Child Aware Practice in Adult Social Services: A Scoping Review

The development of “child aware” practice is about the capacity and capability of adult health and social service providers to identify and respond to the needs of children. A scoping review of the literature considered five adult adversities associated with family stress and reduced parenting capacity: mental illness, alcohol and substance abuse, homelessness, intellectual disability, and domestic violence. Although there are specific needs for children pertaining to particular adversities, there was substantial commonality of potential effects. These included emotional and psychological difficulties, physical and mental health problems, academic difficulties, language delays, peer difficulties, stigma, trauma reactions, loss and grief, instability, and social exclusion. How children react to difficulties in their family depends upon various protective factors, a child's frame of reference, and other dynamics within the family that can offset risks. The findings aim to inform policy, program development, and practice in adult social services, enhancing their responsiveness to children.     

Playground Accessibility and Neighbourhood Social Interaction Among Parents

While the positive association between social interaction and access to green space is well accepted, little research has sought to understand the role of children??s playgrounds in facilitating social interaction within a community. Playgrounds are spaces designed to facilitate play and the interaction of children, but may also be important places of interaction between parents. In this paper we examine how access to playground spaces is related to social interaction between parents. We use two measures of accessibility (1) walking distance to the closest playground and (2) playground service area, a measure of the number of potential users of a playground based on population density. We use generalized estimating equations, an extension of generalized linear models, to control for the confounding effects of socio-economic status (income, education), neighbourhood dynamics (neighbourhood location, years in neighbourhood) and free time (daily outdoor activity, marital status, number of children) on the independent relationship between social interaction and access to playground spaces. Our results suggest that while accessibility to playgrounds is associated with social interaction among parents, the direction of the effect is opposite to existing literature on green space and social interaction; parents with low accessibility to playgrounds are more likely to interact socially with their neighbours than parents with high accessibility. Our results suggest a pattern of spatial behaviour in which the burden of poor access to some resources may actually encourage greater neighbourhood engagement. Future research studying the relationship between health and green space may benefit from studying the specific role of playground spaces.     

Intimate Partner Violence,Minority Stress,and Sexual Risk-Taking Among U.S. Men Who Have Sex With Men

This article examines the prevalence of intimate partner violence (IPV) among a national sample of Internet-recruited U.S. men who have sex with men (MSM) (n = 1,575), and associations between reporting of IPV, minority stress, and sexual risk-taking. Five outcomes are examined: experiences of physical and sexual violence, perpetration of physical and sexual violence, and unprotected anal intercourse (UAI) at last sexual encounter. MSM who reported experiencing more homophobic discrimination and internalized homophobia were more likely to report experiences of IPV. The results point to the need for prevention messages to address the external and internal stressors that influence both violence and sexual risk among MSM.     

Introductory Statistics Textbooks and the GAISE Recommendations

The six recommendations made by the Guidelines for Assessment and Instruction in Statistics Education (GAISE) committee were first communicated in 2005 and more formally in 2010. In this article, 25 introductory statistics textbooks are examined to assess how well these textbooks have incorporated the three GAISE recommendations most relevant to implementation in textbooks (statistical literacy and thinking; use of real data; stress concepts over procedures). The implementation of another recommendation (using technology) is described but not assessed. In general, most textbooks appear to be adopting the GAISE recommendations reasonably well in both exposition and exercises. The textbooks are particularly adept at using real data, using real data well, and promoting statistical literacy. Textbooks are less adept—but still rated reasonably well, in general—at explaining concepts over procedures and promoting statistical thinking. In contrast, few textbooks have easy-usable glossaries of statistical terms to assist with understanding of statistical language and literacy development. Supplementary materials for this article are available online.     

Dynamic reasoning and time pressure: Transition from analytical operations to experiential responses

Based upon the Decision Field Theory (Busemeyer and Townsend 1993), we tested a model of dynamic reasoning to predict the effect of time pressure on analytical and experiential processing during decision-making. Forty-six participants were required to make investment decisions under four levels of time pressure. In each decision, participants were presented with experiential cues which were either congruent or incongruent with the analytical information. The congruent/incongruent conditions allowed us to examine how many decisions were based upon the experiential versus the analytical information, and to see if this was affected by the varying degrees of time pressure. As expected, the overall accuracy was reduced with greater time pressure and accuracy was higher when the experiential and analytical cues were congruent than when they were incongruent. Of great interest was the data showing that under high time pressure participants used more experiential cues than at other time pressures. We suggest that the dynamic reasoning paradigm has some future potential for predicting the effects of experiential biases in general, and specifically under time pressure.     

MEASURING THE INTERDEPENDENCE OF MULTINATIONAL FIRMS' FOREIGN INVESTMENTS

Earlier work found evidence for geographic linkages of aggregate foreign direct investment across countries and country‐pairs. From a theoretical point of view, such linkages at the macroeconomic level may root in between‐firm as well as within‐firm linkages and originate from information spillovers across or within firms in exploring unknown markets, and vertical linkages between production plants across different locations within the firm. We use data on the universe of German multinational enterprises (MNEs) to empirically explore how marginal investments at one foreign affiliate depend on investments at other affiliates within the same MNE. The empirical approach employs two channels or modes of cross‐affiliate interdependence: mere geography (capturing horizontal linkages through correlated learning and horizontal competition within the firm) and input–output relationships within or across industries (which capture vertical linkages). Adding to earlier findings at the aggregate level, we find evidence of a significant interdependence of investments within the firm. In the firm‐level data at hand, vertical linkages appear to be more important than horizontal ones. Investments at one location tend to stimulate investments at other locations of the same MNE, particularly if input linkages are strong. The opposite seems to be true for output linkages. Beyond vertical linkages, mere geographic proximity matters only to a minor extent. This suggests that evidence of linkages through geographic closeness at aggregate data levels accrue mainly to reasons of vertical linkages within networks of affiliates. (JEL C31, D22, F21, F23, F68, G31, H32)