Programa shortstop: a culturally focused juvenile intervention for Hispanic youth

Culturally sensitive juvenile delinquency and substance abuse interventions are relatively limited and unavailable to many first-time Hispanic juvenile offenders. The purpose of this study was to test the effectiveness of a culturally focused juvenile and substance abuse intervention program for first time Hispanic youth offenders. The intent of the program was to decrease juvenile recidivism and increase substance abuse resistance. Programa Shortstop is a family based intervention designed for Hispanic youth ages 9-17. The intervention was delivered to 352 youth and at least one parent/caregiver over the 5-year study period. For intervention youth, the results of the recidivism study (n = 321) indicated that 89% of youth participating in Programa Shortstop between 1995 to 1997 were not rearrested within one year of completing Programa Shortstop. Additionally, statistical paired t-test analysis found that the intervention model had a positive effect on legal knowledge and school related factors associated with substance abuse and delinquency. Parent participants demonstrated significant increases in knowledge related to substance abuse and the legal system.     

National Income and Income Inequality,Family Affluence and Life Satisfaction Among 13 year Old Boys and Girls: A Multilevel Study in 35 Countries

Adolescence is a critical period where many patterns of health and health behaviour are formed. The objective of this study was to investigate cross-national variation in the relationship between family affluence and adolescent life satisfaction, and the impact of national income and income inequality on this relationship. Data from the 2006 Health Behaviour in School-aged Children: WHO collaborative Study (N = 58,352 across 35 countries) were analysed using multilevel linear and logistic regression analyses for outcome measures life satisfaction score and binary high/low life satisfaction. National income and income inequality were associated with aggregated life satisfaction score and prevalence of high life satisfaction. Within-country socioeconomic inequalities in life satisfaction existed even after adjustment for family structure. This relationship was curvilinear and varied cross-nationally. Socioeconomic inequalities were greatest in poor countries and in countries with unequal income distribution. GDP (PPP US$) and Gini did not explain between country variance in socioeconomic inequalities in life satisfaction. The existence of, and variation in, within-country socioeconomic inequalities in adolescent life satisfaction highlights the importance of identifying and addressing mediating factors during this life stage.     

Interdependent Network Recovery Games

Recovery of interdependent infrastructure networks in the presence of catastrophic failure is crucial to the economy and welfare of society. Recently, centralized methods have been developed to address optimal resource allocation in postdisaster recovery scenarios of interdependent infrastructure systems that minimize total cost. In real-world systems, however, multiple independent, possibly noncooperative, utility network controllers are responsible for making recovery decisions, resulting in suboptimal decentralized processes. With the goal of minimizing recovery cost, a best-case decentralized model allows controllers to develop a full recovery plan and negotiate until all parties are satisfied (an equilibrium is reached). Such a model is computationally intensive for planning and negotiating, and time is a crucial resource in postdisaster recovery scenarios. Furthermore, in this work, we prove this best-case decentralized negotiation process could continue indefinitely under certain conditions. Accounting for network controllers' urgency in repairing their system, we propose an ad hoc sequential game-theoretic model of interdependent infrastructure network recovery represented as a discrete time noncooperative game between network controllers that is guaranteed to converge to an equilibrium. We further reduce the computation time needed to find a solution by applying a best-response heuristic and prove bounds on ε-Nash equilibrium, where ε depends on problem inputs. We compare best-case and ad hoc models on an empirical interdependent infrastructure network in the presence of simulated earthquakes to demonstrate the extent of the tradeoff between optimality and computational efficiency. Our method provides a foundation for modeling sociotechnical systems in a way that mirrors restoration processes in practice.     

Distributed Perception: Co‐Operation between Sense‐Able,Actionable, and Accountable Semiotic Agents

Perception is not just a cognitive, private experience, but achieved in and through interactive and practical actions in co‐operation with other semiotic agents. This article contributes to work on multisensory perception that is distributed as an interactional phenomenon between agents. Based on video‐ethnographic research conducted among visually impaired people, and an ethnomethodological, conversation‐analytical framework, the article contributes findings about the most basic sensory characteristics of distributed perception: co‐operation between sense‐able, action‐able, accountable semiotic agents that can communicate multisensorial information in order to solve situated and emerging problems together.     

