Floral abundance and richness drive beneficial arthropod conservation and biological control on golf courses

Urban Ecosystems - Golf courses are among the largest, most ubiquitous highly maintained urban green spaces in the U.S. Although their primary function is recreation, a large portion of golf course...     

Parental sensitivity and friendship development: The mediating role of cooperation

Interactions with mothers and fathers form a critical foundation for youths’ later peer relationships. This study focused on the associations of maternal and paternal sensitivity in third grade with friendship outcomes in sixth grade. Because interactions with parents provide the earliest opportunities for children to learn prosocial behaviors such as cooperation, and cooperation is theoretically conceptualized as a foundation of friendship, cooperation may play a role in the link between parenting and children’s later social relationships. Using the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development sample (N = 955; 51% female; 83% White), and a multimethod, multireporter longitudinal design, children’s cooperation was tested as a mediating mechanism that linked parental sensitivity to early adolescent friendship. Results indicated that most indirect paths from both mothers and fathers’ sensitivity to observed friendship interactions and perceived friendship quality, via cooperation, were significant. Findings provide a more concrete understanding of how parental sensitivity translates to better friendships.     

Persistence and desistance in heavy cannabis use: the role of identity,agency, and life events

Many cannabis users ‘mature out’ of their drug use, and factors of cannabis use cessation have been identified. However, very little in-depth knowledge is available about the mechanisms underlying this phenomenon. Criminological studies have gained interesting insights in desistance from crime, yet these perspectives are rarely used in drug research. This qualitative, three-year longitudinal study explored the processes involved in desistance from frequent cannabis use for young adults. Using a narrative approach, desisters (frequent users who successfully quit their cannabis use) and persisters (frequent users with a persistent desire and unsuccessful attempts to quit) were compared. In the course of the study, desisters mainly exhibited increasing agency and goal setting, established strategies to achieve these goals, and could envision another self. Desistance was generally induced by life events that became turning points. Persisters experienced largely similar events, but lacked goals and strategies and held external factors responsible for their life course and failed quit attempts. Identity change is at the core of desistance from frequent cannabis use, and the meaning-giving to life events and experiences is essential. Agency is a necessary ingredient for desistance, develops over time and through action, and leads to a new drug-free identity with desistance in turn increasing agency.     

A Comparative International Analysis of Religion and Spirituality in Social Work: A Survey of UK and US Social Workers

As service populations have changed, the social work profession in the UK and the US has attempted to respond to the needs of diverse cultures, which often include issues of religion and spirituality. This can be problematic, however, due to the extrication of religious and spiritual concerns from the public social services that resulted from the process of secularization. Members of the British Association of Social Workers (BASW) and the National Association of Social Workers (NASW) in the US were sampled to explore the attitudes and perceptions of social workers regarding the placement of religion and spirituality in practice and education. In general, US social workers in this sample were more accepting of religion and spirituality than their UK counterparts, even among those respondents who expressed non‐religious world views (e.g. atheism). A majority of the respondents in the UK (76%) and the US (73%) indicated that their training programs lacked content on religion and spirituality. In the UK, 57% of the respondents believed that social workers should increase their knowledge on spirituality, compared with 90% of the US respondents. The lower level of acceptance of religion and spirituality among UK social workers may be related to higher levels of secularism in UK society.     

“That Model is Sooooo Last Millennium!” Residential Long-Term Care as a System,Not a Place

The current quandary with the design of existing long-term care settings results from focus on structures (“institutions”) instead of on a system of supports and services that transcends physical and traditional boundaries across settings, including nursing homes, assisted living residences, and the home. Supported by analyses of the commonalities, socio-historical and political contexts, core values, and fallacies of social and medical models in existing and emerging long-term care options, a holistic model is proposed based on new core values that facilitate community and family integration and that asserts dignity and personhood as universal attributes in an array of settings.     

Hidden three-state survival model for bivariate longitudinal count data

Lifetime Data Analysis - A model is presented that describes bivariate longitudinal count data by conditioning on a progressive illness-death process where the two living states are latent. The...     

Design-based analysis of embedded experiments with applications in the Dutch Labour Force Survey

Summary.  Previous research has proposed a design-based analysis procedure for experiments that are embedded in complex sampling designs in which the ultimate sampling units of an on-going sample survey are randomized over different treatments according to completely randomized designs or randomized block designs. Design-based Wald and t -statistics are applied to test whether sample means that are observed under various survey implementations are significantly different. This approach is generalized to experimental designs in which clusters of sampling units are randomized over the different treatments. Furthermore, test statistics are derived to test differences between ratios of two sample estimates that are observed under alternative survey implementations. The methods are illustrated with a simulation study and real life applications of experiments that are embedded in the Dutch Labour Force Survey. The functionality of a software package that was developed to conduct these analyses is described.