Grassroot Soccer resiliency pilot program: building resiliency through sport-based education in Zambia and South Africa

Grassroot Soccer designed a curriculum and sport-based teaching model to build resiliency, targeting boys and girls in Lusaka, Zambia, and Johannesburg, South Africa, where most children are reminded daily of the devastation caused by AIDS and where many face chronic and acute hardship. The activities that were created were designed to resonate with youths' interests in sport while teaching boys and girls between ten and eighteen years of age skills to build resiliency and prevent infection of HIV.     

Child Sexual Behaviors in School Context: Age and Gender Differences

ABSTRACT

The main purpose of the study was to explore the child sexual behaviors that Italian teachers have observed in the school context. A representative sample of 227 children, from 5 to 10 years old, was rated by their teachers through the Child Sexual Behavior Inventory. Frequencies of sexual behaviors among children aged 5 to 6, 7 to 8, and 9 to 10 are presented. Younger children showed a broader range of sexual behaviors that decrease with the growing age, such as males in comparison to females. Moreover, findings showed that child sexual behavior is not only related to age and gender but also to family characteristics. These results suggested that child sexual behaviors reported by teachers through the Child Sexual Behavior Inventory may provide useful information about the development of children’s sexuality. The knowledge of age appropriate sexual behaviors can help teachers discern normal sexual behaviors from problematic sexual behaviors.     

Associations among trauma,depression, and alcohol use profiles and treatment motivation and engagement in college students

ABSTRACT

Objective: This study examined how profiles of alcohol use and symptoms of common mental health disorders (depression and posttraumatic stress disorder [PTSD]) influenced the perceived need for and actual seeking of different types of treatment (for alcohol versus psychological distress) in college student drinkers. Participants: Undergraduate students (n = 164) were assessed between September 2009 and August 2015. Methods: We classified students into different symptom profiles using model-based clustering and compared these profiles on a variety of variables. Results: The cluster model yielded three profiles: Low Risk (n = 66), Concomitant (n = 35), and Heavy Drinking (n = 63). Students in these profiles significantly differed in alcohol consumption, alcohol-related cognitions and problems, and perceptions of need and prior engagement in treatment. Conclusion: A variety of strategies can be used to engage students experiencing heavy drinking and/or mental health problems into treatment on campus.     

HIV/AIDS stigma manifestations during clinical interactions with MSM in Puerto Rico

HIV/AIDS stigma can have detrimental effects on physician/patient interactions when manifested by health professionals. Unfortunately, HIV/AIDS stigma is usually manifested in an intersectional manner with other preexisting stigmas, including stigma toward men who have sex with men (MSM). Therefore, our study aimed to examine the behavioral manifestations of HIV/AIDS stigma among physicians in training during simulated clinical interactions with MSM, and explore the interrelation between HIV/AIDS stigma attitudes and behaviors. We implemented an experimental design using Standardized Patient simulations with a sample of 100 physicians in training in Puerto Rico. Results show a significant difference in the two groups’ means (p?<?.001), with a higher number of stigma behaviors in the HIV MSM patient condition (M?=?6.39) than the common cold control condition (M?=?5.20). Results evidence that stigma manifestations toward MSM with HIV may continue to be an obstacle for public health in Puerto Rico, and that medical training to prevent stigma is still needed.     

‘Gypsies’ in Fascist Italy: from expelled foreigners to dangerous Italians

Italian research on the persecution of Rom and Sinti under Fascism is still incomplete (in terms of exploitation of the archival sources) and marginal (in terms of the national academic context). This article analyses new sources for the development and application of anti-Gypsy policy during the Fascist era. The central focus is on developments in the new border provinces of Venezia Giulia and Venezia Tridentina, acquired from the Habsburg Empire at the end of the First World War. As a result of the transfer of sovereignty over the resident populations, the nationality status of ‘Gypsies’ had to be addressed, while the significant presence of Rom and Sinti communities in those territories challenged the symbolic meaning they had for the Fascist regime. The outcome was that Fascism marked ‘Gypsies’ as both ‘undesirable foreigners’ and ‘dangerous Italians’, thereby creating a dual rationale for placing them in police confinement and interning them after Italy’s entrance into the war. An approach that combines archival research and field work with Sinti and Rom reveals the transformations, continuities and contradictions in the categorization of ‘Gypsies’. This article thus presents a case study of the place of social and geographical margins in the construction of the nation state.     

The relational costs of crossing class lines

How do low socioeconomic status students navigate cross-class interactions in extremely unequal contexts? Previous research has described the high costs of college integration for underprivileged students, which in turn, negatively impact academic performance and general wellbeing. These studies tend to concentrate on cultural capital costs, such as catching up with assumed middle-class or elite capital and dealing with two worlds. Less has been said about social capital costs, the costs of making friends, especially more privileged friends. Through 61 in-depth interviews with various types of students as part of a broader ethnographic fieldwork, this article analyses the experiences of low-income scholarship holders in an elite institution in a very unequal society, Colombia. Rather than isolating themselves or resorting to safe homophilic relations, they faced their new elite environment engaging with the hidden relational cost of making friends with more affluent students. In so doing, they had to overcome fears and experiences of discrimination and micro-aggressions, as well as cultural and economic capital barriers, and employed either camouflaging or disclosure strategies, sometimes becoming culturally and socially omnivorous. Symbolic belonging to the institution and the acquisition of middle-class cultural capital were among the benefits that made overcoming the costs worthy. Our results shed light on what institutions can do to reduce the costs for underprivileged students and, theoretically, unveil an important mechanism and barrier for social mobility: building cross-class ties.     

Principal component analysis with interval imputed missing values

In this paper some statistical properties of Interval Imputation are derived in the context of Principal Component Analysis. Interval Imputation is a recent proposal for the treatment of missing values, consisting of replacing blanks with intervals and then analyzing the resulting data matrix using Symbolic Data Analysis techniques. The most noticeable virtue of this method is that it does not require a single-valued imputation, so it allows us to take into account that incomplete observations are affected by a degree of uncertainty. Illustrative examples and simulation studies are carried out in order to illustrate the functioning of the technique.     

Lottery-Dependent Utility via Stochastic Benchmarking

The possibility to interpret expected and nonexpected utility theories in purely probabilistic terms has been recently investigated. Such interpretation proposes as guideline for the Decision Maker the comparison of random variables through their probability to outperform a stochastic benchmark. We apply this type of analysis to the model of Becker and Sarin, showing that their utility functional may be seen as the probability that an opportune random variable, depending on the one to be evaluated, does not outperform a non-random benchmark. Further, the consequent choice criterion is equivalent to a sort of probability of ruin. Possible interpretations and financial examples are discussed.