ADOLESCENTS' INCONSISTENCY IN SELF-REPORTED SMOKING: A COMPARISON OF REPORTS IN SCHOOL AND IN HOUSEHOLD SETTINGS

Extent and sources of inconsistency in self-reported cigarette smoking between self-administered school surveys and household interviews was examined in two longitudinal multiethnic adolescent samples, the urban Transition to Nicotine Dependence in Adolescence (TND) (N = 832) and the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health) (N = 4,414). Inconsistency was defined as a positive report of smoking in school followed by a negative report in the household. Smoking questions were ascertained with paper-and-pencil instruments (PAPI-SAQ) in school in both studies, and computer-assisted personal interviewing (CAPI) in TND but audio computer-assisted self-interviewing (ACASI) in Add Health in the household. In TND, 23.5 percent of youths who reported smoking lifetime and 20.4 percent of those who reported smoking the last 12 months in the school survey reported in the household never having smoked; in Add Health, the latter was 8.6 percent. Logistic regressions identified five common correlates of inconsistency across the two studies: younger age, ethnic minority status, lesser involvement in deviant activities, having nonsmoking parents and friends. In TND, interviewing of youth and parent by the same interviewer increased inconsistent reporting. Matching the definition of inconsistent reporting and the age, gender and race/ethnic distributions of TND on an urban Add Health subsample reduced the predicted rate of inconsistency in TND. The estimated bias attributable to CAPI compared with ACASI methodology did not reach significance in the aggregated matched samples suggesting that irrespective of administration mode, household interviews decrease reporting of smoking, especially among younger, minority and more conventional youths embedded in a social network of nonsmokers.     

Partitioning Pearson's Chi-Squared Statistic for a Completely Ordered Three-Way Contingency Table

The paper presents a partition of the Pearson chi-squared statistic for triply ordered three-way contingency tables. The partition invokes orthogonal polynomials and identifies three-way association terms as well as each combination of two-way associations. This partition provides information about the structure of each variable by identifying important bivariate and trivariate associations in terms of location (linear), dispersion (quadratic) and higher order components. The significance of each term in the partition, and each association within each term can also be determined.
The paper compares the chi-squared partition with the log-linear models of Agresti (1994) for multi-way contingency tables with ordinal categories, by generalizing the model proposed by Haberman (1974).     

Commitment to Work Among Welfare‐Reliant Women

The purpose of this article is to describe the work of welfare‐reliant women and to reveal commitment to work in the experiences of 84 welfare‐reliant, rural women interviewed for this study. Understanding the domains where welfare‐reliant women exhibit commitment to work may help policy makers, trainers, and employers design and implement interventions that enhance chances of success for these women in the formal, paid workforce. Discussion focuses on the women's formal labor force participation in the past and desire for wage work in the future; barriers to labor force participation, both personal and in the rural job market; informal work and the work of care; support networks; survival strategies for making ends meet while receiving welfare; and the stigma of welfare receipt.     

Contributions to adaptive estimation

There are many statistics which can be used to characterize data sets and provide valuable information regarding the data distribution, even for large samples. Traditional measures, such as skewness and kurtosis, mentioned in introductory statistics courses, are rarely applied. A variety of other measures of tail length, skewness and tail weight have been proposed, which can be used to describe the underlying population distribution. Adaptive statistical procedures change the estimator of location, depending on sample characteristics. The success of these estimators depends on correctly classifying the underlying distribution model. Advocates of adaptive distribution testing propose to proceed by assuming (1) that an appropriate model, say Omega , is such that Omega { Omega , Omega , i i 1 2 … , Omega }, and (2) that the character of the model selection process is statistically k independent of the hypothesis testing. We review the development of adaptive linear estimators and adaptive maximum-likelihood estimators.     

Effects of urbanization on butterfly species richness,guild structure,and rarity

We evaluated the effects of landscape characteristics associated with urbanization, as well as local features, on butterfly species richness at four spatial scales (50, 150, 500, and 1,000 m from survey plots). We also evaluated these effects separately by butterfly guilds based on their region-wide rarity and on degree of specialization. The distribution of abundances of the 44 species observed showed an excess of uncommon species compared to a log-normal distribution, and the two most abundant species were exotic (Thymelicus lineola and Pieris rapae). We used an information theoretic approach to model selection to determine the most important correlates of butterfly species richness. Models of mean butterfly richness per visit explained greater variance than did models of cumulative richness across the season. Cumulative butterfly species richness was affected more at larger spatial scales, while richness per visit was affected similarly at all spatial scales. The most consistent local factor affecting butterfly diversity was the number of nectar producing plants that were flowering. The most consistent landscape-level correlates of species richness were number of people (at small spatial scales) and green space. Measures of increased urbanization were associated with decreased butterfly species richness, and rare and specialized species were most affected. Species that were regionally rare, and those that specialized both in host plants and had few broods, disappeared with declining richness across sites 2.9–4.5 times faster than did generalists and less restricted specialists.     

Intraorganizational Implementation Research: Theory and Method

The article presents a process by which qualitative case studyimplementation research may be cumulated. Using the conceptof the hermeneutic spiral, an iterative process is employedin order to increase understanding of welfare implementationsince the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity ReconciliationAct. This process involves a review of recent welfare reformliterature, the use of the knowing organization model (KOM)as a research frame for understanding the existing literatureand the application of the KOM to primary data collected fromcounty welfare offices in Pennsylvania.     

Shame and guilt in child protection social work: new interpretations and opportunities for practice

Shame is an underexplored and misunderstood emotion. It can be described as an acute awareness of one's flawed and unworthy self. It is the primary social emotion and one of our most intimate feelings developed within the context of our family of origin, which can have a devastating effect on an individual and their relationships. Social workers are routinely faced with issues of shame as an intrinsic consequence of the matters with which social work deals and also as a result of how both families and workers experience the child protection process. This paper outlines the research on shame and guilt to argue for a re‐evaluation of the key challenges faced by child protection social workers. It is argued that shame experienced by parents and carers potentially plays a significant role in these challenges, while it may be argued that ‘guilt’ has had a bad press and may potentially play an important role in the successes. An argument is made for a shame‐reducing child protection social work practice with some key themes for practitioners to consider in their attempt to improve the accuracy of assessments and intervention.     

Perceptions of Academic Health Science Research Center Personnel Regarding Informed Consent Processes and Therapeutic Misconception

Introduction: Instrumentation exists to measure voluntariness and misunderstanding in informed consent processes. However, research personnel’s perspectives about using instrumentation to measure therapeutic misconceptions in research participants has not been reported. We designed a workshop to promote research personnel knowledge of emerging instrumentation and to study the perceptions of research personnel regarding such instruments.

Methods and Findings: Two nationally recognized experts who have developed psychometric instruments to measure aspects of informed consent presented their recent findings to research personnel of the Medical University of South Carolina at a one-day workshop. Following the presentations, workshop attendees divided into two focus groups and shared their perceptions regarding the presentation content. Inductive thematic analysis detected themes related to informed consent processes including: investigator/provider role clarity; investigator transparency; therapeutic misconception; and screening subjects for understanding.

Conclusion: Our findings suggest future directions in applied, proactive empirical research to better understand investigator perceptions and practices related to transparency in research, and to develop instrumentation to detect risks to the integrity of informed consent in order to promote voluntariness and autonomy and minimize therapeutic misconception in research practices.