Assessing small community groups

Many community groups in the UK do micro-project work to help families and young people in low-income neighbourhoods. This paper establishes a common set of criteria for assessing the effectiveness of small community groups and uses these as basis for developing an evaluation tool for community groups and those working with them. It draws on the literature to identify those factors that are seen to be important to the functioning of community groups, where necessary adapting these to smaller groups. These criteria are then ‘tested’ on a small number of community groups across the UK, using a participative approach and questionnaire to explore these issues with each group. Our framework appears to capture all the key aspects of the groups we visited, although some of the assessment criteria need to be interpreted carefully, helping to refine our own understanding of what makes a good community group. This approach is a useful way for community groups to identify their own strengths and weaknesses and, if developed further, has potential applications in the evaluation of capacity-building schemes.     

Assessment of Intimate Partner Violence by Child Welfare Services

The purpose of this study was to describe policy and practice with respect to the assessment of intimate partner violence in a sample of child welfare agencies located throughout the United States and to examine the relationship of contextual characteristics and assessment practices. Telephone interviews were conducted with key informants from child welfare agencies. A snowball interviewing strategy was used to identify the best informant in each agency. Almost all of the participating agencies conducted some assessment of intimate partner violence, with most reporting that the majority of screening or assessment occurred during investigation of referrals. However, only 43.1% reported that all of the families referred to the child welfare system were assessed for intimate partner violence, and 52.8% indicated they had a written policy pertaining to screening and assessment of the problem. There was little relationship between county or agency characteristics and assessment practices. Additional research is needed to determine factors that influence assessment practices and to identify strategies to support and extend efforts to identify intimate partner violence and provide appropriate services for families in the child welfare system.     

Linguistic Markers of Psychological State through Media Interviews: John Kerry and John Edwards in 2004, Al Gore in 2000

What can we learn about presidential candidates by examining their speech in natural conversation? In the present study, the television interviews from the 2004 Democratic presidential primary campaign of John Kerry ( N = 29) and John Edwards ( N = 34) were examined using linguistic analyses. Results indicate that Kerry and Edwards were similar in their use of positive emotion words, but that Kerry used significantly higher rates of negative emotion words than did Edwards. Comparisons with televised interviews of Al Gore from the 2000 presidential campaign ( N = 17) revealed striking similarities in the linguistic styles of Gore and Kerry. Gore's linguistic style overlapped considerably with that of Kerry on pronoun usage and many cognitive domains. This study points to how linguistic analyses can give us a clearer picture of how political candidates think, act, and feel.     

Predictors of High-Risk Sexual Behavior Among Individuals Living with HIV Disease and AIDS

An important focus of the 1996 World Aids Conference related to the extent of unprotected sex among gay men, particularly those in their twenties. This paper will use logistic analysis to explore the extent of unsafe sexual practices among individuals living in Bexar County, Texas, who are HIV+ assymptomatic, HIV+ symptomatic, or have AIDS. Using survey research data, we assess the significance and impact of various independent factors on whether respondents reported they did or did not engage in unprotected sex. The most striking finding is that unprotected sexual activity is prevalent regardless of demographic and/or status differences among respondents. Findings reinforce the use of community planning processes, which emphasize the importance of sound behavioral and social science combined with efforts to include the affected constituency to create effective HIV prevention programs.     

Robust inference for bivariate point processes

In the analysis of recurrent events where the primary interest lies in studying covariate effects on the expected number of events occurring over a period of time, it is appealing to base models on the cumulative mean function (CMF) of the processes (Lawless & Nadeau 1995). In many chronic diseases, however, more than one type of event is manifested. Here we develop a robust inference procedure for joint regression models for the CMFs arising from a bivariate point process. Consistent parameter estimates with robust variance estimates are obtained via unbiased estimating functions for the CMFs. In most situations, the covariance structure of the bivariate point processes is difficult to specify correctly, but when it is known, an optimal estimating function for the CMFs can be obtained. As a convenient model for more general settings, we suggest the use of the estimating functions arising from bivariate mixed Poisson processes. Simulation studies demonstrate that the estimators based on this working model are practically unbiased with robust variance estimates. Furthermore, hypothesis tests may be based on the generalized Wald or generalized score tests. Data from a trial of patients with bronchial asthma are analyzed to illustrate the estimation and inference procedures.     

Gender Role Ideology and the Gender Based Differences in Earnings

Much of the research on gender differences in occupational earnings still focuses on human capital and the structure of the labor market. However, these variables rarely explain even half of the gender gap in earnings. Most research has examined the impact of gender role ideology as it impacts occupational choice, which indirectly can impact earnings. Using data from the National Opinion Research Center General Social Surveys, this research focuses on the relationship between attitudes about gender roles and two variables: (a) earnings, and (b) occupational positions held by women and men. Findings show that traditional gender-role ideology contributes to lower observed earnings for both males and females, independent of the influences of human capital characteristics, occupational context, and ascribed characteristics. Results support socialization as a partial explanation for the gender-based earnings differences and suggest that, to the extent that economic rewards are used to assess the value of gender role expectations, traditional gender role attitudes might continue to change and lead to relatively equal earnings among women and men.     

Subjective well-being and school engagement before versus during the COVID-19 pandemic: What good are positive emotions?

The present study overcomes the limited empirical evidence on the association between well-being and school engagement in times of adversity by exploiting available data from two large and comparable samples of eighth graders; one obtained prior to the COVID-19 pandemic and the second obtained during the pandemic. Results suggest that adolescents were less engaged with their learning context during the pandemic, as well as lower in positive and negative affect, but slightly more satisfied with life. Through SEM we found a stronger positive association between positive affect and school engagement in the COVID-19 group compared with the pre-COVID-19 group. This finding highlights the important role of positive affect in supporting better academic functioning in the aftermath of a global crisis.     

INQUIRY METHOD,GOAL DIFFICULTY,AND CONTEXT EFFECTS ON PERFORMANCE

The decision-making in this study compares the performance of the dialectical inquiry (DI) and the devil's advocate (DA) techniques. In addition, the task was structured to include three levels of goal difficulty and three decision-making contexts. Over all contexts, there were no significant differences between the DI and DA methods. When the DI technique was employed, however, the context of the decision appeared to be an important factor. The goal-difficulty factor was associated with significant effects on decision quality only when individuals were divided according to their perceptions of goal relevancy and meaning. Finally, the order in which the contexts were considered was important.     

INTERVENTIONS INTO GROUP PROCESS: AN APPROACH TO IMPROVING THE EFFECTIVENESS OF GROUPS*

Some new directions for research on group effectiveness are proposed. These include: (a) explicit recognition of group interaction process as the moderator of input-output relationships in groups; (b) research which focuses on the functions of group interaction in influencing group performance; and (c) use of experimental interventions which create new, non-typical patterns of interpersonal behavior in groups as an approach to studying group effectiveness. The results of two studies based on these proposals are summarized. One study examines the effectiveness of implicit vs. explicit discussion of group task “strategies”; the other addresses the effects of implicit (“traditional”) vs. explicit (“adaptive”) approaches to the maintenance of internal social relationships in work groups. Implications of the research are drawn both for future research on group effectiveness, and for the design of interventions aimed at improving the performance of on-going groups in organizations.