The public and private purposes of case records

Social welfare agencies have official reasons and requirements for the construction of case records. Sociologists have detected a set of unofficial reasons that shape case records in practice. This paper suggests that case records that record the lives of children in child welfare systems are written, inter alia, to deny the failure of interventions, to justify the refusal to serve “bad clients,” and to justify the decision to extend hegemony over “good” clients.     

Families of Hadamard group divisible designs

By a family of designs we mean a set of designs whose parameters can be represented as functions of an auxiliary variable t where the design will exist for infinitely many values of t. The best known family is probably the family of finite projective planes with υ = b = t² + t + 1, r = k = t + 1, and λ = 1. In some instances, notably coding theory, the existence of families is essential to provide the degree of precision required which can well vary from one coding problem to another. A natural vehicle for developing binary codes is the class of Hadamard matrices. Bush (1977) introduced the idea of constructing semi-regular designs using Hadamard matrices whereas the present study is concerned mostly with construction of regular designs using Hadamard matrices. While codes constructed from these designs are not optimal in the usual sense, it is possible that they may still have substantial value since, with different values of λ₁ and λ₂, there are different error correcting capabilities.     

Predicting Adolescent Autonomy from Parents: Relationship Connectedness and Restrictiveness

This study examined the extent to which adolescents'behavioral autonomy was predicted by several aspects of the parent-youth relationship that are encompassed by the general constructs connectedness and restrictiveness. Both of these general relationship constructs are composed of more specific social-psychological predictors consisting of parental behaviors, parent-adolescent authority dimensions, and indicators of family ties. A total of 657 adolescents (mean age = 16.3 years) and 753 parents responded to self-report questionnaires. Hierarchical multiple regression analyses were used to test the hypotheses from both the adolescents'and parents'perspectives in separate models. Many of the predictions were confirmed, indicating that adolescent behavioral autonomy often develops within contexts of relationship connectedness, such as continuing parent-youth authority and supportiveness. Moreover, as expected, youthful autonomous behavior was inhibited by such aspects of relationship restrictiveness as punitive behavior and the perceived coercive abilities of parents.     

Chinese Parenting Behaviors,Adolescent School Adjustment,and Problem Behavior

The present research examined the relationship between supportive and controlling dimensions of parenting behaviors and Chinese adolescent outcomes (school adjustment and problem behavior). Researchers collected self-report data from 589 adolescents in Hangzhou, China. Results showed the factor structure for the Parent Behavior Measure in the Chinese sample was different from the factor structure based on Western research. Specifically, paternal support did not emerge as a viable factor. Parental monitoring and involvement predicted positive adolescent outcomes, whereas punitiveness and permissiveness predicted negative outcomes. Surprisingly, maternal support predicted more adolescent problem behavior, especially for boys. Guilt induction, love withdrawal, and positive induction did not predict any significant adolescent outcomes when other parenting behaviors were controlled. School adjustment mediated and gender moderated the relationship between parenting and adolescent problem behavior. The importance of considering parenting behaviors, adolescent school adjustment, gender, and cultural norms when examining adolescent problem behavior was discussed.     

White ‘ladies’, coloured ‘favourites’ and black ‘wenches’; some considerations on sex,race and class factors in social relations in white Creole Society in the British Caribbean

The Formation of a Planter Elite: Jonathan Bryan and the Southern Colonial Frontier. By Alan Gallay. Athens &; London: University of Georgia Press, 19S9, xx, 282 pp. $35.00.

Unification of a Slave State: The Rise of the Planter Class in the South Carolina Backcountry, 1760–1808. By Rachel N. Klein. Chapel Hill &; London: University of North Carolina Press for the Institute of Early American History and Culture, 1990. vii, 331 pp. $34.95.

Women and Sisters: Antislavery Feminists in American Culture. By Jean Fagan Yellin. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989. ix, 226 pp. £20.00/$29.95.

Virtue's Hero: Emerson, Antislavery, and Reform. By Lengougeon. Athens and London: University of Georgia Press. 1990. xiii, 408 pp. $45.00.

Race and Revolution. By Gary B. Nash. Madison: Madison House, 1990. 212pp. $27.95.

Lay My Burden Down: A Folk History of Slavery. Edited by B.A. Botkin. Athens and London: University of Georgia Press, 1990. xl, 297 pp. $14.95 (paper).

Religion and the Radical Republican Movement 1860–1870. By Victor B. Howard. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1990. 297 pp. $32.00.

Aristocrats of Color: The Black Elite, 1880–1920. By Willard B. Gatewood. Bloomington: University of Indiana Press, 1990. cii; 450 pp. $39.95.

Slavery in the Circuit of Sugar: Martinique and the World Economy, 1830–1848. By Dale W. Tomich. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990. xiv, 353pp.

Indenture and Exile: The Indo‐Caribbean Experience. Edited by Frank Birbal‐Singh. Tsar, Toronto, 1989. 264 pp. £10.00.     

The role of leadership in shared mental model convergence and team performance improvement: An agent-based computational model

Research in shared mental models has immeasurably aided our understanding of effective teamwork and taskwork. However, little research has focused on the role that leaders play, if any, in influencing, developing and/or fostering shared mental models and thereby improving team performance. We developed an agent-based computational model based on McComb's theory of three-phase mental model development, where agents repeatedly share individual opinions (orientation phase), evaluate and respond to the opinions expressed by others (differentiation phase), and modify their understanding of the team based on the responses (integration phase). Leadership and team properties are represented in three experimental parameters: social network structure, heterogeneity of agents' domains of expertise, and level of their mutual interest. Participative leadership is represented by a fully connected network, while Leader–Member eXchange (LMX) is represented by a fully connected network of in-group members and several out-group members connected only to the leader. Our simulation results show that, in general, participative leadership promotes mental model convergence better than LMX. In the meantime, the team performance improvement is achieved by participative leadership only when members have both heterogeneous domains of expertise and strong mutual interest. In all other conditions, participative leadership causes the worst degradation of team performance through team development processes, while LMX is the best to minimize such team degradation. Implications and suggestions for future research are provided.     

The composite abuse scale: further development and assessment of reliability and validity of a multidimensional partner abuse measure in clinical settings

Absence of a well-validated comprehensive partner abuse questionnaire has been a major methodological issue in domestic violence research. A new multidimensional measure of partner abuse, the Composite Abuse Scale (CAS), has four dimensions: Severe Combined Abuse, Emotional Abuse, Physical Abuse, and Harassment. A general practice patient sample (N = 1,836) has been used in the development and testing of CAS. Factor analyses in this current study confirmed the four dimensions from a preliminary nurses sample study and resulted in a final scale of 30 items consisting of acts of physical, emotional, and sexual abuse. These four factors exhibited good internal reliability (Cronbach's alpha > 0.85) and the corrected item-total correlations were high (> 0.5). Evidence of criterion and construct validity is presented.