Ensuring the best interest of the child in intercountry adoption practice: case studies from the United Kingdom and the United States.

Each year, thousands of children who cross international borders are destined for homes with adoptive families. For most, this journey from their homeland brings them to loving new homes where they will thrive and prosper. For others, the journey is hazardous and the destination uncertain.     

Extension of the Application of Conway‐Maxwell‐Poisson Models: Analyzing Traffic Crash Data Exhibiting Underdispersion

The objective of this article is to evaluate the performance of the COM‐Poisson GLM for analyzing crash data exhibiting underdispersion (when conditional on the mean). The COM‐Poisson distribution, originally developed in 1962, has recently been reintroduced by statisticians for analyzing count data subjected to either over‐ or underdispersion. Over the last year, the COM‐Poisson GLM has been evaluated in the context of crash data analysis and it has been shown that the model performs as well as the Poisson‐gamma model for crash data exhibiting overdispersion. To accomplish the objective of this study, several COM‐Poisson models were estimated using crash data collected at 162 railway‐highway crossings in South Korea between 1998 and 2002. This data set has been shown to exhibit underdispersion when models linking crash data to various explanatory variables are estimated. The modeling results were compared to those produced from the Poisson and gamma probability models documented in a previous published study. The results of this research show that the COM‐Poisson GLM can handle crash data when the modeling output shows signs of underdispersion. Finally, they also show that the model proposed in this study provides better statistical performance than the gamma probability and the traditional Poisson models, at least for this data set.     

Adolescent Electronic Media Use: Instead of Doing What?

Adolescents like to watch TV and listen to the radio, even on school days, but their day contains, like for all other people, only 24 hours. What do those who use electronic media frequently neglect? Data from 14- and 16-year-old adolescents from 12 European countries and from the USA (EURONET sample) were analyzed (N = 3,250). The correlations between time spent using electronic media (EM) and 15 other daily activities were all negative, which is not surprising given the fact that the sum of all activities is bound to be 24 hours. We, therefore, calculated correlations between electronic media use and the proportions of each other activity within the remaining time. A clear pattern emerged. The method allowed us to identify “mandatory” activities that always have high priority, such as sleeping and attending school, and “optional” activities that enter into competition with electronic media use, including engaging in sports, playing music, leisure reading, and being with friends without media use. As to the mandatory activities, the correlations between media-using time and the proportions of remaining time were positive; relative to the optional activities, the correlations between media-using time and the proportions of remaining time were negative. While one might expect school homework to be regarded as mandatory, the correlation patterns identified it as optional. As to the average electronic media-using times, there were marked differences not only between the individual participants, but also between the countries. While Bulgarian adolescents spent an average of 2.37 hours of a regular school day using electronic media, French adolescents averaged only 1.72 hours.     

Why do People Disclose their HIV Status? Qualitative Evidence from a Group of Activist Women in Khayelitsha

Abstract

This study explores the bio-psychosocial context of HIV/AIDS in which eleven HIV-positive activist women from Khayelitsha negotiated the process of disclosing their HIV-positive status to significant others, specifically biological household members. The study is based on the narratives of a group of HIV-positive peer-educators in Cape Town, South Africa. The results suggest that community perceptions of HIV/AIDS are shaped by a wide variety of factors particular to the socio-cultural and political context of HIV/AIDS in South Africa. The process and outcomes of disclosure to others occurs within this shifting web of meanings, and in turn, reshapes them as people respond to the person who has just disclosed. Eight out of the eleven women disclosed to a close biological household member as these significant-others provided, or had the potential to provide, the appropriate support. Six of the eleven participants disclosed during the symptomatic phases of HIV/AIDS, while five were asymptomatic at the time. Four of the five who disclosed when asymptomatic were diagnosed while pregnant and had never experienced severe opportunistic infections. Additionally, these same four disclosed some time after diagnosis (nine months > t < two years). Of the six who disclosed in a state of ill-health, five disclosed immediately after diagnosis in order to access health-related social support. At this time, concerns regarding health and mortality superseded fears of rejection and discrimination due to AIDS-related stigma. The perceived potential benefits (social and health-related support) outweighed the perceived risks (stigmatisation and discrimination). When participants had never experienced serious illness, they disclosed in order to educate loved-ones, gain emotional support or challenge false popular perceptions of HIV/AIDS.     

