Dual Measures of Sexual Consent: A Confirmatory Factor Analysis of the Internal Consent Scale and External Consent Scale

Sexual assault, often defined as nonconsensual sex, is a problem among college students. Universities have made efforts to increase student awareness about sexual consent, which varies along two dimensions: internal feelings of wantedness and external expressions of consent. However, interventions focus on increasing knowledge of the external expression of consent despite the importance of both dimensions for effective sexual communication. A validated research tool that captures students’ ecological experiences along both dimensions is critical. The current study aimed to replicate and validate the factor structure of the Internal Consent Scale (ICS) and External Consent Scale (ECS) in a sample of 610 undergraduate students and to expand on prior work by examining associations with relationship to partner and sexual orientation. Confirmatory factor analyses (CFA) provided support for the ICS in its current form (i.e., model fit and factor loadings for the ICS were good). Although model fit for the ECS was good, one subscale, no response signals, had poor factor loadings (.16, .38); thus, suggestions are offered to improve its psychometric properties. Despite limitations of the ECS, these dual measures fill a gap in the consent literature by providing a tool to quantify internal and external aspects of sexual consent.     

Adapting the Friends of the Children programme for child welfare system‐involved families

Research has shown the importance of long‐term, caring adults for children in foster care. This paper reviews the Friends of the Children (FOTC) long‐term mentoring programme and how it was adapted to serve children and families with child welfare system involvement. This study's two research questions are (1) How do Friends (FOTC's paid professional mentors) currently work with, and in turn, have an impact on, child welfare‐involved families? and (2) How can Friends better support child welfare system‐involved caregivers and families to promote family stability, permanence, and child well‐being? Data were collected from 21 caregivers (foster and biological), 24 FOTC Friends, five child welfare workers, and five teachers. Qualitative analyses of focus group, interview, and open‐ended survey data revealed a wide variety of ways Friends currently support children and families. In addition, several recommendations were made for strengthening programming. These findings provide valuable insights into providing long‐term mentoring to child welfare system‐involved children and families.     

Complicating the Duality: Reconceptualising the Construction of Children in Victorian Child Protection Law

This article seeks to challenge the prevailing view that child protection legislation introduced in the late Victorian and Edwardian periods was characterised by a victim/threat duality. An examination of the parliamentary debates leading to the passage of major reforming Acts leads to a more complex construction of children. While the classic duality was present in respect of some issues earlier in the period under examination, it gave way to a view which placed greater emphasis on the child as a victim. At the same time, the law began, in an admittedly limited sense, to recognise children as agents with individual stories capable of contributing to the legal process, especially through increased capability to participate at trials. This conclusion can add significantly to our understanding of how the law understood childhood before the development of the modern children's rights movement.     

Concepts of Risk in Relation to Organizational Structure and Functioning within the Personal Social Services and Probation

The main argument of this paper is that personal social services, including probation, at both a policy and practice level are increasingly focused on issues of risk. We postulate that risk assessment, risk management, the monitoring of risk and risk-taking itself are rapidly becoming the dominant raison d'être of such agencies, thus supplanting ideologies of meeting need or welfare provision. In turn they have become key to priority setting and rationing, the basis for organizational rationales and structures, the central focus for professional activity and accountability, and measuring quality. Thus an analysis of risk as an organizing principle offers fundamental insights into the rapidly changing nature and organization of statutory social work and probation. There is very little literature that focuses on risk across the spectrum of services. Risk analysis, as such, is most developed in the criminal justice and child protection fields. However, the mental health literature, being centrally preoccupied with notions of dangerousness, is quickly adopting risk terminology. Apart from work on elder abuse, literature on child welfare and community care has been framed in terms of need, issues of risk only coming to the fore around potential admission to residential care. We contend that as issues of rationing and accountability become more dominant, so do concerns with risk. Thus we predict the extension of notions of risk as central organizing principles throughout the social services and probation.     

Power models and the farm workers' struggle: A case study of the agribusiness vs. UFW conflict

Power elite and pluralist frameworks are used to examine the conflict between farm workers and their employers, in California, from 1850 to 1977. Analysis focuses on four time periods which provide varying support for the contending frameworks. Assumptions and assertions of theorists in each camp are shown to be contradicted by some of the data in this case. We conclude by suggesting that a more accurate theoretical model of our national structure of power would emerge from a series of similar case studies of important national issues. This is a revision of a paper presented at the Eastern Sociological Society Meeting in New York, 1977. The research was supported by a generous grant from the Ford Foundation to the first author.     

Exact intervals and tests for mean of symmetrical population when one "sample" value possibly an outlier

The (continuous) data are n observations that are believed to be a random sample from a symmetrical population. Confidence intervals and significance tests for the population mean are desired. There is, however, the possibility that either the smallest observation or the largest observation is an outlier. That is, the population providing this observation differs from the symmetrical population providing the other n - 1 observations. If this occurs, intervals and tests are desired for the mean of the population providing the other n - 1 observations. Some investigation difficulties can be overcome if intervals and tests can be developed that are simultaneously usable for all of these three situations (a confidence coefficient, or significance level, has the same value for all three situations). Two kinds of intervals and tests with this property are developed. These results always involve both the next to smallest observations and should have at least moderately high efficiencies. Also, some extensions are considered, such as allowing each observation to be from a different population.     

Existence of every possible distribution for any sample order statistic

Given are any stated value for sample size and an arbitrary but specified univariate distribution. Let an arbitrary but specified order statistic for a univariate random sample of this size be considered. It is shown that a statistical population always exists, for yielding the sample, such that the distribution of the order statistic is exactly the specified distribution. Some asymptotic implications of these results are outlined.