The Impacts of Acculturative Stress and Social Competence on the Mental Health of Mainland Chinese Immigrant Youth in Hong Kong

Correspondence to Dr Daniel Fu Keung Wong, Associate Professor in the Department of Social Work and Social Adminstration, 1317 K K Leung Building, The University of Hong Kong, Pokfulam Road, Hong Kong.E-mail: dfkwong{at}hkucc.hku.hk Summary Attempts were made to examine migration stressors, social competence,and mental health status of immigrant youth in Hong Kong andto examine the effects of social competence on stress and themental health of immigrant youth. Data on 106 immigrant youth,which were collected through a structured questionnaire, wereanalysed. It was discovered that immigrant youth found survivalissues and losses, rather than cultural differences and unfulfilledexpectations, to be stressful. Male immigrant youth exhibitedmore psychological distress symptoms than female immigrant youth.Hierarchical regression analyses revealed that social competenceexerted moderating effects on stress and the mental health ofimmigrant youth. Immigrant youth who had a higher level of socialcompetence, in terms of self-control, empathy, assertivenessand the ability to read social cues, had less stress and enjoyedbetter mental health. In conclusion, personal and socio-culturalreasons are put forward to explain the findings. Practice andpolicy implications are also discussed.     

Quality of Life in Older Adults: Benefits from Caring Services in Hong Kong

Many older adults are in need of care. Therefore, older people would generally benefit from the use of caring services, notably including home care, residential care, nursing, and medical services. The contributory factors underlying caring services tend to be a caring perspective that aspires to sustain older people’s social relationships and real-life involvement. To gauge the benefits from various social and health services, the present study relies on a large-scale survey of 3000 older adults in Hong Kong, using quality of life as a criterion. Results showed that an older adult who had used (ordinary or enhanced) home care services for a longer time turned out to have appreciably more improvement in quality of life. Besides, those who joined an interest group more frequently were higher in quality of life, including the health domain. On the other hand, frequent use of medical and meal-to-home services were signals that reflected problems detrimental to the older user’s quality of life. Despite this, the quality of clinics or hospitals, as perceived by the older adult, was the most beneficial. As such, caring services that foster older adults’ interests, cater to their health care needs, and embody quality can have principal contribution to their users’ quality of life.     

Should we be very cautious or extremely cautious on measures that may involve our destruction?

For decisions (e.g. nuclear power development, environmental protection, genetic engineering) that may affect the probabilities of the continued survival of the human race, whether we should be very cautious or extremely cautious (defined as refusing to undertake anything that may reduce our survival probabilities) depends on whether our expected welfare is finite or infinite. If it is infinite, a paradox arises in the trade-off between our own expected welfare and that of future generations, since a small fraction (probability change) of infinity is still infinite. However, limitations on population size and average welfare suggest a finite expected welfare but the possibility of transforming our own selves perhaps by genetic engineering increases our expected welfare tremendously but still finite.The author acknowledges the helpful comments of John Broome and Maurice Salles.     

Orientalist Knowledge and Social Theories: China and the European Conceptions of East‐West Differences from 1600 to 1900

This paper examines the long‐term development of Orientalism as an intellectual field, with the European learning of China between ca.1600 and ca.1900 as an exemplary case. My analysis will be aided by a theoretical framework based on a synthesis of the world‐system and network perspectives on long‐run intellectual change. Analyzing recurrent debates on China within European intellectual circles, I demonstrate that the Western conception of the East has been oscillating between universalism and particularism, and between naive idealization and racist bias. This oscillation is a function as much of the changing political economy of the capitalist world‐system as of the endogenous politics of the intellectual field. Despite their contrasting views, both admirers and despisers of the East viewed non‐Western civilizations as uniform wholes that had never changed. I argue that the fundamental fallacy of Orientalism lay, not in its presumptions about the ontological differences between East and West and the former's inferiority, as previous critics of Orientalism have supposed, but in its reductionism. Understanding non‐Western civilizations in their full dynamism and heterogeneity is a critical step toward the renewal of the twentieth‐century social theories that were built upon and impaired by the Orientalist knowledge accumulated in the previous centuries.     

Politics and Productivity

We use a stochastic frontier approach to study the effects of political and regulatory institutions on aggregate productivity in 39 countries from 1975 to 1990. We show that technical efficiency is positively related to policies supporting laissez-faire and political structures that promote policy stability. Moreover, models of technical efficiency incorporating both measures perform better than models including only one or the other. This suggests that economic performance depends not only on current policies but also on the confidence of market participants and outside investors that these policies will remain in place.     

