Problem Gambling and Delinquent Behaviours Among Adolescents: A Scoping Review

Despite many studies indicating an association between problem gambling and delinquent behaviours among adolescents, there has been no effort to systematically analyze the state of the literature on this relationship. To fill this gap, we conducted a scoping review of the literature published between 2000 and 2016 on problem gambling and delinquent behaviours among adolescents. We searched twelve databases and reviewed reference lists to identify eligible studies. Search terms included a combination of medical subject headings and keywords for gambling, youth, and delinquency, which were combined with the Boolean operator “AND”. 1795 studies were identified through the literature search. Nine studies were eligible for inclusion. All of the studies were conducted in North America, with primarily male participants, and most of the data were cross-sectional. No qualitative studies met the inclusion criteria. Screening tools used to measure problem gambling were inconsistent, making comparisons across studies difficult. We found a consistent moderate to strong association between problem gambling and delinquent behaviour. Only one study presented associations by socio-economic status and none considered gender, sex or ethnic differences. Studies in the review showed that problem gambling is associated with both violent and non-violent behaviours among adolescents. These associations may suggest that problem gambling and delinquent behaviours have common risk factors and reflect a syndrome of risky behaviours best targeted through prevention and treatment that is holistic and considers the context in which the youth is situated. Further research is warranted to better understand the relationship between problem gambling and delinquent behaviours.     

Improving and measuring transparency in NGOs: A disclosure index for activities and projects

Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) are established not with the aim of making profits but rather to provide social values by implementing different projects and activities. Transmitting complete information about these projects to society is a key element of transparency, as they operate within an atmosphere of public trust. Although there is a large body of literature on transparency in NGOs from a global perspective, very little research has been conducted on transparency within the area of projects and activities. This study takes a deeper look at this line and contributes to the literature on transparency in NGOs by proposing an index to measure the information transparency of the projects implemented by these organizations. The index captures three dimensions of the information about the projects (technical, financial, and scope) and makes it possible to: analyze the level of transparency of the portfolio of projects, detect the specific aspects that could be improved in each organization, and carry out comparisons among organizations.     

<Emphasis Type="BoldItalic">MAD-STEC</Emphasis>: a method for multiple automatic detection of space-time emerging clusters

Crime or disease surveillance commonly rely in space-time clustering methods to identify emerging patterns. The goal is to detect spatial-temporal clusters as soon as possible after its occurrence and to control the rate of false alarms. With this in mind, a spatio-temporal multiple cluster detection method was developed as an extension of a previous proposal based on a spatial version of the Shiryaev–Roberts statistic. Besides the capability of multiple cluster detection, the method have less input parameter than the previous proposal making its use more intuitive to practitioners. To evaluate the new methodology a simulation study is performed in several scenarios and enlighten many advantages of the proposed method. Finally, we present a case study to a crime data-set in Belo Horizonte, Brazil.     

Pension reforms in EU11 countries: An evaluation of post‐socialist pension policies

This article evaluates the pension policy pathways of the 11 former state socialist nations that have joined the European Union since 2004. Focusing primarily on the post‐2004 period, the analysis discusses the most important measurable outcomes of these countries’ pension reforms, in terms of poverty alleviation, pension adequacy and fiscal sustainability. Going beyond the quantifiable concepts, we also investigate the quality of the 11 countries’ pension systems in terms of equity as well as efficiency, emphasizing the less conspicuous design errors present in these systems. Although these errors have received little attention to date, they may harm pension schemes along several dimensions, including their fiscal sustainability.     

Promoting healthy transition to college through mindfulness training with first-year college students: Pilot randomized controlled trial

Objective: Given the importance of developmental transitions on young adults' lives and the high rates of mental health issues among U.S. college students, first-year college students can be particularly vulnerable to stress and adversity. This pilot study evaluated the effectiveness and feasibility of mindfulness training aiming to promote first-year college students' health and wellbeing. Participants: 109 freshmen were recruited from residential halls (50% Caucasian, 66% female). Data collection was completed in November 2014. Methods: A randomized control trial was conducted utilizing the Learning to BREATHE (L2B) program, a universal mindfulness program adapted to match the developmental tasks of college transition. Results: Participation in the pilot intervention was associated with significant increase in students' life satisfaction, and significant decrease in depression and anxiety. Marginally significant decrease was found for sleep issues and alcohol consequences. Conclusions: Mindfulness-based programs may be an effective strategy to enhance a healthy transition into college.     

