A Measure of Justice: The Rabinal Human Rights Movement in Post-War Guatemala

This article explores one region’s struggle for human rights and legal justice in post-war Guatemala. Rabinal—a target of state-directed genocide in the 1980s—suffered one of the highest fatality levels of the war. In the post-war era, Rabinal human rights activists have led the struggle to demand exhumations of mass graves, build memorials, and push for criminal investigations and trials. Despite some important local victories, few of those responsible for the violence have received punishment. But that does not mean this movement is a failure. Instead, this article highlights the cultural, expressive and inprocess benefits of mobilization. Rabinal activists have restored their sense of agency and confirmed their collective identity as fighters for legal justice. Meanwhile, this local mobilization has contributed to Guatemala’s uneven process of democratization.

Child and Family Outcomes in New York and Tel AVIV: Using Social Indicators in a City Level Comparative Analysis

This article presents a comparative study in which social indicators were employed as a means to examine differences in living conditions and family and children outcomes on a local level. The study obtained household-level data on the well-being of children and families in two cities: New York (NYC) and Tel Aviv (TLV). Data were collected using computer assisted telephone interview (CATI) technology and random digit dialing (RDD). Telephone interviews were conducted with the randomly selected adults in English, Spanish and Chinese in NYC and in Hebrew in TLV. The study reported here documented differences in family and child well-being between the two cities. It further documented that family size and caregiver level of education play a similar role in both cities and their importance in regard to child and family outcomes. The significant differences found in adults’ and especially children’s outcomes were analyzed by the caregiver’s level of education and further support the need for policies that alleviate the burden of less educated caregivers and aim to improve the well-being of them and their families. The study demonstrates the relevance of social indicators at the local level, not only for measuring outcomes among specific populations, but also in regard to their possible implications for social policies, a most timely task in an era of social services devolution.     

Indicators and Indices of Child Well-being: A Brief American History

This paper traces the history of indicators and indices of child well-being from its origins in the social indicator movement of the 1970s through recent developments in the field. Initial work calling for comprehensive sets of indicators of child well-being and later recommendations for indicator improvement are detailed. Products that resulted from these recommendations, such as comprehensive indicator reports and online resources are described. The development of child well-being indices is shown to parallel the history of indicators. The contributions of state and international indicator and index projects are included as well. Important aspects of child well-being indicator development are uncovered through documenting its history, including the need to focus on subjective as well as objective measures of well-being, and the need to develop indicators for the multiple ecological contexts of children’s lives, but to separate measures of context from measures of child outcomes. A rough consensus emerges across the history of indicator efforts on the critical domains of child well-being: physical, psychological, cognitive, social, and economic well-being. Recent recognition of the importance of indicators of positive development is noted. This paper was funded by the KIDS COUNT project of the Annie E. Casey Foundation.     

双重信息不对称下销售渠道双目标混合激励模型

销售渠道在企业与消费者之间扮演着重要的桥梁作用,销售人员的销售能力和销售努力等信息均为其私有而不为企业所共知时,企业如何甄别其真实能力信息并对其销售努力实施有效激励是个重要问题.针对上述问题,给出了基于线性合约的双目标混合激励模型,通过模型求解得到并刻画了最优合约的3个特征.首先,为辨别高能力类型与普通能力类型这两种不...     

Observed Infant Reactions During Live Interparental Conflict

Associations between interparental conflict and infant reactions were examined. Infants' history of exposure to interparental conflict and infant reactive temperament were examined as moderators. A community sample of 74 infants, aged 6–14 months, participated with their parents. Behavioral observations were made of parents' marital conflict and their infants' reactions. Parents reported on their emotional states during conflict, infants' history of exposure to interparental conflict, and infant temperament. Multilevel modeling indicated that infants showed differential responses to marital conflict; destructive and depressive conflict were associated with increased infant discussion attending and negative reactions, whereas constructive conflict was associated with decreased discussion attending and negative reactions. Infants' history of exposure to marital conflict and infant reactive temperament emerged as moderators.     

