Assessing reoffense risk with juvenile sexual offenders

This article summarizes a two-year study of juvenile sexual offenders in Washington. Both community-based and institution-based treatment programs were evaluated. A typical profile of the juvenile sexual offender is offered, as well as recidivism data from a mean 20-month follow-up period.     

The transition to parenthood in Puerto Rico: Occupational status and the timing of first births

This study examines the relationship between occupational status and fertility timing during a period of rapid development in Puerto Rico. Our fundamental hypothesis is that women with higher status occupations face greater opportunity costs than those with less valued jobs and therefore will be more likely to postpone parenthood until later ages than women without such high costs. We test this hypothesis using event history techniques with data from the 1982 Puerto Rico Fertility and Family Planning Assessment, an island-wide survey of women between the ages of 15 and 49. The analysis examines the effects of occupational status on the timing of first births, and finds strong support for the basic hypothesis, especially regarding the post-ponement of teen births. After the teen years, the effects are less pronounced. Overall, it appears that employment opportunities have played an important role in childbearing decisions in Puerto Rico.An earlier version of this paper was presented at the annual meeting of the Population Association of America, Denver, Colorado, 30 April–2 May 1992.     

Videogame Assisted Emotional Regulation Training: An ACT with RAGE-Control Case Illustration

This paper describes the treatment of an adolescent girl (age 16) who received the ACT with RAGE-Control intervention during her treatment in an urban inpatient psychiatry unit. ACT with RAGE-Control utilizes five traditional Cognitive Behavioral techniques combined with an active biofeedback videogame designed to strengthen a patient’s self-regulatory capacities while facing simulated stress in a virtual environment. The treatment is delivered as daily individual psychotherapy sessions over five consecutive days of an inpatient psychiatric admission. The following case illustrates the theory and techniques of the ACT with RAGE-Control intervention.     

Predictive Inference for Big,Spatial, Non‐Gaussian Data: MODIS Cloud Data and its Change‐of‐Support

Remote sensing of the earth with satellites yields datasets that can be massive in size, nonstationary in space, and non‐Gaussian in distribution. To overcome computational challenges, we use the reduced‐rank spatial random effects (SRE) model in a statistical analysis of cloud‐mask data from NASA's Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instrument on board NASA's Terra satellite. Parameterisations of cloud processes are the biggest source of uncertainty and sensitivity in different climate models’ future projections of Earth's climate. An accurate quantification of the spatial distribution of clouds, as well as a rigorously estimated pixel‐scale clear‐sky‐probability process, is needed to establish reliable estimates of cloud‐distributional changes and trends caused by climate change. Here we give a hierarchical spatial‐statistical modelling approach for a very large spatial dataset of 2.75 million pixels, corresponding to a granule of MODIS cloud‐mask data, and we use spatial change‐of‐Support relationships to estimate cloud fraction at coarser resolutions. Our model is non‐Gaussian; it postulates a hidden process for the clear‐sky probability that makes use of the SRE model, EM‐estimation, and optimal (empirical Bayes) spatial prediction of the clear‐sky‐probability process. Measures of prediction uncertainty are also given.     

Health,wartime stress,and unit cohesion: Evidence from Union Army veterans

We find that Union Army veterans of the American Civil War who faced greater wartime stress (as measured by higher battlefield mortality rates) experienced higher mortality rates at older ages, but that men who were from more cohesive companies were statistically significantly less likely to be affected by wartime stress. Our results hold for overall mortality, mortality from ischemic heart disease and stroke, and new diagnoses of arteriosclerosis. Our findings represent one of the first long-run health follow-ups of the interaction between stress and social networks in a human population in which both stress and social networks are arguably exogenous.     

Assessing Changes in Household Socioeconomic Status in Rural South Africa, 2001–2013: A Distributional Analysis Using Household Asset Indicators

Understanding the distribution of socioeconomic status (SES) and its temporal dynamics within a population is critical to ensure that policies and interventions adequately and equitably contribute to the well-being and life chances of all individuals. This study assesses the dynamics of SES in a typical rural South African setting over the period 2001–2013 using data on household assets from the Agincourt Health and Demographic Surveillance System. Three SES indices, an absolute index, principal component analysis index and multiple correspondence analysis index, are constructed from the household asset indicators. Relative distribution methods are then applied to the indices to assess changes over time in the distribution of SES with special focus on location and shape shifts. Results show that the proportion of households that own assets associated with greater modern wealth has substantially increased over time. In addition, relative distributions in all three indices show that the median SES index value has shifted up and the distribution has become less polarized and is converging towards the middle. However, the convergence is larger from the upper tail than from the lower tail, which suggests that the improvement in SES has been slower for poorer households. The results also show persistent ethnic differences in SES with households of former Mozambican refugees being at a disadvantage. From a methodological perspective, the study findings demonstrate the comparability of the easy-to-compute absolute index to other SES indices constructed using more advanced statistical techniques in assessing household SES.     

Early Childhood Education and Care as a Social Work Issue

Early childhood education and care affects millions of young people, their parents, and ultimately society at large. Social workers are employed directly in early childhood education and care programs and also witness the results of inadequate early interventions in various practice settings. Yet social workers do little of the research related to this topic. Numerous issues relate to both social work and to thoughtful discussions of early childhood education and care, including the unequal use of high quality early education programs, which is ultimately a social justice issue. This article elucidates how social workers can and why they should contribute to practice, policy, and research related to early childhood education and care.     

Claiming a Space for International Social Work: Voices From the Field

Despite the rise in interest in international social work, surprisingly little empirical evidence exists outlining the knowledge, values, and skills required of social workers to succeed in the global arena. This qualitative study conducted from the spring through winter months of 2013 involved 10 semi-structured interviews with experienced international social workers triangulated with a content analysis of 52 international job postings. Findings suggest that social work professional perspectives including eco-systemic thinking, social justice principles, strength-based analyses, and foundational skills, such as developing empowering person-centered relationships, exhibiting cultural humility, implementing participatory approaches to research and practice, and demonstrating reflexivity, are not always valued by international colleagues nor sought in job advertisements. Furthermore, upon graduation, MSW social workers may lack key areas of expertise expected of international workers such as program monitoring and evaluation, grant writing, policy development, and communicating with media and high-level officials. Ultimately, the invisibility of foundational social work skills and lack of other technical expertise may not only challenge social workers' competitiveness on the global market but also threaten their maintenance of a professional social work identity over time. The authors provide guidance for schools of social work and accrediting bodies to improve social workers' readiness for international work and strengthen their presence in the international arena.     

Environmental disasters as risk regulation catalysts? The role of Bhopal,Chernobyl, Exxon Valdez,Love Canal,and Three Mile Island in shaping U.S. environmental law

Unexpected events such as environmental catastrophes capture wide public attention. Soon after five major shocks—Three Mile Island, Love Canal, Bhopal, Chernobyl, and the Exxon Valdez oil spill—Congress voted on new risk regulation. This paper conducts an event study to test whether individual congressional representatives were “shocked” by these environmental disasters into increasing their probability of voting in favor of risk legislation. On average, representatives were less likely to vote in favor of bills tied to these five events. Significant heterogeneity in representatives’ responses to these shocks is documented. Liberal Northeast representatives were most likely to increase their pro-environment voting in the aftermath of these shocks.