Digital media,subcultural activity and youth participation: the cases of protest rap and graffiti in Portugal

Over the last decade, we have witnessed the emergence of an academic debate surrounding the relationship between youth and the ‘new media’, with a particular emphasis on the social uses of different digital technologies within the sphere of youth activity. A specific area of research has been dedicated to studying the use of digital media in the context of the so-called youth subcultures. With this article we expect to contribute to this ongoing debate, by examining the problem through an analysis of two interconnected case studies: protest rap and illegal graffiti. Both cases may be defined as subcultures, insofar as they are characterized as alternative, subterranean, and to a certain extent, subversive movements. The empirical ground for this discussion is based on several investigations, with a qualitative basis, carried out by the authors in the course of over a decade in Portugal. This extended time frame allowed ample access to a diversified and matured analytical material and enabled a better perspective of the developments and the mutations involving the appropriation of the digital media. Our researches have shown that digital media and technologies have been gradually integrated in these urban youth subcultures, accomplishing several strategic roles.     

Workplace aggression against health care workers,law enforcement officials,and bus drivers: Differences in prevalence,perceptions, and psychological consequences

Investigations into workplace aggression (WPA) remain largely occupation specific, with few studies using a comparative approach. The aim of the present study was to compare the health care, law enforcement, and public transportation sectors with regards to the prevalence of different types of WPA, the perceptions of workers toward WPA, and the psychological consequences of such acts. A cross-sectional survey was completed by 1,774 workers in Canada. Multinomial regressions were utilized to address the objectives. Findings revealed that verbal abuse victimization was particularly common in bus drivers, witnessing death threats was most frequent among law enforcement officials, and witnessing all types of WPA was most common among health care workers. Although bus drivers did not normalize WPA, they feared complaining about violence to their employer and thought it useless to talk it about unless wounds were visible. Fear of complaining about violence to colleagues was prevalent in health care and law enforcement, both sectors in which WPA was normalized. Finally, flashbacks and irritability following WPA were most likely to affect bus drivers whereas health care workers experienced hypervigilance to a greater extent. Strategies to tailor primary, secondary, and tertiary prevention according to these distinctions are suggested to offer a better-informed response to WPA.     

‘I Want to Persuade You!’ – Investigating the effectiveness of explicit persuasion concerning attributes of the communicator and the marketing campaign

In explicit persuasion, the communicator states explicitly a desire to persuade the consumer. By referring to an attributional approach, social engagement was simultaneously explored as a beneficial communicator attribute, while cause-related marketing (CRM) was addressed as a boundary condition. In an experiment, we varied the persuasion strategy (explicit vs. implicit), the communicator’s prior experience with social engagement (yes vs. no), and the specific marketing strategy (CRM vs. non-charity marketing). As expected, in the non-charity marketing condition, explicit (vs. implicit) persuasion was more effective when the communicator had prior experience in social engagement. In the CRM condition, explicit (vs. implicit) persuasion was less effective when the communicator had prior experience in social engagement; when no prior experience was reported, persuasiveness increased.     

Marginal models for the association structure of hierarchical binary responses

Clustered binary responses are often found in ecological studies. Data analysis may include modeling the marginal probability response. However, when the association is the main scientific focus, modeling the correlation structure between pairs of responses is the key part of the analysis. Second-order generalized estimating equations (GEE) are established in the literature. Some of them are more efficient in computational terms, especially facing large clusters. Alternating logistic regression (ALR) and orthogonalized residual (ORTH) GEE methods are presented and compared in this paper. Simulation results show a slightly superiority of ALR over ORTH. Marginal probabilities and odds ratios are also estimated and compared in a real ecological study involving a three-level hierarchical clustering. ALR and ORTH models are useful for modeling complex association structure with large cluster sizes.