Factor structure of quality of life: The Lehman interview

This study of 67 chronically mentally ill outpatients with psychotic disorders examined subjective quality of life scores from Lehman's Quality of Life (QOL) interview. Factor analyses identified ‘Affiliative’ and ‘Instrumental’ dimensions which accounted for 67% of the variance in subjective satisfaction ratings. The results suggest a model in which instrumental and affiliative needs comprise significant portions of subjective life satisfaction and that global QOL satisfaction is related more to instrumental than affiliative needs. These findings further clarify the concept of life satisfaction in this population of severely mentally ill individuals and suggest modifications in how quality of life information is evaluated.     

Promising practices in understanding and treating child neglect

Child neglect is the most common type of child maltreatment in the United States. However, services provided to families who neglect often fail to address and treat the primary concerns associated with child neglect. The information provided in this paper identifies the primary problems contributing to child neglect, and some promising practices in child welfare casework that address these problems and show positive outcomes for the children and families who experience child neglect. Knowledge pertaining to assessment skills, treatment abilities, and model programmes is provided.     

Socio‐Emotional Context and Adolescents' Decision Making: The Experience of Regret and Relief After Social Comparison

Many studies indicate that adolescents are hypersensitive to rewards in salient socio‐emotional contexts. However, little is known about adolescents' sensitivity to complex negative emotions. To study the development of the ability to experience regret and relief, children, adolescents, and young adults performed a gambling task in a socio‐emotional context of competition, in which they were informed that their outcome would be compared with that of a competitor. The context of competition impacted the feelings of regret and relief in adolescents. When adolescents experienced an initial negative outcome, their feeling of relief was reinforced. However, they did not seem to experience regret in the social context of competition. These results provide a possible explanation for adolescents' enhanced risk seeking.     

Time Out for Childcare: Signalling and Earnings Rebound Effects for Men and Women

ABSTRACT: The wage cost of time out of the labor force for childcare is important in order to understand the functioning of labor markets and for public policy. This paper reviews the literature and identifies several limitations. Using employment records of a large Swedish company over the period 1983-88, we demonstrate an alternative approach for estimating earnings effects and find a year out costs 1.7 percent of earnings for a woman and 5.2 percent for a man. This large effect for men raises questions of signalling costs. For both men and women, earnings‘'rebound'’for time out in the more distant past.