Are services to prevent foster care effective?

The prevention of foster care became an important issue for child welfare services during the 1970s. Two main types of prevention models have emerged: crisis intervention programs intended to prevent imminent placement and intensive service programs designed to avert those crisis situations that precipitate placement. A critical analysis of several project evaluations leads to the conclusion that neither model has been markedly successful. Low nominal project placement rates seem attributable to inability to predict placements and to client selection biases. From a strictly financial perspective, preventive services have been considerably more expensive than regular services, including temporary family foster care. Data from a new demonstration project in New Jersey illustrate various problems in providing and evaluating preventive services to families referred to protective service agencies. Implications of the findings for prevention programs and policies are discussed, and a new direction focused on truly early intervention with children and families is proposed.     

Sonet-1: Social network analysis and modeling system

SONET-I is a preliminary but completely operational version of a package of computer programs for the analysis of social structure. The programs were written to implement a strategy for the analysis of social networks which the authors have developed over the past several years. The conceptual basis for the research method has its origins in graph theory on the one hand and in anthropological studies of social organization — especially kinship studies — on the other. The method can, in fact, be seen as a graph theoretic formalization and generalization of kinship-based methods of social analysis often associated with British social anthropology.     

Quality of life indicators and program evaluation

Social indicators and program evaluation research have much in common. Quality of life work specifically raises the question of objective versus subjective variables, aggregate data versus distributional and individual issues, and the reference standards used in judgment and evaluation decisions. This article presents perspectives on these issues from the orientation of quality of life research and proposes that these approaches have relevance for program evaluation work.     

Social aspects of economic readjustment in Hungary: A consideration of the role of social-economic indicators

Social Accounting Matrices have been used as a means of analysing national economic structure but it is argued in this paper that their usefulness could be enhanced if they were designed to include compatible sets of socio-economic indicators which might reflect physical stocks and flows rather than strictly monetary flows. This paper considers ways in which this might be accomplished, giving particular consideration to optional approaches based on economic, social and quality of life indicators. Three approaches to providing supplementary information to the conventional Social Accounting Matrix model are considered. These include the incorporation of indicators of characteristics of households, the disaggregation of data to a geographical base and use of indicators of social attitudes and expectations. Although work continues on the first two of these suggestions, certain results concerning the third are presented. A consideration is given to the use of available secondary data to meet the needs identified. It is shown, however, that such information fails to meet the objectives of the study for various reasons. It is concluded that the necessary data can only be collected by surveys. Preliminary results of a survey carried out in Hungary beginning in May 1991 by Gallup/Hungary are presented. This information reflects attitudes of the population toward changes which are taking place and would seem to provide a means of estimating perceptions of changes in expected quality of life that result from the current efforts toward economic readjustment in Hungary.     

The portfolio choice problem: comparison of certainty equivalence and optimal Bayes portfolios

For the portfolio problem with unknown parameter values, we compare the conventional certainty equivalence portfolio choice with the optimal Bayes portfolio. In the important single risky asset case a diffuse Bayes rule leads to portfolios that differ significantly from those suggested by a certainty equivalence rule which we show are inadmissible relative to a quadratic utility function for the range of parameters we consider. These results are invariant to arbitrary changes in the utility function parameters. We illustrate the results using a simple mutual fund example.     

Perceived Racial Discrimination as a Predictor of Health Behaviors: the Moderating Role of Gender

Perceived racial discrimination (PRD) has been implicated in undermining the mental and physical health of racial/ethnic minorities (e.g., Williams et al. in Am J Public Health 93:200–208, 2003; Wong et al. in J Pers 71:1197–1232, 2003). Researchers have begun to explore the indirect role of health behaviors as one factor in helping to explain this relationship. The goal of the present study was to examine the relationship between PRD and a wide range of health behaviors using a prospective, longitudinal design and to explore the role of gender in moderating these relationships. Using data from the Maryland Adolescent Development in Context Study, we examined the relationship between adolescent PRD (accumulated across ages 14–21) and health behaviors (i.e., diet, substance use, exercise) at age 30 in a sample of middle-class black men and women. Using structural equation modeling, results revealed that more cumulative PRD during adolescence was associated with less healthy eating, more substance use (among men), and more exercise (among women) in young adulthood. Implications of these findings for understanding the role of health behaviors in explaining the link between PRD and health outcomes are considered.     

在公共服务递送中运营共同生产：服务蓝图的贡献

本文认为,公共服务应从以产品为主导的逻辑转向服务途径。通过采取服务导向,公共服务递送的经验性、组织间和系统性,以及作为共同生产者的服务使用者角色,将一同被考虑。论文将通过服务蓝图的应用,解释共同生产如何操作。并介绍了高等教育中的一个案例。在这一案例中,蓝图的创建将师生汇聚在一起,专注于学生入学的设计,从而改善学生体验,并支持共同生产。      

学区在教育变革中的作用

美国和加拿大对于学区在教育变革中的作用研究已有近40年的历史.关于学区在教育变革中的作用研究可划分为几个具有不同特点的时期,包括创新实施时期、高效学校范式时期、学校重构时期和基于标准的变革时期.综述列举了不同研究时期最重要的一些研究,并讨论了它们的研究特点和成果.在关于成功学区的案例研究的基础上,着重分析了学区在系统改进学生学习的过程中所面临的挑战、学区改进学生学习所采取的策略以及学区影响教学和学习质量的证据.同时,总结并讨论了12条促进学生学习的学区策略,提供了5个关于学区在教育变革中的作用的研究方向.     

宗教社会学范式及理论的新进展

20世纪90年代以后,宗教社会学领域出现了新的理论范式。新范式是理解美国宗教的框架,旧范式则来源于欧洲的宗教传统。新范式的内容包括理性选择理论、似真性理论和仪式理论。目前,新范式开始运用于中国、印度等国家的宗教研究,似乎要成为普世性的理论模式。