Gambling in young adolescents

A questionnaire was used to investigate gambling in British adolescents. Responses from fifty 13- to 14-year-olds were analyzed. Gambling was found to be very pervasive (90% of subjects reported at least some gambling activity). Males gambled more than females, both in absolute terms and as a proportion of income. Income was found to have some influence on gambling behavior, but the effects of intelligence and social class were nonsignificant. Slot machines were the commonest form of gambling in both sexes.The willing cooperation of the teacher and students concerned is gratefully acknowledged. This paper is based on a report submitted by the first author in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the BSc degree at the University of Exeter. Some of the data were presented to the conference of the British Psychological Society Developmental Section, held in Exeter in September 1986, and to the colloquium of the International Association for Research in Economic Psychology, held at Aarhus, Denmark, in September 1987.     

From child rescue to family protection: The evolution of the child protective movement in the United States

The child protective movement, an offshoot of animal protective work, initially adopted a punitive, law enforcement emphasis. Under the leadership of the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, anti-cruelty work took on a broader focus based on prevention rather than punishment. The new approach stressed the need to maintain and enrich family life through broad social supports, relying on family casework and social reform. “Normal family life,” a vaguely denned but firmly middle-class notion, was established as the ideal to which social agencies should subscribe in their drive to protect children and insure an orderly society. Child protection, formerly isolated from the child welfare movement, gradually became a part of it.     

Personnel policies and the age structure of an occupation: the case of the academic labor market

Population projection techniques are used to project the size and age structure of the academic labor force. Age specific coverage data from Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association are used to proxy academic employment. Hiring, quit, retirement and death rates are calculated for 1981 and 1982. Projections of the future academic labor force are made holding these rates constant. The results show the importance of these entry and exit rates and also indicate how these rates can fluctuate from year to year.Estimates of the future demand for teachers are used to determine a target rate of growth of the academic labor force. Alternative personnel policies are incorporated into the projections. This analysis indicates that the personnel policies chosen to meet the desired labor force size have substantially different effects on the age structure of the labor force.The authors wish to acknowledge the cooperation of the Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association in providing the data used in this study and specifically Francis King for his assistance and encouragement. Helpful comments on this paper were provided by John Dutton, Ronald Schrimper, Jack Wilson, and Bryan Boulier.     

Community: Toward an integration of research,theory, evaluation,and public policy considerations

This article presents a paradigm for the analysis of communities and investments designed to improve them. Its fundamental objective is to provide the researcher, the theoretician, the evaluator, and the public policymaker with a common analytic framework. Direct and indirect effects of investment programs (e.g., in education, economic development, and health) can be documented longitudinally, and the community analyzed as an independent, dependent or mediating variable. The roots of this approach in social science and policy theory are explored. Five concepts (Status, Change, Interaction, Duality of Interaction and Change, and Viability) are incorporated. Community is operationally defined to include fifteen sectors whose interactions and changes can be studied systematically over time. This approach can help to clarify how a community, its people, culture, and institutions, and the outside world both influence and are influenced by investment programs.     

Looking Forward Not Looking Back: The Evaluation of Community Living

This article outlines the development of evaluative methods within the field of mental handicap services. It suggests that evaluators have too often taken for granted the tacit assumptions underlying service models, using these to determine the criteria for evaluating success. It argues that evaluators should be more explicit about the values they adopt, and what patterns of life services should be enabling people to achieve. By more closely linking evaluation criteria to what people with a mental handicap should achieve, evaluation can become more effective in promoting positive change in service models. The article describes an approach developed by the authors for the evaluation of the 'All-Wales Strategy for the Development of Services for Mentally Handicapped People'.     

Hardiness and the relationship between stressors and outcomes

Using a sample of 468 participants, from two organizations, this study examined direct and moderating relationships between hardiness (a composite of challenge, control, and commitment), life and work stressors, and a variety of health-related outcomes. The results indicated that hardiness did not moderate the relationship between stressors and outcomes as reported by others (e.g. Kobasa 1982a). However, hardiness did have significant direct effects on emotional and psychological factors thought to be related to personal well-being and work performance. Hardy individuals reported higher levels of job satisfaction and fewer tensions at work dun did the less hardy. In general, hardy individuals experienced a higher quality of life and a more positive affect while being more energized and less negative about life. Hardy individuals also reported fewer somatic complaints and tended to be less depressed and anxious than individuals low in hardiness. In addition, hardiness was negatively related to all four measures of life and work stress implying that hardiness may not be independent of life demands.     

ANALYSIS OF DOUBLY CENSORED DATA AND THE HIV INCUBATION PERIOD DISTRIBUTION IN WESTERN AUSTRALIA

The paper analyses the distribution of times from HIV seroconversion to the first AIDS defining illness for a subcohort of the Western Australian HIV Cohort Study for whom the seroconversion date is known to fall within a calendar time window. The analysis is based on a generalised gamma model for the incubation times and a piecewise constant distribution for the conditional times of seroconversion given the seroconversion windows. This allows flexible hazard shapes and also allows comparison of goodness of fit of the gamma and Weibull distributions which are often used for modelling incubation times. Computational issues are discussed. In these data, neither age at seroconversion, nor calendar time of seroconversion, nor the identification of a seroconversion illness appears to afFect incubation distributions. The Weibull distribution appears to provide a reasonable fit. The distribution of times from seroconversion to an HIV-related death is also briefly considered.     

Career and Lifestyle Expectations of Rural Eighth-Grade Students: A Second Look

Gender differences in rural eighth-grade students' curricular, career, and lifestyle expectations were examined. Girls expect to take more math classes in high school, select careers that require a college education, and plan to go to college more frequently than do boys. Boys and girls do not differ in their interest in various careers, although girls prefer occupations that involve people, whereas boys prefer occupations that involve things. Girls plan to work for as many years of their lives as do boys; however, girls are more likely to expect to work part-time, whereas boys expect to work full-time. Counseling implications are offered.     

Longitudinal measurement models in evaluation research: Examining stability and change

This article provides an introduction to the use of Confirmatory Factor Analysis to test measurement invariance and stability in longitudinal research. The approach is illustrated through examples representing: (a) one construct, two measurement waves; (b) one construct, three waves; (c) two constructs, two waves; and (d) comparison of treatment and control groups in pre-post designs. Basic issues in establishing measurement invariance over time, across treatment groups, and within measurement waves are discussed. Estimates of the stability coefficients that are corrected for measurement error and method variance associated with each specific measured variable are provided. Establishing measurement invariance is a critical requirement for making inferences about treatment effects and changes in constructs over time.