Knowledge and Attitudes of University Health Service Clients about Genital Herpes: Implications for Patient Education and Counseling

Abstract

Genital herpes virus infection is an important target for health education efforts because of its apparently rising incidence in the college student population and because it can have potentially serious psychological as well as medical consequences. In order to better understand the health education and counseling needs of students, the present study surveyed knowledge and attitudes about genital herpes of 190 university students using a gynecology clinic and of 161 students using a general medical clinic. The students were found to have a high degree of familiarity with the disease, its cause, and mode of transmission, but tended to view the consequences of the disease as more severe than is actually warranted by the common medical complications. There was some degree of misinformation about prevention and treatment of the disease and some negative attitudes about patients suffering from it, but the survey respondents endorsed a high level of responsible behavior with regard to the disease and expressed some optimism about the possibility of adapting to it. These findings suggest specific misconceptions about genital herpes that might be amenable to a mass education approach. They also suggest the need for a counseling program that centers around reasonable reassurance and appropriately positive psychological and medical management for newly diagnosed patients.     

The utilitarian contract: A generalization of Rawls' theory of justice

In a series of major papers culminating in A Theory of Justice, John Rawls constructs an alternative to utilitarianism by developing a social contract theory of moral and political philosophy. Unfortunately, Rawls formulates the two basic principles upon which the theory rests in such a way as to restrict (unduly) the contract theory's applicability (see Section I). In this paper we present a more general discussion of the theory of justice that avoids the problems of Rawls' formulation and yet retains the important idea of justice as fairness and the contractarian approach (Section II). Later it is argued that this more general theory constitutes a bridge between the pure utilitarian theories and the social contract doctrines (Sections V and VI). The theory's advantages are demonstrated by applying it to a problem discussed by Rawls, intergenerational equity, and comparing the two solutions (Section III). Further comparisons are made and inferences drawn in the concluding three sections.Without implicating them, we would like to thank James M. Buchanan and David Lyons for comments on an earlier draft of this paper.

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Migrant networks and the immigrant professional: An analysis of the role of weak ties

Weak ties, particularly those to potential employers, play a more important role than strong ties in the immigration of professionals to the United States. I operationalize network strength through the class of admission variable in the Immigration and Naturalization Service's public use data files,Immigrants Admitted to the United States, 1972–1992. I also examine the differential impact of legislative measures on the availability of strong versus weak ties for four groups of professionals: physicians, nurses, engineers and scientists. Not only do weak ties figure heavily on the immigration experiences of professionals, but those impacts affect women differently than men. Professional women rely more heavily on strong ties than on weak ties when compared with males in their respective professions, with the exception of nursing. These findings suggests a need for further study into the migration experiences of professionals as well as more research into how gendered networks develop among immigrant professionals and how those networks influence (either positively or negatively) immigrant adaptation to United States' society.     

Navigating the Transition to Multi‐Ethnic Urban High Schools: Changing Ethnic Congruence and Adolescents' School‐Related Affect

This short‐term longitudinal study investigated 918 students' school‐related affect across the transition to high school. The study focused specifically on the moderating effect of change in student ethnic congruence from middle to high school. Results indicate that students experiencing more ethnic incongruence from middle to high school, in particular African American and male students, reported declining feelings of school belonging over time. Moreover, students experiencing ethnic incongruence also had increasing worries about their academic success. These results suggest that the changing school demographics from middle school to high school may negatively impact students' school‐related affect, especially if they move to high schools which include fewer students who are ethnically similar to themselves.