whether substantiated and unsubstantiated allegations of maltreatment share equal risk of recurrence. In the current study we seek to advance this debate by extending the analyses to focus specifically on the risk of juvenile delinquency. We also seek to determine whether the relationship between substantiation and delinquency varies by race and gender. Our sample includes 38,223 youth between 5 and 16 years of age from Los Angeles County. We use propensity score matching to create relatively equivalent groups and use Cox Regression to model the risk of juvenile arrest. The results indicate that the relative risk ratio of arrest is 2.2 times greater for youth associated with a substantiated report of maltreatment as compared with similar youth associated with an unsubstantiated report of maltreatment. Older youth, and African American youth are also at an increased risk of juvenile arrest. These findings indicate that the process of substantiation is not without merit - as investigators and supervisors are clearly able to distinguish cases based on individual risks and strengths.     

Coalitions on mental health and aging: lessons learned for policy and practice

Elders with mental health needs have been poorly served. Private and government agencies have given this issue a low priority, which is reflected in service delivery and funding. Coalitions have developed in states around the country and have engaged in a variety of tasks, including training techniques and collaborative efforts to advocate successfully for appropriate services. While accomplishments vary, the coalitions should continue their work, and others should organize in order to reach the goal of having accessible and appropriate elder mental health services.     

Supply Network Structure,Visibility, and Risk Diffusion: A Computational Approach

Understanding and managing supply chain risks is a critical functional competency for today's global enterprises. A lack of this competency can have significant negative outcomes, including costly production and delivery delays, loss of future sales, and a tarnished corporate image. The ability to identify and mitigate risks, however, is complicated as supply chains are becoming increasingly global, complex, and interconnected. Drawing on the complex systems and epidemiology literature, and using a computational modeling and network analysis approach, we examine the impact of global supply network structure on risk diffusion and supply network health and demonstrate the importance of supply network visibility. Our results show a significant association between network structure and both risk diffusion and supply network health. In particular, our results indicate that small‐world supply network topologies consistently outperform supply networks with scale‐free characteristics. Theoretically, our study contributes to our understanding of risk management and supply networks as complex networked systems using a computational approach. Managerially, our study illustrates how decision makers can benefit from a network analytic approach to develop a more holistic understanding of system‐wide risk diffusion and to guide network governance policies for more favorable health level outcomes. The article concludes by highlighting the main findings and discussing possibilities of future research directions.     

Developing social indicators research on the military in American society

This paper suggest an organizing framework for developing social indicator research of the military and its relationship to larger society. Military activities are divided into seven categories which parallel civilian institutional sectors: (1) economy and labor force, (2) education, (3) crime and deviance, (4) science and technology, (5) health and health care, (6) population and family, and (7) politics and government. In each activity area each of the following three topics is discussed: (1) impacts of civilian social changes on the military, (2) patterns of internal military change, (3) impacts of changes in the military on civilian society. For each topic in each category we briefly review some relevant issues, classifying references by the topics and categories to which they relate.     

婚姻形式与男孩偏好:对中国农村三个县的考察

应用在招赘婚姻高度流行区、中度流行区和低度流行区的调查数据 ,本文研究了严格生育控制下婚姻形式以及个人、家庭和社会因素对男孩偏好的影响及其区域差异。研究发现 ,嫁娶婚姻的生育行为有明显的男孩偏好倾向 ,而招赘婚姻的生育行为则不存在性别偏好 ;男孩偏好存在显著的区域差异 ,招赘婚姻的流行显著降低了当地的男孩偏好水平。研究结果为政府在农村降低男孩偏好水平、稳定低生育率提供了新的思路和途径     

略阳县两类招赘婚姻类型的决定因素研究

利用略阳县男孩偏好文化传播抽样调查的数据 ,定量研究两类招赘婚姻的决定因素 :由人口因素导致的应时性类型和由经济因素导致的制度性类型。研究表明 ,应时性类型比制度性类型更常见 ,并且后者可以家庭内部传播而前者则不能。两种招赘婚姻类型的条件、动机和目的各不相同 ,决定因素也不相同。研究结果对于理解中国农村家庭结构和婚姻习俗的变化有参考意义     

Identifying the time of change in the mean of a two-stage nested process

Statistical process control charts are used to distinguish between common cause and special cause sources of variability. Once a control chart signals, a search to find the special cause should be initiated. If process analysts had knowledge of the change point, the search to find the special cause could be easily facilitated. Relevant literature contains an array of solutions to the change-point problem; however, these solutions are most appropriate when the samples are assumed to be independent. Unfortunately, the assumption of independence is often violated in practice. This work considers one such case of non-independence that frequently occurs in practice as a result of multi-stage sampling. Due to its commonality in practice, we assume a two-stage nested random model as the underlying process model and derive and evaluate a maximum-likelihood estimator for the change point in the fixed-effects component of this model. The estimator is applied to electron microscopy data obtained following a genuine control chart signal and from a real machining process where the important quality characteristic is the size of the surface grains produced by the machining operation. We conduct a simulation study to compare relative performances between the proposed change-point estimator and a commonly used alternative developed under the assumption of independent observations. The results suggest that both estimators are approximately unbiased; however, the proposed estimator yields smaller variance. The implication is that the proposed estimator is more precise, and thus, the quality of the estimator is improved relative to the alternative.     

Research on leadership in a cross-cultural context: Making progress, and raising new questions

It is almost cliché to say that there has been an explosion in the amount of research on leadership in a cross-cultural context. In this review, we describe major advances and emerging patterns in this research domain over the last several years. Our starting point for this update is roughly 1996–1997, since those are the dates of two important reviews of the cross-cultural leadership literature [specifically, House, Wright, and Aditya (House, R. J., Wright, N. S., & Aditya, R. N. (1997). Cross-cultural research on organizational leadership: A critical analysis and a proposed theory. In: P. C. Earley, & M. Erez (Eds.), New perspectives on international industrial/organizational psychology (pp. 535–625). San Francisco, CA) and Dorfman (Dorfman, P. W. (1996). International and cross-cultural leadership research. In: B. J. Punnett, & O. Shenkar (Eds.), Handbook for international management research, pp. 267–349, Oxford, UK: Blackwell)]. We describe the beginnings of the decline in the quest for universal leadership principles that apply equivalently across all cultures, and we focus on the increasing application of the dimensions of culture identified by Hofstede [Hofstede, G. (1980). Culture's consequences: International differences in work-related values (Abridged ed.). Newbury Park, CA: Sage] and others to describe variation in leadership styles, practices, and preferences. We also note the emergence of the field of cross-cultural leadership as a legitimate and independent field of endeavor, as reflected in the emergence of publication outlets for this research, and the establishment of long-term multinational multi-investigator research programs on the topic. We conclude with a discussion of progress made since the two pieces that were our departure point, and of progress yet to be made.