Questioning the Notion of Feminine Leadership: A Critical Perspective on the Gender Labelling of Leadership

Traditionally, leadership has been equated with masculinity. Managerial jobs, at least in business and on senior levels, have been defined as a matter of instrumentality, autonomy, result‐orientation, etc. something which is not particularly much in line with what is broadly assumed to be typical for females. Today, however, there seems to be a broad interest in leadership being more participatory, non‐hierarchical, flexible and group‐oriented. These new ideas on leadership are often seen by students of gender as indicating a feminine orientation. This article argues that it is necessary to critically discuss the whole idea of gender labelling leadership as masculine or feminine and suggests that we should be very careful and potentially aware of the unfortunate consequences when we use gender labels. Constructing leadership as feminine may be of some value as a contrast to conventional ideas on leadership and management but may also create a misleading impression of women's orientation to leadership as well as reproducing stereotypes and the traditional gender division of labour.     

‘I Want to Bring Him from the Aeroplane to Here’: The Meaning of Animals to Children of Refugee or Migrant Backgrounds Resettled in Australia

Separation from animals with whom children have caring relationships can lead to considerable loss and grief, perhaps especially in the case of migration. This article reports on a thematic analysis of interviews undertaken with children of migrant or refugee backgrounds who had resettled in Australia. Findings suggest that children who spoke about animals framed their experiences in ways that either evoked a sense of loss with regard to animals or referred to animals as engendering a safe haven following resettlement. The article concludes by exploring potential service responses and encourages a focus on animals' needs in the context of migration.     

Differential Item Functioning of a Family Affluence Scale: Validation Study on Data from HBSC 2001/02

Methodology for making cross-national comparisons is an area of increasing interest in social and public health related research. When studying socio-economic differences in health outcomes cross-nationally, there are several methodological issues of concern, especially when data is derived from self-reported questionnaires. Health Behaviour in School-aged Children (Currie et al. 1998) is a WHO cross-national study using school samples. HBSC provides comparable data, and thereby a unique opportunity to study associations between social indicators and health outcomes within an international perspective. In 2001/02 data was collected from a total of 162,323 children in 32 countries (Austria, Belgium, Canada, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Greenland, Hungary, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Malta, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Russia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Ukraine, United Kingdom, USA.). Studies of social inequalities requires that a comparable measure of socio-economic position (SEP) is in use. HBSC has developed a proxy for social position measuring material wealth, the Family Affluence Scale (FAS). This paper studies FAS and whether it is comparable across population subgroups defined by country, age and gender. Initial analysis revealed that an item measuring perceived family wealth was a valid FAS item. Including this item in the FAS score will improve the reliability of FAS. Graphical log-linear Rasch models (GLLRM) showed that FAS contain differential item functioning (DIF) with respect to country, age, and gender as well as local dependency (LD) between items. During the analysis, test equating techniques where used to adjust for the test bias generated by DIF. We recommend that the equated scores are used whenever FAS is included as a variable. This study suggests that HBSC-FAS should contain five items (additional item: perceived family wealth) when analysing data from HBSC 2001/02, and furthermore that each country should adjust for the DIF or make use of the converted FAS scores provided. If using FAS as a proxy for social position at an international level, it is not advised to compare the absolute levels of FAS, but weigh the scale by ridit transformation.

Secular Trends in Alcohol Drinking Among Danish 15‐Year‐Olds: Comparable Representative Samples From 1988 to 2010

This study describes the secular trends in weekly intake of beer, wine, liquor, and drunkenness among 15‐year‐olds 1988–2010 (total N = 8,701), a period with several policy initiatives regarding alcohol in Denmark. Data from seven comparative and representative school surveys conducted in 1988, 1991, 1994, 1998, 2002, 2006, and 2010 were used. The proportion of 15‐year‐olds in Denmark who drank alcohol and were drunk increased from 1988 to 2002, but decreased substantially to 2010; for example, the proportion of 15‐year‐old girls who drank beer at least weekly increased from 15% in 1988 to 31% in 2002 and decreased to 7% in 2010. We hypothesize that age limits for purchasing alcohol may have resulted in a decrease in young people's alcohol use.     

Servicing the body: placing glasses on the client’s head at the opticians

Various forms of service work rely upon personnel undertaking activities that necessitate close, and in some cases potentially intimate, contact with a client’s body. In this paper, we consider the ways in which opticians place and position glasses on the head of their clients and how they avoid, or at least ameliorate, the problems and sensitivities that might arise in this close encounter with the co-participant. The paper is based on the analysis of a substantial corpus of video-recordings, augmented by field work, undertaken both in UK and Denmark. The analysis draws on ethnomethodology and conversation analysis and contributes to our understanding of the interactional accomplishment of body work and embodied conduct and to the growing corpus of research concerned with ‘multimodality’ and the social organisation of service encounters.