Children's involvement in their parents' divorce: implications for practice

The paper reports findings from a research study that explored children's experience of divorce. It shows that children experience parental divorce as a crisis in their lives but that they are able to mobilise internal and external resources to regain a new point of balance. In doing so, children demonstrate the degree to which they are active and competent participants in the process of family dissolution. The implications of the data are then considered in relation to engaging with children involved in divorce and in relation to some of the cultural presumptions that might militate against hearing what they have to say about their experiences. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

“It's hard work,believe me!”: Active efforts to optimise housing by people who live with mental illness and access housing assistance

Secure and appropriate housing is critical for the well‐being of people living with mental illness (consumers). Yet it is often difficult to achieve. Housing assistance is available, but is often difficult for consumers to access and negotiate. While the need for support is well‐recognised, little is known about the active part consumers play in finding and keeping appropriate accommodation. This paper addresses the research question: How do consumers who use housing assistance actively manage their housing situations? In‐depth interviews were conducted with 18 consumers who had used housing assistance within the past five years. These were analysed using constant comparative analysis, based on a grounded theory approach. Participants engaged in a range of activities to address six major concerns: working toward my home; following the rules to keep what I have; managing and improving my accommodation; working with housing services; living within my current situation; and finding and using supports. All participants described times when their mental health negatively affected their ability to do these activities. The findings highlight the need for housing services and mental health services to collaborate to develop policies and protocols that place reasonable demands on consumers and support their abilities to actively manage their housing situations.     

Self‐Efficacy,Perceptions of Barriers,Vocational Identity,and the Career Exploration Behavior of Latino/a High School Students

This study explored the potential relationship between the social cognitive variables of career decision‐making self‐efficacy and perceptions of barriers and the outcome variables of vocational identity and career exploration behaviors in a sample of 128 urban Latino/a high school students. The results indicated that higher levels of career decision‐making self‐efficacy were related to both a more differentiated vocational identity and a greater engagement with career exploration tasks. Perception of fewer barriers was also found to be related to a more integrated vocational identity. Implications for career counseling and future research are discussed.     

Designing np control charts

This paper presents the results of a simulation approach to the design of economic attribute control charts. The approach taken differs from the classical studies reported in the literature in two respects. First, the often made assumption that the out-of-control state of a process will remain so until detection is relaxed. This in effect allows the average proportion of defectives to deteriorate further before the out-of-control state is detected. Second, there is no requirement for detailed information on the exact process behaviour in the out-of-control state. It is assumed that a multitude of out-of-control causes exist and that the proportion defective is equally likely to be within a specified range of values. The relaxation of these two assumptions makes the model realistic and gives it wide practical applications in the control of a manufacturing process. The simulation computer programs developed are sufficiently compact to run on the low cost microcomputers.     

A Unit in Current Events

The authors encourage teachers to make use of existing, standard social studies curriculum to uncover and to make visible the normative assumptions that underlie American cultural beliefs about gender and sexuality. The article provides an overview of how some cultures within the various Native American nations conceptualize gender and sexuality in ways that challenge Western norms. An example lesson plan addressing Two Spirit history is included as well as reflections from teachers who have taught the curriculum in their classrooms.     

Quantifying experts' uncertainty about the future cost of exotic diseases

Since the foot-and-mouth disease outbreak of 2001 in the United Kingdom, there has been debate about the sharing, between government and industry, both the costs of livestock disease outbreaks and responsibility for the decisions that give rise to them. As part of a consultation into the formation of a new body to manage livestock diseases, government veterinarians and economists produced estimates of the average annual costs for a number of exotic infectious diseases. In this article, we demonstrate how the government experts were helped to quantify their uncertainties about the cost estimates using formal expert elicitation techniques. This has enabled the decisionmakers to have a greater appreciation of government experts' uncertainty in this policy area.     

Pathological gambling among adolescents: Massachusetts Gambling Screen (MAGS)

This article describes the development of the Massachusetts Gambling Screen (MAGS). The purpose of the MAGS is to provide a brief clinical screening instrument that can (1) yield an index of non-pathological and pathological gambling during a 5 to 10 minute survey or interview and (2) document the first psychometric translation of the proposed DSM-IV pathological gambling criteria into a set of survey or clinical interview questions. The development data for this instrument were obtained from a survey of 856 adolescents who were students in suburban Boston high schools. The results provided evidence that weighted item scores (i.e., discriminant function coefficients) could correctly classify 96% of adolescent gamblers as pathological, in transition or non-pathological when DSM-IV criteria were employed as the conceptual referent. The results also describe the prevalence of a variety of social and emotional problems associated with adolescent gambling. Finally, the discussion examined the normalization and contemporary social context of gaming and the impact of these influences on the measurement and identification of pathological gambling.Thanks are extended to Dr. Thomas Sharkey, Mary Kaddaras, Alan Bryce, David Shaffer, and Reingard Heller for their assistance during the development and implementation of this project.