The early home environment and developmental outcomes for young children in the child welfare system

The quality of the early home environment is predictive of young children's subsequent cognitive, academic, and behavioral functioning. Limited research has focused on the effects of the early caregiving environment on the functioning of young children involved with the child welfare system. This study investigated the influence of children's home environments (i.e., number of children in the home, number of moves the child experienced, level of cognitive stimulation, and level of emotional support) during the first 2 years of life on their preschool developmental outcomes (i.e., cognition, language, social skills, and behavior problems).As anticipated, a high-quality early home environment promoted the well-being of preschool children who had entered the child welfare system as infants. Children who lived with greater numbers of children incurred more compromised cognitive, language, behavioral, and social outcomes. No significant associations emerged between the total number of placements and developmental outcomes; children who remained in the same home during infancy (typically the birth family home) had more compromised developmental outcomes in every domain except behavioral problems.Both cognitive stimulation and emotional support in the home predicted higher cognitive and language scores, decreased behavioral problems, and increased social skills. Early out-of-home placement and lack of emotional support interacted to predict children's behavioral problems. These findings are considered in the context of extant research and policy relevant to young children in the child welfare system.     

Successful adoption and implementation of a comprehensive casework practice model in a public child welfare agency: Application of the Getting to Outcomes (GTO) model

In recent years, several states have been developing or adopting casework practice models in an effort to shape the thinking and behavior of front line child welfare workers with a commitment to improving the safety, permanency and well-being outcomes of vulnerable children in their care (Antle, Christensen, Barbee & Martin, 2008; Christensen, Todahl & Barrett, 1999; Courtney, 2009; Folaron, 2009). This article presents one framework for approaching the organizational changes that need to be made in order to support a practice model. The Getting to Outcomes” Framework (Wandersman, 2009) is a useful approach for ensuring that all areas to support practice change are addressed.     

Foster children placed with or separated from siblings: Outcomes based on a national sample

This study examines a range of outcomes for children in foster care who have siblings, using a large, national U.S. database. Three types of sibling placements are defined: split (child has no siblings in the home), splintered (at least one sibling in the home), and together (all siblings in the home). The study analyzes records (n = 1701) from the National Study of Child and Adolescent Wellbeing, including Child Protective Services (CPS) and Long-term Foster Care (LTFC) samples. It contributes to the literature in its inclusive definition of siblings, use of three categories for sibling placement status, and use of outcome measures that include the perceptions of foster children. The study reports limited significant findings. Neither foster parents' nor youths' reports of behavioral problems differ by sibling placement status. As rated by teachers, academic performance in the group placed together exceeds that in both of the other groups. For children in kinship homes, teachers also reported less problematic internalizing and externalizing behavior for the splintered and together groups than for the split group. Children in the splintered group also responded more favorably than those in the split group to questions of closeness to the primary caregiver and liking the people in the foster family.     

合同线性化与线性化合同

本文讨论了不对称信息下委托代理关系中合同的线性化与线性化的合同。我们的出发点是代理人之间的能力差异,由此诱发了同时存在的逆向选择和道德风险问题,为处理这一问题我们得到一个产出呈凹性的支付合同,并对其线性化,考虑到这一参数线性合同系的不稳定性,我们最终以无参数的线性合同来替代,从而更为接近现实中使用的合同。     

Estimating and comparing adverse event probabilities in the presence of varying follow-up times and competing events

Safety analyses of adverse events (AEs) are important in assessing benefit–risk of therapies but are often rather simplistic compared to efficacy analyses. AE probabilities are typically estimated by incidence proportions, sometimes incidence densities or Kaplan–Meier estimation are proposed. These analyses either do not account for censoring, rely on a too restrictive parametric model, or ignore competing events. With the non-parametric Aalen-Johansen estimator as the “gold standard”, that is, reference estimator, potential sources of bias are investigated in an example from oncology and in simulations, for both one-sample and two-sample scenarios. The Aalen-Johansen estimator serves as a reference, because it is the proper non-parametric generalization of the Kaplan–Meier estimator to multiple outcomes. Because of potential large variances at the end of follow-up, comparisons also consider further quantiles of the observed times. To date, consequences for safety comparisons have hardly been investigated, the impact of using different estimators for group comparisons being unclear. For example, the ratio of two both underestimating or overestimating estimators may not be comparable to the ratio of the reference, and our investigation also considers the ratio of AE probabilities. We find that ignoring competing events is more of a problem than falsely assuming constant hazards by the use of the incidence density and that the choice of the AE probability estimator is crucial for group comparisons.