Child global rating scales: Selecting a measure of client functioning in a large mental health system

The Global Assessment Scale for Children (GAS-Children) and the Children's Impairment Scale (CIS) were examined for inter-rater reliability, discrimination of outpatients from inpatients, and clinician acceptance. Forty-four clinicians used the two scales to rate 146 recently admitted children and adolescents in eight mental health programs. An additional study assessed the inter-rater reliability of the two scales compared with the Connors Parent-Teacher Questionnaire and the correlation of the GAS-Children with both the Connors Parents Questionnaire and Achenbach's Child Behavior Checklist. The GAS-Children showed better interrater agreement than any of the four subscales of the CIS, although the sum of the CIS subscales also showed adequate inter-rater reliability. Among adolescents, the GAS-Children correlated highly with the adult GAS, but the scales showed different mean values. Clinicians slightly preferred the GAS-Children over the CIS. To assess comparability of scale usage across sites, clinicians rated six case vignettes. Inpatient clinicians rated the vignettes as more dysfunctional than did their outpatient counterparts. Bias-adjusted scores still discriminated outpatient from inpatient children. Nevertheless, these rater biases should make evaluators cautious about comparing functioning scores across programs, even when the rating scale is ostensibly the same.     

THE EFFECT OF DIVORCE ON SUICIDE IN DENMARK, 1951–1980

Past research on the effect of marital dissolution on suicide is limited largely to the cultural and institutional framework of the U.S. The present article studies Denmark, a nation with a different social context. A Cochrane-Orcutt iterative regression analysis replicates the American-based pattern for Denmark. The divorce index is more closely associated than the unemployment rate with changes in the suicide rate. A 1% increase in divorce is associated with a 0.32% increase in suicide. Divorce trends also predict the incidence of youth suicide. The study further confirms the generalization that links rapid change in kinship structures to suicide in industrial societies.     

Primary prevention services for children and youth

Described and empirically supported is an interventive model for primary prevention of social and health problems among children and youth. Involving three components—information dissemination, information personalization, and skills acquisition—preventive intervention is delivered through a group training format. Data from two field applications of the model document its feasibility and effectiveness. The first application focuses on helping adolescents prevent unwanted pregnancy; the second on preventing cigarette smoking among preadolescents. In both studies self-report, behavioral, and objective data obtained at program's end and at 6-month follow-up favored trained youths when compared to those in untrained control conditions. The model's adjunctive benefits and directions for further research are discussed.     

RACE IN THE WORKPLACE:

Previous research on job satisfaction largely ignores possible race differences in its determinants. This study examines two explanations of a race/job satisfaction relationship: a structural perspective focuses on objective job rewards; a dispositional, on the role of worker orientations. The former implies that characteristics of race; the latter, that race leads to distinctive job needs and values and thus contributes to black/white differences in the sources of satisfaction. Analysis of recent national survey data supports the structural model: similarities outweigh differences in the predictors of job satisfaction across races. Blacks' lower workplace satisfaction is a function, not of racial differences in the process that determines satisfaction, but of their lower scores on the factors that tend to promote it.     

Multicultural,Multi‐Asian,Multi‐Muslim leicester: Dimensions of social complexity,ethnic organization and local government interface

Although ‘multiculturalism’ is a term increasingly employed in social science and in the public sphere, there is a dearth of comparative research and a lack of detailed studies showing the complexity of social groups, the variety of their forms of organization, and their emergent forms of interaction or interface with local government which the term ‘multiculturalism’ should ideally entail. Here, set in the context of the British East Midlands city of Leicester, an examination of the makeup, socio‐economic position, organizational structure, and nature of government interface surrounding one minority segment is provided to indicate such complexity and variety and to submit material for further comparative study. Numerous layered and cross‐cutting backgrounds, identities, and mobilized groups among Asians are described, as are several significant modes and processes of interaction and political representation, particularly among Muslim citizens. In highlighting the activities of certain individuals, associations and umbrella groups representing minorities, together with programmes and undertakings initiated by local government, the importance of minorities having multiple points of interface is stressed by way of proposing more progressive models of multiculturalism.     

Freedom of Choice through the Promotion of Gender Equality

This article argues that policies that promote gender equality actually also increase freedom of choice. Thus, despite the neo-liberal criticism that welfare policies limit choices and privatization and market solutions increase freedom of choice, this article concludes that market-liberal welfare regimes offer less choice than the Nordic type of social-democratic welfare regimes, which have openly striven to promote gender equality. They do so by making it easier for mothers to choose to work (by making day care available and making it easier for fathers to stay at home with children) and by giving fathers the ability to choose to spend more time with children. However, within the realm of such policies, it is still possible to offer more or less freedom of choice, for example, by making parental leaves either extremely flexible or rigid in how they are utilized. Interestingly, it turns out that, in the real world, policies that promote gender equality even offer greater freedom of choice for the group of women considered to be 'family oriented' as well as for lesbian and homosexual couples.