Bureaucratic Neglect and Oppression in Child Welfare: Historical Precedent and Implications for Current Practice

Historically, child maltreatment has been seen as an issue warranting the involvement of the American government. However, over time, the definition of child maltreatment has changed; typically, maltreatment is often understood as a violation of the parental right to care for and protect a child. Consequently, the government, through systems such as child protective services is expected to be the acceptable parental alternative. As illustrated by the numerous negative outcomes experienced, it is clear that the system is not meeting the needs of abused and neglected children. This bureaucratic neglect is allowed to occur because of population primarily served by the child welfare system, the poor and families of color. In this way, dynamics of power and privilege manifest in the differing expectations of appropriate care between biological parents and the foster care system.     

Coalitions of Actors and Managerial Innovations in the Healthcare and Social Healthcare Sector

This paper studies the behavior of a variety of stakeholders around the adoption of managerial innovations desired by operational managers of health services institutions. We show that if the operational manager may cause the managerial innovation, the tool prospective is subject to power games around coalitions of actors. The study of several management situations in health services institutions enables us, using the game theory, to highlight the “winning”, “losing” and “uncertain” coalitions that can achieve operational management within the establishment to settle a managerial innovation.     

Happy People Have Children: Choice and Self-Selection into Parenthood

There is mixed evidence in the existing literature on whether children are associated with greater subjective well-being, with the correlation depending on which countries and populations are considered. We here provide a systematic analysis of this question based on three different datasets: two cross-national and one national panel. We show that the association between children and subjective well-being is positive only in developed countries, and for those who become parents after the age of 30 and who have higher income. We also provide evidence of a positive selection into parenthood, whereby happier individuals are more likely to have children.     

Cohort Measures of Internal Migration: Understanding Long-Term Trends

Internal migration intensities fluctuate over time, but both migration levels and trends show great diversity. The dynamics underpinning these trends remain poorly understood because they are analyzed almost exclusively by applying period measures to cross-sectional data. This article proposes 10 cohort measures that can be applied to both prospective and retrospective data to systematically examine long-term trends. To demonstrate their benefits, the proposed measures are applied to retrospective survey data for England that provide residential histories from birth to age 50 for cohorts born between 1918 and 1957. The analysis reveals stable lifetime migration for men but increased lifetime migration for women associated with earlier ages at moving in adulthood and a compression of intervals between consecutive moves. The proposed cohort measures provide a more comprehensive picture of migration behavior and should be used to complement period measures in exploring long-term trends. Increasing availability of retrospective and longitudinal survey data means that researchers can now apply the proposed measures to a wide range of countries.     

Adaptive and Maladaptive Coping Strategies in Adult Pathological Gamblers and Their Mediating Role with Anxious-Depressive Symptomatology

Coping plays a central role in the appearance and persistence of pathological gambling. Anxious and depressive symptomatology also influence pathological gambling and are related to coping. This study aimed to analyze pathological gamblers’ coping strategies and styles, as well as associated anxious and depressive symptomatology. The study sample included 167 male pathological gamblers (mean age = 39.29 years) and 107 non-gamblers (mean age = 33.43 years). Measures of gambling, coping, and anxious and depressive symptomatology were used. Results showed that pathological gamblers’ scored higher in all the maladaptive coping strategies, problem- and emotion-focused disengagement, and disengagement subscales. These subscales also correlated with pathological gambling, and anxious and depressive symptomatology. Pathological gamblers also scored higher in emotional expression and emotion-focused engagement, with no differences in the rest of the adaptive coping strategies. Coping was also found to predict pathological gambling and anxious and depressive symptomatology. It was found that coping mediated the relationship between pathological gambling and anxious symptomatology when controlling for the effect of age. Specifically, social withdrawal and disengagement stood out as mediators. These results provide practical information for use in clinical settings with people diagnosed with pathological gambling.     

Learning discrete decomposable graphical models via constraint optimization

Statistical model learning problems are traditionally solved using either heuristic greedy optimization or stochastic simulation, such as Markov chain Monte Carlo or simulated annealing. Recently, there has been an increasing interest in the use of combinatorial search methods, including those based on computational logic. Some of these methods are particularly attractive since they can also be successful in proving the global optimality of solutions, in contrast to stochastic algorithms that only guarantee optimality at the limit. Here we improve and generalize a recently introduced constraint-based method for learning undirected graphical models. The new method combines perfect elimination orderings with various strategies for solution pruning and offers a dramatic improvement both in terms of time and memory complexity. We also show that the method is capable of efficiently handling a more general class of models, called stratified/labeled graphical models, which have an astronomically larger model space.     

Die Anderen als sozialer Kontext. Zur Bedeutung strategischer Interaktion

An action is defined as “strategic” when the consequences of ego’s action depend on the action of alter. Situations of strategic interaction are numerous in daily life, business, and politics. Pioneers like Erving Goffman or Raymond Boudon recognized the importance of strategic interaction in sociological analysis long ago. Other peoples’ opportunities of actions form ego’s strategic context. The dynamics of the impact of the strategic context on ego’s action can be modeled and analyzed by means of game theory. We will discuss three examples of strategic interaction models: “Diffusion of responsibility”, Boudon’s “logic of relative frustration”, and the problem of social exchange and trust. We demonstrate the effects of the strategic context on the opportunities and beliefs of actors. In contrast to non-strategic rational choice theory, beliefs and opportunities are not assumed as exogenous. The analysis of the strategic context contributes to a better understanding of the micro-level effects and the macro-level implications. However, the strict rationality requirements of game models are often violated. In these situations, evolutionary models based on principles of learning and adaptions are more adequate than models based on assumptions of strict rationality.