Adolescent Violence towards Parents: Maintaining Family Connections When The Going Gets Tough

This paper explores some of the dilemmas, difficulties and decisions faced by mothers whose adolescent sons or daughters act in violent and abusive ways and refuse any counselling. A group intervention program, designed to assist these mothers in more fully understanding and addressing their adolescent's behaviour, was evaluated using both quantitative and qualitative methods. Self‐report questionnaire data indicated that following the group intervention the mothers reported less violence in their homes, and significantly less personal anxiety and fatigue. However, these women continued to experience high levels of depression, and the reasons for this are discussed. These findings are integrated with information from post‐intervention, in‐depth interviews which indicated that participants valued the group experience because they realised that they were not alone, their problems were understood, and they developed a wider range of strategies to deal with their children's violent behaviour.     

Mismatch of school desks and chairs by ethnicity and grade level in middle school

The purpose of this article is to introduce the cross-disciplinary competency standards for work-related assessments, why they are needed and how they have been developed in New South Wales (NSW). Cross-disciplinary competency standards communicate the benchmarks for effective performance of work-related assessments. They outline what is expected of rehabilitation professionals, including the ability to apply and transfer competence across different conditions and workplace contexts. Outcomes in occupational rehabilitation are affected by the efficacy of the work-related assessments performed, which is dependent upon competent, clinical decision-making by rehabilitation professionals. However, in Australia, work-related assessment practice is not governed by universally accepted competency standards or by any competency-based training/education and assessment system. To enhance professional practice, WorkCover NSW has developed cross-disciplinary competency standards for work-related a ssessments. The competencies provide (i) quality standards for professional workplace training and development, (ii) benchmarks for assessing the competence of rehabilitation professionals, (iii) a framework for evidence-based practice, (iv) benchmarks for measuring service quality and (v) "real world" learning outcomes and assessment criteria for professional education programs.     

PARTY POLITICS AND THE PRICE OF PAYOLA

The literature contains two competing views of the role of political parties: parties are treated either as associations of interest groups supported to the degree that they offer electoral support in the lawmaker's district, or as expressions of the personal ideologies of the lawmakers. In this paper parties are treated as bargaining agents for groups of lawmakers in their dealings with interest groups. Interest groups are depicted buying votes on proposals where those votes are cheapest. Parties are combinations of consistently low-price vote suppliers. The theory has empirical power that discriminates between it and the two competing models.     

Public sector delivery of waste management services: cases from the Indian Sub-Continent

This paper discusses the role of public sector institutions in the delivery of urban services, with a particular focus on waste management in the Indian Sub-Continent. Public sector institutions are the major stakeholders in the delivery of urban sevices. They hold the major responsibilities, funds and employ a large number of staff. The public sector institutions are also exposed to political influence and the institutional changes are often politically or donors driven. However, since new institutions such as non-government organisations and private sector are taking important roles in the actual delivery of services, there is a greater need to understand the existing linkages to promote integration. The informal sector also provides services to a large number of population. In order to promote efficient and effective delivery of urban services, it is important to work on the integrated approaches involving key stakeholders.     

eDiary and Female Sexual Distress Scale(©) in evaluating distress in hypoactive sexual desire disorder (HSDD)

Sex-related distress is integral to the diagnosis of hypoactive sexual desire disorder (HSDD). This article describes the results of three prospective, non-treatment validation studies (two North American and one European), each testing over 200 participants with HSDD, other types of female sexual dysfunction (FSD), or no FSD in which the 12-item Female Sexual Distress Scale(?) (FSDS(?)), the 13-item FSDS-Revised(?)(FSDS-R(?)), and a single question asked using a daily electronic diary (the eDiary For HSDD Trials(?); eDiary) were used to measure sex-related distress. FSDS results with 30- and seven-day recall were equivalent. The results observed with FSDS-R Item 13 (a single question assessing concern due to low sexual desire) were comparable to the FSDS. Mean eDiary monthly distress scores were closer to the minimum possible score (equivalent to "a little bit" of distress) and were about twice as variable as FSDS or FSDS-R Item 13 scores in participants with HSDD. All three measures confirmed that there is more distress in women with HSDD compared to women with no sexual dysfunction at all time points, demonstrating discriminant validity.     

Underprotection of Unpredictable Statistical Lives Compared to Predictable Ones

Existing ethical discussion considers the differences in care for identified versus statistical lives. However, there has been little attention to the different degrees of care that are taken for different kinds of statistical lives. Here we argue that for a given number of statistical lives at stake, there will sometimes be different, and usually greater, care taken to protect predictable statistical lives, in which the number of lives that will be lost can be predicted fairly accurately, than for unpredictable statistical lives, where the lives are at stake because of a low‐probability event, such that most likely no one will be affected by the decision but with low probability some lives will be at stake. One reason for this difference is the statistical challenge of estimating low probabilities, and in particular the tendency of common approaches to underestimate these probabilities. Another is the existence of rational incentives to treat unpredictable risks as if the probabilities were lower than they are. Some of these factors apply outside the pure economic context, to institutions, individuals, and governments. We argue that there is no ethical reason to treat unpredictable statistical lives differently from predictable statistical lives. Moreover, lives that are unpredictable from the perspective of an individual agent may become predictable when aggregated to the level of a societal decision. Underprotection of unpredictable statistical lives is a form of market failure that may need to be corrected by altering regulation, introducing compulsory liability insurance, or other social policies.     

Family Ties and Young Fathers' Engagement in Cape Town,South Africa

Young South African fathers are often engaged in their children's lives even if they do not live together. Using longitudinal data on children (n = 1,209) from the Cape Town area, the authors show that although only 26% of young fathers live with their children, 66% of nonresidential fathers maintain regular contact, and 61% provide financial support. The father–child relationship, however, is embedded in broader family ties. The type of father–mother relationship is strongly associated with whether fathers coreside with their children but not with fathers' contact with nonresidential children. Close mother and maternal grandmother bonds reduce the likelihood that fathers live with their children, whereas close ties between fathers and paternal grandmothers increase the chance that fathers visit nonresidential children. Family ties do not affect fathers' financial contributions, which are driven by men's current economic situation. These findings illustrate that father–child relationships are best understood in the context of interacting family systems.     

The role of purpose in life in healthy identity formation: a grounded model

Researchers contend that committing to an inspiring purpose in life is an important component of healthy identity development for adolescents; however, little research has focused on how identity and purpose develop together. Therefore, the study followed a sample of eight adolescent purpose exemplars for five years in order to develop a grounded model of the way these two constructs interact. Findings suggest that for adolescent purpose exemplars, the processes of identity formation and purpose development reinforce one another; the development of purpose supports the development of identity, and the development of identity reinforces purposeful commitments. Furthermore, in the adolescent purpose exemplars' lives, the purpose and identity constructs largely overlap in such a way that what individuals hope to accomplish in their lives serves as the basis of the adults they hope to become. Implications of these findings are discussed.     

Climate change and non-migration — exploring the role of place relations in rural and coastal Bangladesh

Population and Environment - Of growing research and policy interest are the experiences of people living under conditions of climate change–induced environmental stress, which either are...