Comprehensive college student suicide assessment: application of the BASIC ID

Whether one knows someone who is thinking of suicide, has attempted suicide, or has completed suicide, nearly all individuals who encounter suicide are affected. The influence and residual affects of suicide are further amplified as the issue reaches across communities such as college or university campuses. College and university staff must improve their response to suicidal ideation with comprehensive assessment and intervention. The authors discuss risk factors and basic screening methods for suicide risk. They present Lazarus' BASIC ID tool (ie, Behavior, Affective Responses, Sensations, Images, Cognitions, Interpersonal Relationships, and Drugs or Biological Influences) as a method for conducting a comprehensive suicide assessment. The authors demonstrate assessment procedures through a case vignette.     

Factors associated with family reunification for children in foster care

In this paper, we analyse reunification processes from family foster care, both kinship and non‐kinship, and the variables associated with them in a Spanish sample. Data collection was carried out after a review of child protection and foster care files, and those responsible for the cases were also consulted. The cases studied were closed, which made it possible to assess the final outcome of the fostering. We found that only one‐fifth of the children return to their birth family after the fostering, and that those in non‐kinship are less likely to do so. Seven factors were associated with family reunification processes: age of the child, kinship care with family co‐operation, drug dependence in parents, neglect due to alcoholism, foster care under voluntary arrangement with visits, short‐term fostering with family co‐operation and parental impossibility due to imprisonment. The contribution of these data takes on particular importance given that the Spanish child protection system keeps no official statistics on the development or outcome of its interventions and records even less information on the factors associated with such outcomes.     

Social Capital and Subjective Wellbeing in Europe: A New Approach on Social Capital

This paper aims to analyze the relationship between the various dimensions of social capital and subjective wellbeing. Data used in this study come from the fourth wave of the European Social Survey and different measures of wellbeing are used to take account of both the cognitive and affective processes of individual wellbeing (i.e. life satisfaction, happiness, and subjective wellbeing). A factor analysis is performed to summarize information coming from a large set of variables into different components corresponding to each dimension of social capital (i.e. networks, norms, and trust). Among the results, we find that the impact of social capital on subjective wellbeing differ depending on the component of social capital which is under analysis. In particular, social networks, social trust and institutional trust are the components that show a higher correlation with subjective wellbeing. Furthermore, in addition to the positive effects of the individual variables, our results suggest that social capital at the aggregate level positively correlates with individual wellbeing, thus pointing to an external or environmental effect of social capital.     

The Rationality of Under‐employing the Best‐performing Soccer Players

Abstract. This paper analyses the influence of sport performance (productivity) and other variables measuring the economic contribution of soccer players, upon the coach's decision of selecting a particular player. Using as dependent variable the proportion of time that individuals play in the Spanish professional soccer league, the paper concludes that players' economic market value does significantly affect the coach's choice, revealing the existence of other aims different from maximizing sport performance. We also examine the type of discrimination associated with lower chances of playing, which leads to smaller earnings and poorer career opportunities. The empirical evidence does not support discrimination due to nationality.     

On Augmented Franses Tests for Seasonal Unit Roots

This article extends the results reported in del Barrio Castro, Osborn and Taylor (2012 del Barrio Castro, T., Osborn, D.R., Taylor, A. M.R. (2012). On augmented HEGY tests for seasonal unit roots. Econometric Theor. 18:1121–1143.[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) to the approach followed by Franses (1991a Franses, P. H. (1991a). Model selection and seasonality in time series. Tibergen Institute Series, 18. [Google Scholar],b Franses, P.H. (1991b). Seasonality, non-stationarity and the forecasting of monthly time series. Int. J. Forecast. 7:199–208.[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) to test for seasonal unit roots, providing the asymptotic representation to the seasonal unit roots tests proposed by Franses for a general number of seasons S.     

The Effect of Verification Bias in the Naïve Estimators of Accuracy of a Binary Diagnostic Test

The assessment of a binary diagnostic test requires a knowledge of the disease status of all the patients in the sample through the application of a gold standard. In practice, the gold standard is not always applied to all of the patients, which leads to the problem of partial verification of the disease. When the accuracy of the diagnostic test is assessed using only those patients whose disease status has been verified using the gold standard, the estimators obtained in this way, known as Naïve estimators, may be biased. In this study, we obtain the explicit expressions of the bias of the Naïve estimators of sensitivity and specificity of a binary diagnostic test. We also carry out simulation experiments in order to study the effect of the verification probabilities on the Naïve estimators of sensitivity and specificity.     

A Sequential Markov Chain Monte Carlo Approach to Set-up Adjustment of a Process over a Set of Lots

We consider the problem of adjusting a machine that manufactures parts in batches or lots and experiences random offsets or shifts whenever a set-up operation takes place between lots. The existing procedures for adjusting set-up errors in a production process over a set of lots are based on the assumption of known process parameters. In practice, these parameters are usually unknown, especially in short-run production. Due to this lack of knowledge, adjustment procedures such as Grubbs' (1954, 1983) rules and discrete integral controllers (also called EWMA controllers) aimed at adjusting for the initial offset in each single lot, are typically used. This paper presents an approach for adjusting the initial machine offset over a set of lots when the process parameters are unknown and are iteratively estimated using Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC). As each observation becomes available, a Gibbs Sampler is run to estimate the parameters of a hierarchical normal means model given the observations up to that point in time. The current lot mean estimate is then used for adjustment. If used over a series of lots, the proposed method allows one eventually to start adjusting the offset before producing the first part in each lot. The method is illustrated with application to two examples reported in the literature. It is shown how the proposed MCMC adjusting procedure can outperform existing rules based on a quadratic off-target criterion.     

On the potential in the estimation of linear functions in regression

New aspects of potential in Cook's Influence measure for linear combinations are explored. It is shown that this potential can be considered as a case influence measure in the scatter of estimated combinations. The potential is related to precise estimation directions and multicollinearity concepts; It Is also used as a basis for selection of new cases.     

A coordinate-free approach to testable hypotheses

Using the coordinate-free version of the linear model and geometrical considerations, the usual definition of testable hyptheses is extended. The concept of partially testable hypotheses is defined in that context. This new approach provides an alternative to the one given by Peixoto (1986), offering some complementary aspects. Simple and direct techniques for testing the new testable hyptheses by means of the classical testing procedure are given.