“A DIAMOND IS FOREVER” AND OTHER FAIRY TALES: THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN WEDDING EXPENSES AND MARRIAGE DURATION

In this study, we evaluate the association between wedding spending and marriage duration using data from a survey of more than 3,000 ever‐married persons in the United States. Controlling for a number of demographic and relationship characteristics, we find evidence that marriage duration is inversely associated with spending on the engagement ring and wedding ceremony. (JEL J12, Z1, D1)     

Transition without status: the experience of youth leaving care without Canadian citizenship

The origins of the project reviewed in this chapter lie in discussions with a Toronto agency that has a mandate to serve youth in transition from the care of the Children's Aid Society. This service system, also known in various jurisdictions as child welfare, child protection, or foster care, includes among its clients children and youth who are living in Canada without legal Canadian status. This could have occurred because the child arrived alone and was taken into care on arrival or because the child arrived with a family but was taken into care before status was obtained. While the child is in care, this lack of status is relatively inconsequential in that health, educational, and other services are provided through the Children's Aid Societies. Once the transition is made from care, the youth's vulnerability increases dramatically if legal status has not been obtained. Health services, educational opportunities, and legal employment are often beyond reach, and the youth is subject to deportation. The major objectives of the project were to explore the national and international literature to discover the dimensions of this issue, interview youth and service providers to gain insight into their experience, and discover ways to minimize the number of youth who leave care without having obtained status.     

Some findings on Britain's black working class, 1900–1914

The identification of members of a visible minority in early twentieth century Britain not only shows something of their participation in working class life but also that black people were not solely resident in towns and cities. As Britain was highly urbanized, the presence of such migrants in rural areas suggests that the number of black people in Britain was higher than has been assumed.     

Assessment methods in social work education: A review of the literature

Student assessment is an important component of social work education, and consumes considerable effort on behalf of both students and staff members. Social work educators in higher education face the challenge of constructing assessment methods, which encourage the development of reflective and critical learning, as well as enabling students to demonstrate acquisition of required knowledge and/or skills. While there is now a substantial literature on field education, the assessment of classroom-based units has warranted less attention. This paper examines the range of assessment methods reported in the social work education literature, the evidence which supports the use of these methods and issues associated with the identified assessment methods.     

Parenting,family functioning and lifestyle in a new culture: the case of African migrants in Melbourne,Victoria, Australia

This study documented the parenting styles among African migrants now living in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, and assessed how intergenerational issues related to parenting in a new culture impact on family functioning and the modification of lifestyles. A total of 10 focus group discussions (five with parents and five with 13–17‐year‐old children; N = 85 participants) of 1.5–2 hours duration were conducted with Sudanese, Somali and Ethiopian migrant families. The analysis identified three discrete themes: (i) parenting‐related issues; (ii) family functioning and family relations; and (iii) lifestyle changes and health. African migrant parents were restrictive in their parenting; controlled children's behaviours and social development through strict boundary‐setting and close monitoring of interests, activities, and friends; and adopted a hierarchical approach to decision‐making while discouraging autonomy among their offspring. Programmes seeking to improve the health and welfare of African migrants in their host countries need to accommodate the cultural and social dimensions that shape their lives. Such programmes may need to be so broad as to apply an acculturation lens to planning, and to assist young people, parents and families in addressing intergenerational issues related to raising children and growing up in a different social and cultural milieu.     

Ridge regression from principal component point of view

Ridge regression is often discussed as an estimation procedure for producing estimators which are biased but with a smaller mean squared error than the usual least square estimators. In this paper we show that this procedure can also be used to reflect the nature of dependency among a set of highly collinear regressor variables. In particular, we prove that, when data are severely multicollinear, the ridge estimators can be made very close to the principal component estimators. Examples are given to illustrate the point.     

Bayesian Development of a Dose‐Response Model for Aspergillus fumigatus and Invasive Aspergillosis

Invasive aspergillosis (IA) is a major cause of mortality in immunocompromized hosts, most often consecutive to the inhalation of spores of Aspergillus. However, the relationship between Aspergillus concentration in the air and probability of IA is not quantitatively known. In this study, this relationship was examined in a murine model of IA. Immunosuppressed Balb/c mice were exposed for 60 minutes at day 0 to an aerosol of A. fumigatus spores (Af293 strain). At day 10, IA was assessed in mice by quantitative culture of the lungs and galactomannan dosage. Fifteen separate nebulizations with varying spore concentrations were performed. Rates of IA ranged from 0% to 100% according to spore concentrations. The dose‐response relationship between probability of infection and spore exposure was approximated using the exponential model and the more flexible beta‐Poisson model. Prior distributions of the parameters of the models were proposed then updated with data in a Bayesian framework. Both models yielded close median dose‐responses of the posterior distributions for the main parameter of the model, but with different dispersions, either when the exposure dose was the concentration in the nebulized suspension or was the estimated quantity of spores inhaled by a mouse during the experiment. The median quantity of inhaled spores that infected 50% of mice was estimated at 1.8 × 10⁴ and 3.2 × 10⁴ viable spores in the exponential and beta‐Poisson models, respectively. This study provides dose‐response parameters for quantitative assessment of the relationship between airborne exposure to the reference A. fumigatus strain and probability of IA in immunocompromized hosts.     

Performance-based contracting and the moderating influence of caseworker role overload on service provision in child welfare

Although performance-based contracts have become increasingly popular in child welfare, administrators are developing these contracts with little empirically guided information about how internal work conditions may influence the services families receive. This study examines how child welfare caseworker role overload moderates associations between child welfare agencies' use of performance-based contracting and services provided to families. Analyses using data from the National Survey of Child and Adolescent Well-Being suggest that when caseworkers experience high role overload, use of performance-based contracts may decrease caregivers' likelihood of receiving necessary social and behavioral health services. These findings and their implications are discussed.