Agency and structure in the life-world of Aboriginal children in Central Australia

This paper offers ethnographic observations on the place of “agency” in the lives of Aboriginal children in Central Australia. The focus is on children's play and adult-child interaction in the remote community of Ernabella, the oldest settlement in the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara (APY) Lands, northern South Australia. The circumstance of Aboriginal children in remote areas is introduced as a contrasting picture: on the one hand, the life of Aboriginal families is shaped by their marginalised socio-economic position and dependency on the state, which has become especially evident in the recently intensified efforts by the government to “mainstream” Aboriginal communities deemed in “social chaos” in order to regulate and thereby improve children's lives; on the other there is the social fact that children enjoy a comparatively high level of autonomy within the Aboriginal domain. The much-observed “freedom” from parental discipline, however, does not simply mean that children assert their will without regard for certain social rules. Rather, it is suggested that it is precisely the relatively low level of direct instruction and reprimand by adults that fosters children's ability to pattern their behaviour in relation to one another and to structure their social world and understandings according to the meanings that they co-create. Agency of this kind often occurs through imaginative play and spontaneously. This paper does not address policy issues directly. However, it is relevant as a background paper on Aboriginal children's lives that contributes to the understanding and recognition of existing social capacities outside institutional settings.     

The compensation of non-executive directors: rationale,form, and findings

Corporate governance guidelines in many countries do not specify the determinants of non-executive director compensation and the empirical evidence has only briefly and indirectly addressed this issue. We show that this question is fundamentally complex because (a) whilst the roles of non-executive directors are relatively well stated, their actual contributions remain unclear, (b) governance codes have not discussed the ways in which non-executive directors should undertake their roles and (c) non-executive director contribution may be unobservable. As a result, their efforts, contribution and/or performance are difficult to measure. Nevertheless, we find the literature related to non-executive directors strongly supportive of some sort of remuneration that is a function of performance and effort to align non-executive directors with their duties and make boards more efficient in undertaking their duties.     

Some simple robust estimators of normal distribution tail percentiles and their properties

Applications often require estimation of extreme percentile of a distribution. For example, in high temperature low cycle fatigue testing one wishes to estimate the cycles to failure associated with a low failure probability. Frequently, the available data suggest a normal distribution as a reasonable model for that part of the distribution that contains the percentile of interest, even though it may be inadequate as an overall representation. For such situations we seek estimators that are simple to apply by non-statisticians, robust to deviations from normality, and resistant to contamination by outliers in the right tail. We are especially concerned with situations that involve small sample sizes and extrapolation beyond the data.     

Jugend, Gewalt, Fernsehen und Erwachsene — Ein Plädoyer für visuelle Bildung

In modern society, the question of the collective adult’s responsibility for children in the visual field must be renewed. Background is that complaining about a high level of violence in films, television and PC games to just reach more state-prescribed “looking-away” is quite unproductive. In order to counter the dominance of all kind of pictures passivity of young spectators. Instead of navie watching, children must develop very early the ability to consciously and critically see things in order for them to be able to decrypt correctly all kind of audiovisual messages. ‘Seeing’ is, similar to learning calculation on as well as writing and reading, an elementary task of modern general education, which can not be the mission of parents.     

Youth Development: On the Path Toward Professionalization

Youth development in the United States is making a transition from social movement to emerging profession. This article marks the path of this transition; charts achievements in developing core competencies and skill standards, training and education programs, career ladders, evaluations, and public awareness; and suggests the next steps in staff development that managers of nonprofit youth and human service organizations should consider.     

Social bonding and loneliness after network disruption: A longitudinal study of East German refugees

After the 1989 breakdown of the communist system, 235 East Germans were interviewed three times during the two years following their transition to West Berlin. In moving to the west, the migrants had to deal with various stressors, among them the lack of social ties in their new environment. Fortunately, the number of their new friends increased steadily, and loneliness declined. These changes, however, differed between sexes and age groups. Men made more friends than women, in particular same-sex friends, whereas women knitted ties with both sexes. The young built larger networks than the intermediate age group. Loneliness emerged as an inhibiting factor in the bonding process. The study demonstrates how well these refugees coped with a social crisis. It also examines the roles that loneliness and social bonding played in the readjustment process.     

Empowering teen peers to prevent bullying: The Bully Busters Program for high school (Peer leader guide and CD) by Horne,A. M., Nitza,A., Dobias,B. F., Jolliff,D. L., Raczynski,K. A., & Voors,W.

This article describes low-cost and tested procedures which may be used by the social work pracritioner-researcher for collection of data about what takes place in groups in natural setting. Some technical issues in uses of tapes of group sessions obtained by portable cassette recorders are explored. Content analysis as a research technique is explained and illustrations provided. Process analysis through measurement of such dimensions as frequency and initiator of speech is described.     

What Affects the Quality of Economic Analysis for Life‐Saving Investments?‡

Economic analysis of life-saving investments in both the public and private sectors has the potential to dramatically improve longevity and the quality of life, but only if the analyses on which decisions are based are done well. In this article, we analyze a data set that provides information on the content and quality of journal articles that measure the cost-effectiveness of life-saving investments. Our study is the first to provide a detailed multivariate analysis of factors affecting objective measures of quality. We also explore whether a series of recommendations by an expert panel convened by the U.S. Public Health Service affect the way analyses of specific life-saving investments are done. Our results suggest that four factors are positively correlated with an index we construct to measure analytical quality: (1) having at least one author affiliated with a university, (2) publication in a journal that has experience in publishing these analyses, (3) if the life-saving investment is located in the United States, and (4) if the analysis considers a measure of social costs or benefits. Somewhat surprisingly, a study's funding source and whether it is affiliated with industry are not significantly correlated with the quality index. Finally, neither time nor the panel guidelines had an impact on the index.