Adolescent development and adolescent pregnancy among late age African-American female adolescents

Prematurely constituted families are a problem of considerable magnitude in inner city communities. Research was conducted to compare and contrast a random sample (N36) of pregnant and nonpregnant late age low income African-American adolescent females' perceptions about their transition to adulthood. Findings suggest that adolescent pregnancy, although problematic, may be a solution to developmental concerns for some Black females and serves as a rite of passage to adulthood. Thematic categories of mate selection, opportunity mobility, and care protection represented psychological-attitudinal variables where the two groups differed significantly. Nonpregnant females were more frequently invested in behaviors that reflected social mobility goals than pregnant females.This article is a revised version of a paper presented at the 3rd Statewide Social Work Symposium, The Massachusetts Chapter of the National Association of Social Workers, Marlborough, Mass, 4/22/94.     

A Joint Score Test for Heteroscedasticity in the Two Way Error Components Model

This article extends the work by Holly and Gardiol (2000) (A score test for individual heteroscedasticity in a one-way error component model. In: Krishnakumar, J., Ronchetti, E., Eds. Panel Data Econometrics: Future Directions. Elsevier, North-Holland, Amsterdam, pp. 199–211, Ch. 10) to the two-way error components model. It deals exclusively with a joint heteroscedasticity test by first deriving Rao's efficient score statistics. Then, based on appropriate set of assumptions, we deduce the asymptotic distribution of the score under contiguous alternatives. Finally, we provide the expression for the score test statistic in the presence of heteroscedasticity and discuss its asymptotic local power.     

Ecological Community Structure Analyses in the Formulation,Implementation, and Enforcement of Law and Policy

Most of what is currently known about ecosystems derives from two sources: comprehensive studies by classical ecologists and economically motivated studies by resource specialists. The former have traditionally concentrated on natural or long-undisturbed ecosystems, the latter on those few species in managed or polluted ecosystems that are harvested, hunted, or fished. A recent genre of legislation, drafted with insight provided by the scientific community, recognizes the dearth of ecological information on managed or polluted communities (which are becoming far more ubiquitous and important) and dramatically raises the requirements for comprehensive data and data analyses to guide managerial and pollution abatement policies. This paper describes several important current efforts to use ecological community structure analyses to implement and enforce such legislation and some effects of such analyses on environmental policy.     

Home run or strikeout: The dynamics of public opinion on new sports facilities

Determinants of political support for new sports facilities are explored. We test to what extent the civic attachment and civic optimism of a respondent promotes support for new facilities. Survey data from the 2005 CBS News/New York Times monthly poll were analyzed to find variables that affected public support for a new stadium for the New York Mets and a new arena for the New Jersey Nets. Whether New Yorkers’ were optimistic about the future of New York and whether they planned to continue living in New York had a significant impact on whether they supported new facilities. Demographic factors that frequently explain political differences did not have a significant effect. Respondents with greater civic attachment and optimism were more likely to support major sports projects. The findings open the door for additional research on how civic attachment and optimism impact the willingness of community residents to support major public projects.     

Uniform convergence of an empirical cdf based on a relatively small number of order statistics

An empirical distribution function F_m, defined on a subset of order statistics of a random sample of size n taken from the distribution of a random variable with continuous distribution function F, is shown to converge uniformly with probability one to F. Small sample distributions of the one and two sided deviations and the asymptotic normality of the standardized F_m are established. The relative efficiency of F_m as compared to the classical empirical distribution function is calculated and tabled. for n = 10, 20, 50, 100, 200.     

Implementing Evidence‐Based Parenting Programmes in a Small Sample of English Urban Local Authorities: Eligibility,Fidelity and Intensity

This article focuses on the implementation of evidence‐based parenting programmes (EBPPs) in a small sample of urban local authorities in England. The first part discusses the development of government policy, guidance and implementation issues. The second part presents findings from an exploratory study, which focused on the implementation of EBPPs in terms of programme eligibility, fidelity and intensity in six urban local authorities. Implementation was not necessarily in line with policy or guidance. Issues associated with programme fidelity along with concerns about sustainability as a result of cuts in funding are discussed and implications for policy and future research considered.     

Efficient Classification-Based Relabeling in Mixture Models

Effective component relabeling in Bayesian analyses of mixture models is critical to the routine use of mixtures in classification with analysis based on Markov chain Monte Carlo methods. The classification-based relabeling approach here is computationally attractive and statistically effective, and scales well with sample size and number of mixture components concordant with enabling routine analyses of increasingly large data sets. Building on the best of existing methods, practical relabeling aims to match data:component classification indicators in MCMC iterates with those of a defined reference mixture distribution. The method performs as well as or better than existing methods in small dimensional problems, while being practically superior in problems with larger data sets as the approach is scalable. We describe examples and computational benchmarks, and provide supporting code with efficient computational implementation of the algorithm that will be of use to others in practical applications of mixture models.     

The Role of Beliefs in Sexual Behavior of Adolescents: Development and Validation of an Adolescent Sexual Expectancies Scale

This article reports on the development and psychometric properties of the Adolescent Sexual Expectancies Scale (ASEXS). Data were obtained from three annual longitudinal surveys of youth aged 10–17 at the first administration (N=932 at Wave 3). Confirmatory factor analyses indicated that 4 correlated factors corresponding to Social Risk, Social Benefit, Health Risk, and Pleasure adequately represented the expectancy items. High alpha coefficients and stability across survey waves indicated good internal and test–retest reliability for these factors. Latent variable autoregressive analyses indicated that Social Risk expectancies predicted changes in sexual behavior over the course of the study. Multigroup analyses established that the measurement and predictive models were equivalent for males and females and across age groups. The ASEXS provides researchers with a useful measure for examining adolescents' expectancy beliefs about the consequences of sexual behavior.