A case for cardinal utility and non-arbitrary choice of commodity units

With preference changes, cardinal utility is indispensable. For any necessity good, there exists an intermediate consumption level at which a change in preference intensity has no effect on utility, below/above which an increase in preference intensity decreases/increases utility. This is supported by an indicative empirical survey. At the intermediate consumption level, the utility from the relevant good is zero. For a Cobb-Douglas utility function, this intermediate consumption level equals one, making the choice of the unit of measurement non-arbitrary.We are grateful to a referee for some helpful comments     

On cubic 2-independent Hamiltonian connected graphs

A graph G=(V,E) is Hamiltonian connected if there exists a Hamiltonian path between any two vertices in G. Let P ₁=(u ₁,u ₂,…,u _|V|) and P ₂=(v ₁,v ₂,…,v _|V|) be any two Hamiltonian paths of G. We say that P ₁ and P ₂ are independent if u ₁=v ₁,u _|V|=v _|V|, and u _i ≠v _i for 1<i<|V|. A cubic graph G is 2-independent Hamiltonian connected if there are two independent Hamiltonian paths between any two different vertices of G. A graph G is 1-Hamiltonian if G−F is Hamiltonian for any F⊆V∪E with |F|=1. A graph G is super 3^*-connected if there exist i internal disjoint paths spanning G for i=1,2,3. It is proved that every super 3^*-connected graph is 1-Hamiltonian. In this paper, we prove that every cubic 2-independent Hamiltonian connected graph is also 1-Hamiltonian. We present some cubic 2-independent Hamiltonian connected graphs that are super 3^*-connected, some cubic 2-independent Hamiltonian connected graphs that are not super 3^*-connected, some super 3^*-connected graphs that are not 2-independent Hamiltonian connected, and some cubic 1-Hamiltonian graphs that are Hamiltonian connected but neither 2-independent Hamiltonian connected nor super 3^*-connected. Dedicated to Professor Frank K. Hwang on the occasion of his 65th birthday. This work was supported in part by the National Science Council of the Republic of China under Contract NSC 94-2213-E-233-011.     

Medicaid State Plan personal care services: trends in programs and policies

Policymakers face mounting pressures from consumer demand and the 1999 Olmstead Supreme Court decision to extend formal (paid) programs that deliver personal care to the elderly, chronically ill, and disabled. Despite this, very little is known about the largest program that delivers personal care: the Medicaid State Plan personal care services (PCS) optional benefit. This paper presents the latest available national program (participant and expenditure) trend data (1999-2002) on the Medicaid PCS benefit and findings from a national survey of eligibility and cost control policies in use on the program. The program trends show that, over the study period, the number of states providing the Medicaid PCS benefit grew by four (from 26 to 30), and national program participation, adjusted for population growth, increased by 27%. However, inflation-adjusted program expenditures per participant declined by 3% between 1999 and 2002. Findings from the policy survey reveal that between 1999 and 2002 there was a marked decline in the range of services provided, and by 2004, almost half the programs operated a cap on the hours of services provided.     

Practices and challenges in educational program evaluation in the Asia-Pacific region: results of a Delphi study

While educational program evaluation has become more important in recent years because of increasing governmental demands for accountability, little is known about the development of and issues in regard to this topic in the Asia-Pacific region. The findings from a Delphi study conducted in a number of relevant countries are provided in this article. Thirty panelists participated in three rounds of iterations to identify current status, challenges, and concerns in the near future. The results should be of value to educational evaluators, researchers, and decision makers.     

Utility of Gambling when Events are Valued: an Application of Inset Entropy

The present theory leads to a set of subjective weights such that the utility of an uncertain alternative (gamble) is partitioned into three terms involving those weights—a conventional subjectively weighted utility function over pure consequences, a subjectively weighted value function over events, and a subjectively weighted function of the subjective weights. Under several assumptions, this becomes one of several standard utility representations, plus a weighted value function over events, plus an entropy term of the weights. In the finitely additive case, the latter is the Shannon entropy; in all other cases it is entropy of degree not 1. The primary mathematical tool is the theory of inset entropy. The work of Luce and Marley was supported in part by National Science Foundation grant SES-0452756 to the University of California, Irvine, and by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) of Canada Discovery Grant 8124 to the University of Victoria for Marley. That of Ng was supported in part by the NSERC of Canada Discovery Grant 8212. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.