Issue Information

In 2017, the number of applications for care orders in England and Wales was the highest ever recorded at 14,207. This is a significant factor, contributing to the rise in the number of children who are looked after, which is at the highest level since 1985. The authors reflect on the recently published Care Crisis Review 2018, a sector‐led review, which examines the reasons for the rise in care proceedings and the number of children in care. The review sought to identify changes to policy and practice within local authorities and the family justice system, in an attempt to divert cases away from the family courts and to reduce the number of children in care, where it is safe to do so. Whilst the legislative framework is largely effective and the system generally works well, there is insufficient funding and resources to meet the needs of children and their families when they seek help, regardless of whether this is at an early stage or when they are in crisis and most in need of care and protection.     

We Don’t Belong Here: Adolescents of North Korean Refugee Families and Their Suicidal Behaviors

Despite the increasing number of studies that examine the link between immigration and suicide in Korean youths, most have focused on self-harming behaviours among adolescents in multicultural families, while much less attention has been directed towards those in North Korean (NK) refugee families. This paper addresses this gap by comparing three determinants of suicidal behaviours across three groups of Korean adolescents. Data are drawn from the KYRBS, a nationally representative sample of students in middle and high schools, and the results indicate that NK youths were 87.2 per cent more likely to have suicidal ideation than their South Korean peers, that they are 3.7 times more likely to experience suicidal plans and 4.1 times more likely to attempt suicide. These results clearly suggest that immigrant youths, including NK refugees, are confronting significant difficulties with assimilation, and those disadvantages lead to a higher propensity of self-threatening behaviours.     

Social investment effects of public education,health care,and welfare service expenditures on economic growth

The purpose of this study is to theoretically and empirically examine whether public spending in education, health care, and welfare service operates as a fruitful investment in welfare states, which has been implied in the literature of social investment arguments. Based on comprehensive review of existing literature, this study suggested a tripartite mechanism of social investment effect of such spending, that is “enhancement of human capital,” “support for labor force participation,” and “job creation.” To find the empirical evidence, a pooled time‐series cross‐section analysis was conducted with the data of 15 advanced welfare states from 1980 to 2015 using estimation technique of fixed‐effect model. The results confirmed that public spending in education, health care, and welfare service had a positive medium‐term as well as long‐term effect on economic performance, while cash‐type welfare spending had an obscure or no visible effect on economy. Government consumption that is a proxy and control variable of size of the welfare state showed a positive effect on real GDP in the medium term but a negative effect in the long run. In conclusion, this study suggests that reinforcing social services should be recognized and dealt with as essence of social investment strategy.     

Zero-inflated sum of Conway-Maxwell-Poissons (ZISCMP) regression

While excess zeros are often thought to cause data over-dispersion (i.e. when the variance exceeds the mean), this implication is not absolute. One should instead consider a flexible class of distributions that can address data dispersion along with excess zeros. This work develops a zero-inflated sum-of-Conway-Maxwell-Poissons (ZISCMP) regression as a flexible analysis tool to model count data that express significant data dispersion and contain excess zeros. This class of models contains several special case zero-inflated regressions, including zero-inflated Poisson (ZIP), zero-inflated negative binomial (ZINB), zero-inflated binomial (ZIB), and the zero-inflated Conway-Maxwell-Poisson (ZICMP). Through simulated and real data examples, we demonstrate class flexibility and usefulness. We further utilize it to analyze shark species data from Australia's Great Barrier Reef to assess the environmental impact of human action on the number of various species of sharks.     

Noninformative priors for the between-group variance in the unbalanced one-way random effects model with heterogeneous error variances

For the unbalanced one-way random effects model with heterogeneous error variances, we propose the non-informative priors for the between-group variance and develop the first- and second-order matching priors. It turns out that the second-order matching priors do not exist and the reference prior and Jeffreys prior do not satisfy a first-order matching criterion. We also show that the first-order matching prior meets the frequentist target coverage probabilities much better than the Jeffreys prior and reference prior through simulation study, and the Bayesian credible intervals based on the matching prior and reference prior give shorter intervals than the existing confidence intervals by examples.     

Small‐sphere distributions for directional data with application to medical imaging

We propose novel parametric concentric multi‐unimodal small‐subsphere families of densities for p ? 1 ≥ 2‐dimensional spherical data. Their parameters describe a common axis for K small hypersubspheres, an array of K directional modes, one mode for each subsphere, and K pairs of concentrations parameters, each pair governing horizontal (within the subsphere) and vertical (orthogonal to the subsphere) concentrations. We introduce two kinds of distributions. In its one‐subsphere version, the first kind coincides with a special case of the Fisher–Bingham distribution, and the second kind is a novel adaption that models independent horizontal and vertical variations. In its multisubsphere version, the second kind allows for a correlation of horizontal variation over different subspheres. In medical imaging, the situation of p ? 1 = 2 occurs precisely in modeling the variation of a skeletally represented organ shape due to rotation, twisting, and bending. For both kinds, we provide new computationally feasible algorithms for simulation and estimation and propose several tests. To the best knowledge of the authors, our proposed models are the first to treat the variation of directional data along several concentric small hypersubspheres, concentrated near modes on each subsphere, let alone horizontal dependence. Using several simulations, we show that our methods are more powerful than a recent nonparametric method and ad hoc methods. Using data from medical imaging, we demonstrate the advantage of our method and infer on the dominating axis of rotation of the human knee joint at different walking phases.     

Using Experiential Learning to Help Students Understand the Impact of Food Insecurity

Experiential learning theory suggests that students increase their understanding when given the opportunity to experience a particular situation in addition to learning about it intellectually. This theory was used to construct an assignment to assist social work master’s students in better understanding food insecurity and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). Through coding previously collected reactions to the assignment, the researchers discovered multiple reoccurring themes: increased understanding of SNAP, feelings about the program, realizations regarding individual privilege, client stigma, the social experience of eating, and empathy for those who experience food insecurity. Through this exercise, students increased their knowledge of the program and also gained a better understanding of how food insecurity personally affects individuals and families.     

Too Hard to Shout Over the Loudest Frame: Effects of Competing Frames in the Context of the Crystallized Media Coverage on Offshore Outsourcing

This study investigates the effects of competing frames in newspaper coverage of offshore outsourcing, an issue that is characterized by a predominantly negative, unemployment-focused media framing. The findings of a randomized, controlled experiment (N = 152) demonstrate that conventional framing effects do hold for this issue and for this media context by moving recipients’ attitudes in the direction consistent with the valence of the frame. However, they also show the backfire effect of the positively valenced frame among recipients with greater interest in political and economic news, who become less supportive of outsourcing if they read a story framing outsourcing from a consumer-oriented perspective. Our results contribute to the ongoing debate about the limits of framing effects on forming opinion about contentious policy issues and demonstrate the challenges for nondominant perspectives to make their way to news-savvy audiences even when the nature of the issue in question necessitates considering them.     

Loneliness and the use of social media to follow celebrities: A moderating role of social presence

Because social media provide users with the possibility of an easy way to communicate with celebrities in society, it has become a more common practice to follow celebrities through social media. However, there exists few studies that examine how people’s individual characteristics are related to their celebrity-following behavior. In this regard, the current study examines whether celebrity followers’ loneliness is associated with the following behavior of their favorite celebrity. Data were collected through an online survey (N = 210). Primary findings suggest that celebrity followers’ loneliness is positively related to frequent visits of their favorite celebrity’s social media, greater social-interpersonal motive for following the celebrity, and greater enjoyment of learning about personal life stories of the celebrity. Social presence is found to be a significant moderator that can intensify more favorable parasocial relationship perceptions with the celebrity.