Downgrading as a counterstrategy: a case study in child welfare

Child welfare conversations in cases of suspected sexual child abuse are often slow and complex processes in which professionals and clients proceed cautiously. These conversations may best be considered as negotiations between professionals aiming at classifying clients in or out of problem categories, and clients distancing themselves from these categories or downgrading them. In a case study of a conversation between a child welfare worker and a 15‐year‐old boy who is the likely victim of sexual abuse by his stepfather, this process is demonstrated by an interactional analysis. It is shown that the client is not co‐operating in a co‐operative way.     

Assessment of problem behaviour by foster parents and their foster children

This study investigates the level of agreement between foster parents and foster children about problem behaviour and how this is associated with the breakdown of a foster care placement. The study took a sample of foster parents and their foster children (n= 60), who were aged 11–17 years, and analysed the severity of problem behaviour displayed by the foster children within 3 months of placement in the foster family and a year and a half later. The level of agreement was established with the intra‐class correlation coefficient, which represents both the differences in scores and the differences in ranking. This coefficient shows that there is a statistically significant difference in the level of agreement on the Internalizing Problems scale of the Child Behaviour Checklist between the placements that broke down and those that continued. The level of agreement is associated with the severity score, which in turn is associated with the outcome of the foster care placement. To avoid placement breakdown, problem behaviour should also be assessed from the perspective of the foster child.     

Measuring changes in consumer confidence

Consumer confidence indicators are surveyed monthly and each month concern different individuals. This complicates a straightforward interpretation of shifts in confidence. First, it is not clear how many respondents switch from and to negative, neutral and positive opinions in consecutive months. Second, reported net changes in confidence may be largely driven by the different respondent samples used over time. The proposed methodology addresses both issues. It involves estimating unobserved switching between negative, neutral and positive opinions for what can be thought of as being the same set of individuals. Next, a new change-in-confidence measure is developed from these switching proportions and the associated confidence bounds are computed for testing purposes. Applications to US and Dutch confidence data show that US respondents tend to switch attitudes more often than their Dutch counterparts do. Furthermore, the illustrations show that monthly changes in consumer confidence are not often significantly different from zero. Hence, claims about increased or decreased confidence should be made with care.     

Characteristic properties of FPTP systems

In this article, we model FPTP systems as social preference rules and give two characterizations. We show that a social preference rule is an FPTP system if, and only if, it satisfies the axioms of subset consistency, district consistency, subset cancellation, and district cancellation. The second characterization consists of the axioms of subset consistency, subset anonymity, neutrality, topsonlyness, Pareto optimality, district consistency and district cancellation. The characterizations give us an opportunity to compare the characteristic properties of FPTP systems to the characteristic properties that we found for list systems of proportional representation (list PR systems) in Hout et al. (Social Choice and Welfare, 27:459–475, 2006), where we modelled those systems also as social preference rules. We find that consistency and anonymity distinguish list PR systems from FPTP systems. On the other hand, it is district cancellation that distinguishes FPTP systems from list PR systems.     

Who Believes in the Storybook Image of the Scientist?

Do lay people and scientists themselves recognize that scientists are human and therefore prone to human fallibilities such as error, bias, and even dishonesty? In a series of three experimental studies and one correlational study (total N = 3,278) we found that the “storybook image of the scientist” is pervasive: American lay people and scientists from over 60 countries attributed considerably more objectivity, rationality, open-mindedness, intelligence, integrity, and communality to scientists than to other highly-educated people. Moreover, scientists perceived even larger differences than lay people did. Some groups of scientists also differentiated between different categories of scientists: established scientists attributed higher levels of the scientific traits to established scientists than to early-career scientists and Ph.D. students, and higher levels to Ph.D. students than to early-career scientists. Female scientists attributed considerably higher levels of the scientific traits to female scientists than to male scientists. A strong belief in the storybook image and the (human) tendency to attribute higher levels of desirable traits to people in one’s own group than to people in other groups may decrease scientists’ willingness to adopt recently proposed practices to reduce error, bias and dishonesty in science.     

The next stage of managed care.

Since the turn of the century, we have gone from medicine as a cottage industry, based largely on barter, to the complex entity it is today. What we will see in the coming decade, if not sooner is the emergence of the next level of managed care. As managed care matures, contradictions in the health care system that we have not been able to resolve will be addressed, as well as other value-related issues. The ability to deliver value and then to monitor outcomes will be the nut to crack. The next big movement will be to hone in on outcomes and measurement. This will be the path to increasing the inherent value of the medical care system. This will go hana in hand with accountability, which is where physician-sponsored networks (PSNs) will be an indispensable tool. Centered as they are around accountability and responsibility, PSNs will be a natural starting point for developing the protocols to produce and collect this data. The standardization of care, anchored upon medical evidence, is the objective.     

“Spoken Word” and “Poetry Slams”: the voice of youth today

In this article the authors discuss a relatively new cultural expression that has become popular in high schools across the United States: Spoken Word and Poetry Slam. This type of poetry appeals to teenagers because it allows them to express themselves in their own language, and it allows them to address issues that they find important. This article describes the history of poetry slams, as well as the educational developments presently taking place in the United States and Europe.     

The Partial Linear Model in High Dimensions

Partial linear models have been widely used as flexible method for modelling linear components in conjunction with non‐parametric ones. Despite the presence of the non‐parametric part, the linear, parametric part can under certain conditions be estimated with parametric rate. In this paper, we consider a high‐dimensional linear part. We show that it can be estimated with oracle rates, using the least absolute shrinkage and selection operator penalty for the linear part and a smoothness penalty for the nonparametric part.     

Romantic Relationship Commitment and Its Linkages with Commitment to Parents and Friends during Adolescence

This five‐wave longitudinal study examines linkages between adolescents' perceptions of romantic relationship commitment and the development of adolescents' perceptions of commitment to parents and friends. A total of 218 early‐to‐middle adolescents (39.0 percent boys) and 185 middle‐to‐late adolescents (30.8 percent boys) participated. Multivariate growth curves showed that higher base levels of commitment and a stronger positive development of commitment to parents and friends were associated with higher levels of later commitment to romantic partners. The effects were equally strong in early‐to‐middle adolescence and middle‐to‐late adolescence. Also, commitment to parents and commitment to friends were associated equally strong to romantic relationship commitment. No gender differences were found regarding these linkages. Overall, this study shows the importance of parents and friends for boys and girls regarding committed romantic relationships. The results support the idea of one stable and general working model used in different types of relationships.