Methodological approaches to the analyses of elder abuse screening measures: Application of latent variable measurement modeling to the WC-RAPS

While several elder abuse screens exist, few measure risk and none target long-term support services. The aims were to examine the psychometric properties of the Weinberg Center Risk and Abuse Prevention Screen (WC-RAPS), comparing approaches to modeling self-reported risk and abuse in relation to reported Adult Protective Services contacts. Methods: The sample (n = 7,035), admissions to managed long-term care (79%) and short-term rehabilitation (20%), was primarily (66%) female, with mean age 77.6 (SD = 9.10); 7% each were African American and Latino and 12% Asian. Latent variable models were used to examine measurement properties of six indicators of abuse and five of risk. Results: Good model fit and stable subscale measurement models were observed across analyses. Reliability was >0.80 across methods, and concurrent criterion validity estimates were as expected. Conclusion: Evidence supported the reliability and concurrent criterion validity of the risk and abuse subscales in an ethnically diverse cohort.     

Not the Israel of My Elementary School: An Exploration of Jewish-Canadian Secondary Students' Attempts to Process Morally Complex Israeli Narratives

The following article presents data from a mixed-methods practitioner research study that focuses on understanding how Jewish secondary students learned about controversial topics in Israel's history and how these topics impacted their connection to the country. The responses that were provided by the students showed that the material forced students to conceptualize Israel in new ways and that the material— learning from Palestinian and Israeli texts about events that happened in 1947 and 1948—was disruptive to their preconceived notions of Israel. With the passing of time, the students were able to reflect on the real difficulty they had with learning about the topics but were able to synthesize the disruption into their Israel narrative to arrive at a new understanding. The integration of this new material into existing schema is understood within the context of dangerous memories, and how learning about controversial moments in nationalist narratives can impact the way students learn and relate to a topic. A further finding was that some students expressed resentment at previous educational experiences for not being fully transparent about historical events.     

Existential Risks to Humanity Should Concern International Policymakers and More Could Be Done in Considering Them at the International Governance Level

In this perspective, we consider the possible role of the United Nations (UN) with respect to existential risks to human civilization and the survival of humanity. We illustrate how existential risks have been discussed at an international governance level, specifically in documents in the UN Digital Library. In this large corpus, discussions of nuclear war account for over two-thirds (69%, 67/97) of mentions of existential risks, while mention of other existential risks, or such risks as a category, appears scant. We take these observations to imply inadequate attention to these significant threats. These deficits, combined with the need for a global response to many risks, suggest that UN member nations should urgently advocate for appropriate action at the UN to address threats, such as artificial intelligence, synthetic biology, geoengineering, and supervolcanic eruption, in analogous fashion to existing attempts to mitigate the threats from nuclear war or near-Earth objects.     

Island refuges for surviving nuclear winter and other abrupt sunlight-reducing catastrophes

Some island nations in the Southern Hemisphere might survive a severe sun-reducing catastrophe such as nuclear winter and be well placed to help reboot-collapsed human civilization. Such islands must be resilient to the cascading effects abrupt sunlight reduction scenarios (ASRS) would impose beyond the impacts on agricultural systems. We aimed to identify island nations whose societies are most likely to survive nuclear winter or other ASRS. We also aimed to conduct a case study of one island nation to consider how it might enhance its resilience and therefore its chance of aiding a global reboot of complex technological society. We performed a threshold analysis on food self-sufficiency under severe nuclear winter conditions to identify islands. We then profiled each island across global macroindices representing resilience factors reported in the literature. We undertook a case study of the island nation of New Zealand. The island nations of Australia, New Zealand, Iceland, the Solomon Islands, and Vanuatu appear most resilient to ASRS. However, our case-study island nation of New Zealand is threatened in scenarios of no/low trade, has precarious aspects of its energy supply, and shortcomings in manufacturing of essential components. Therefore, inadequate preparations and critical failures in these systems could see rapid societal breakdown. Despite some islands’ favorable baseline conditions and apparent food security even in a severe ASRS, cascading impacts through other socioecological systems threaten complex functioning. We identified specific resilience measures, many with cobenefits, which may protect island nodes of sustained complexity in ASRS.     

Shared Governance in Communities: Using Study Circles to Put Citizens at the Center of the System

This article describes four communities where citizens and government are participating in a dialogue and action process called study circles. Together, the organizers, citizens, and public officials of these communities are beginning to recognize the potential benefits of sharing the decisions and tasks of governance.     

Reliability reporting practices in youth life satisfaction research

Due to the emergence of positive psychology in recent years, a growing line of research has focused on aspects of psychological wellness rather than psychopathology. Within the context of positive psychology, life satisfaction has emerged as a key variable of study in relation to adult and youth populations. Accurate measurement of life satisfaction and subsequent interpretation of results requires that the assessment devices yield strong psychometric properties. In terms of consistent measurement, reliability estimates must be calculated with each administration, as changes in sample characteristics may alter the scale’s ability to generate reliable scores. Therefore, the present study was designed to address reliability reporting practices for three youth life satisfaction measures. Seventy-three occasions of use were identified in the literature for the three scales examined in this study. Results suggest that greater than half of the life satisfaction studies calculated reliability coefficients from their own data. A discussion of reliability from classical test theory is provided, examples of correct reliability reporting practices are given, and implications for reporting reliability are discussed.     

Reducing Absenteeism and Rescheduling Among Grocery Store Employees With Point-Contingent Rewards

The purpose of this research was to evaluate a reward program designed to reduce absenteeism among staff (N = 38) at a grocery store. The intervention included public feedback and a credit reward system whereby participants got store dollars for attendance and authorized rescheduling of work assignments. Results showed that absenteeism decreased from a group mean of 8 shifts missed per week during baseline to 4.25 shifts missed per week during the intervention before increasing to 6.75 shifts missed per week during the reversal phase. The mean total rescheduling occurrences were reduced from a baseline average of 19.83 per week to 9.25 per week during the intervention and returned to 22.25 per week during the reversal. Employees were also less likely to leave early during the intervention period.     

Exploring the relationship between gambling,debt and financial management in Britain

The issue of how and why gamblers end up in debt has received comparatively little attention in the literature. Data from the 2007 Adult Psychiatric Morbidity Survey (APMS) revealed that although problem gamblers were more likely than non-problem gamblers to have forms of financial debt, just under two-thirds of problem gamblers (62%) reported having no debt. Using a qualitative approach, this study aimed to explore the issue from the perspective of gamblers themselves through interviews with 27 purposively sampled gamblers drawn from participants who took part in the APMS and the British Gambling Prevalence Survey 2010. Analysis, using the Framework method, suggested the existence of four kinds of gamblers categorized by their approach to gambling spending and their approach to their general spending: ‘controlled gamblers’, ‘uncontrolled gamblers’, ‘uncontrolled spenders’ and ‘chaotic spenders’. Also proposed on the basis of these data is an ecological model which aims to capture the different levels of personal and environmental factors that influenced people's financial decisions, including cognitive factors, control and compulsion, normative spending, resource and financial management, and the credit environment. The implications for practice are also discussed.