Sudanese refugee youth in foster care: the "lost boys" in America

This study examined the resettlement experiences of unaccompanied Sudanese refugee youth placed in foster care from the perspectives of the youth, foster parents, and agency caseworkers. Youth experienced considerable success. The challenges of adjusting to school and family life, however, suggest a need for funding to support more intensive educational services, more cultural training and support for foster parents and school personnel, and flexibility to provide services in more culturally appropriate modalities.     

The co-occurrence of depression and alcohol dependence symptoms in a community sample of lesbians

Numerous studies have found an association between depression and alcohol use disorders in women. Little is known, however, about the relationship between depression and alcohol use among lesbians. We examined the prevalence of depression and alcohol dependence symptoms as well as the co-occurrence of these two health problems in a large community-based sample of women who self-identified as lesbian. Past year alcohol dependence symptoms were significantly associated with both past year and lifetime depression. Lifetime depression was higher among White and Latina lesbians than among African American lesbians. Younger women and those not currently in a committed relationship more commonly reported past year depression. Younger age was the strongest predictor of the co-occurrence of depression and alcohol dependence symptoms.     

Characteristics of adolescents who provide neither parental consent nor refusal for participation in school-based survey research

Schools offer a convenient setting for research on adolescents. However, obtaining active written parental consent is difficult. In a 6th-grade smoking study, students were recruited with two consent procedures: active consent (parents must provide written consent for their children to participate) and implied consent (children may participate unless their parents provide written refusal). Of 4,427 invited students, 3,358 (76%) provided active parental consent, 420 (9%) provided active parental refusal, and 649 (15%) provided implied consent (parental nonresponse). The implied consent procedure recruited more boys, African Americans, students with poor grades, and smokers. This dual-consent procedure is useful for collecting some limited data from students who do not provide active consent or refusal.     

Adolescent cigarette smoking in U.S. racial/ethnic subgroups: findings from the National Education Longitudinal Study

Using nationally representative data for 16,454 8th graders and 13,840 10th graders, we explore racial/ethnic differences in "daily cigarette initiation," beginning to smoke on a daily basis between baseline interviews and reinterviews conducted two years later. In both samples, the initiation rate among whites is more than double the rate among blacks and higher than rates among Asian/Pacific Islanders and Hispanics. Risk factors at the individual, family, and peer-group levels of analysis do not explain most racial/ethnic differences. We develop alternative hypotheses by extending theories of cigarette use to the school level, and we test them using multilevel models: Consistent with social learning theory, cigarette risk among blacks and Hispanics decreases as the percentage of racial/ethnic minority students in the school increases. Consistent with strain theory, cigarette risk increases with the academic competitiveness of the school--especially among females--after controlling for the adolescent's academic performance.     

Vocational rehabilitation in multiple sclerosis (MS): a profile of clients seeking services

Although a number of innovative vocational rehabilitation (VR) demonstration projects have been completed with MS populations, there remains a lack of clarity as to a profile of these VR participants. An effort is made in this article to carefully describe the demographic and occupational characteristics of people with MS seeking vocational services at intake, as well as their self-perceived psychosocial functioning across a range of pertinent measures. The issue of "program dropouts" in VR services for people with MS is also addressed. Implications for better understanding participants with MS within the VR process and improved nuances in service delivery are then discussed.     

Further Notes on Public Response to Uncertainty in Risks and Science

Given the prevalence of uncertainty and variability in estimates of environmental health risks, it is important to know how citizens interpret information representing uncertainty in risk estimates. Ranges of risk estimates from a hypothetical industry source elicited divergent evaluations of risk assessors' honesty and competence among New Jersey residents within one mile of one or more factories. A plurality saw ranges of risk estimates as both honest and competent, but with most judging such ranges as deficient on one or both dimensions. They wanted definitive conclusions about safety, tended to believe the high end of the range was more likely to be an accurate estimate of the risk, and believed that institutions only discuss risks when they are "high." Acknowledgment of scientific, as opposed to self-interested, reasons for uncertainty and disputes among experts was low. Attitude toward local industry seemed associated with, if not a cause of, attitudes about ranges of risk estimates. These reactions by industry neighbors appear to replicate the findings of Johnson and Slovic (1995, 1998), despite the hypothetical producer of risk estimates being industry instead of government. Respondents were older and less educated on average than were the earlier samples, but more diverse. Regression analyses suggested attitude toward industry was a major factor in these reactions, although other explanations (e.g., level of scientific understanding independent of general education) were not tested in this study.     

Asymptotic properties of Bayes risk for one-sided tests

Consider a given sequence {T_n} of estimators for a real-valued parameter θ. This paper studies asymptotic properties of restricted Bayes tests of the following form: reject H₀:θ ≤ θ₀ in favour of the alternative θ > θ₀ if T_n ≤ C_n, where the critical point C_n is determined to minimize among all tests of this form the expected probability of error with respect to the prior distribution. Such tests may or may not be fully Bayes tests, and so are called T_n-Bayes. Under fairly broad conditions it is shown that and the T_n-Bayes risk where a_n is the order of the standard error of T_n, - is the prior density, and μ is the median of F, the limit distribution of (T_n – θ)/a_nb(θ). Several examples are given.     

Where is the border? Current issues in the diagnosis and treatment of the borderline

Differential diagnosis of subtypes of individuals meeting criteria for borderline personality disorder has received only limited attention in the recent social work literature on the borderline. Whether the borderline disturbance is moderate or severe, the condition may overlap with several borders, suggesting that borderline personality disorders are a heterogeneous group of conditions. Discrimination between different subtypes is necessary in order to help clients obtain the optimum combination of treatments.