Creating pathways to participation: a community-based developmental prevention project in Australia

Pathways to Prevention is a developmental prevention project focused on the transition to school in a disadvantaged multicultural urban area in Queensland. The project incorporates two elements: The Preschool Intervention Program (PIP) promotes communication and social skills related to school success; and the Family Independence Program (FIP) (parent training, facilitated playgroups, support groups, etc) promotes family capacity to foster child development. Using a quasi-experimental design (N= 597), improvements in boys' but not girls' behaviours over the preschool year were found. FIP reached more than a quarter of the target population, including many difficult-to-reach families experiencing high stress. Case studies and other qualitative data suggest positive outcomes.     

Local Polynomial Estimation of Regression Functions for Mixing Processes

Local polynomial fitting has many exciting statistical properties which where established under i.i.d. setting. However, the need for non-linea r time series modeling, constructing predictive intervals, understanding divergence of non-linear time series requires the development of the theory of local polynomial fitting for dependent data. In this paper, we study the problem of estimating conditional mean functions and their derivatives via a local polynomial fit. The functions include conditional moments, conditional distribution as well as conditional density functions. Joint asymptotic normality for derivative estimation is established for both strongly mixing and ρ-mixing processes.     

Gaussian deconvolution via differentiation

Suppose that ? is a Gaussian density and that g = f * ?, where * denotes convolution. From observations with density g, one wishes to estimate f. We analyze an estimate which is a linear combination of estimates of derivatives of g and show that this estimate converges in an L₂ norm at a rate which is compatible with the pointwise optimal rate established by Fan (1991).     

Foreign Policy and the Domestic Worker

In 2009, following numerous high profile abuse cases, the Indonesian government placed a moratorium on its citizens taking up employment in Malaysia as domestic workers. From the perspective of feminist International Relations, the emergence of migrant domestic work as a foreign policy concern between these two states is significant – exposing a relationship between foreign policy and the webs of transnationalized social relations of reproduction that underpin the development prospects of middle to low income states. In this article I utilize the example of the Malaysia–Indonesia dispute in order to develop some tentative suggestions concerning the possibility of integrating an analysis of transnational social relations of reproduction into foreign policy analyses. The article initially overviews how the dispute is widely understood in relation to Indonesia's turn to a more democratic foreign policy. The inadequacy of such a reading is explored further. The article suggests that the above-mentioned dispute should rather be understood in relation to the specific configurations of productive–reproductive relations that underpin migratory flows and the role of Indonesia and Malaysia as ‘regulatory’ states involved in the establishment of return-migration systems in which women migrants are viewed as economic commodities and policed via a range of state-sanctioned practices (including commitments to anti-trafficking).     

Rainbow Research: Challenges and Recommendations for Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity and Expression (SOGIE) Survey Design

VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations - A growing number of people around the world identify, in some way, as Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer...