News coverage of child sexual abuse and prevention, 2007-2009

News media coverage of child sexual abuse can help policymakers and the public understand what must be done to prevent future abuse, but coverage tends to focus on extreme cases. This article presents an analysis of newspaper coverage from 2007 to 2009 to describe how the daily news presents and frames day-to-day stories about child sexual abuse. When child sexual abuse receives news attention, the stories focus primarily on the criminal justice details of a specific incident rather than contextual information about causes of and solutions to child sexual abuse, and prevention is rarely addressed. We offer suggestions for strategies that advocates can use to help reporters improve news coverage so that it better contextualizes child sexual abuse and links it to prevention policies.     

Limited information likelihood analysis of survey data

Analysts of survey data are often interested in modelling the population process, or superpopulation, that gave rise to a 'target' set of survey variables. An important tool for this is maximum likelihood estimation. A survey is said to provide limited information for such inference if data used in the design of the survey are unavailable to the analyst. In this circumstance, sample inclusion probabilities, which are typically available, provide information which needs to be incorporated into the analysis. We consider the case where these inclusion probabilities can be modelled in terms of a linear combination of the design and target variables, and only sample values of these are available. Strict maximum likelihood estimation of the underlying superpopulation means of these variables appears to be analytically impossible in this case, but an analysis based on approximations to the inclusion probabilities leads to a simple estimator which is a close approximation to the maximum likelihood estimator. In a simulation study, this estimator outperformed several other estimators that are based on approaches suggested in the sampling literature.     

Stress and Resilience in the Oral Histories of Rural Older Women

Oral history research has seldom focused on the reflections of rural older women. The purpose of this qualitative study was to identify: (a) stresses associated with major historical events that affected the lives of rural older women, and (b) strategies they used to deal with those stresses. Oral histories were gathered from a cross-section of 25 older women living in a small rural Midwestern community and analyzed using the method of constant comparison (Glaser & Straus, 1967 Glaser, B. and Strauss, A. 1967. The discovery of grounded theory, Chicago: Aldine.  [Google Scholar]). Content analysis revealed that economic hardship, disruption of family life, and fears and uncertainties were stressors associated with the Great Depression and world wars of the 20th century. Resilience was demonstrated by frugality, reliance on social supports, and acceptance. Implications for intervention with rural older women are discussed.     

Geriatric Enrichment in Social Work Education: Lessons Learned from the GeroRich Projects

The Geriatric Enrichment in Social Work Education (GeroRich) initiative was a critical step in addressing the national shortage of social workers interested in gerontological practice. Sixty-seven social work programs participated in the 3-year GeroRich project designed to infuse gerontological content into the BSW and MSW curriculum. This study analyzed the lessons learned by participating institutions about the curriculum enrichment effort. Five themes emerged from the qualitative analysis of GeroRich final reports: (a) obtaining faculty buy-in and faculty development, (b) increasing student interest and engagement, (c) developing community partners, (d) developing interdisciplinary linkages, and (e) facilitating institutional commitment and sustainability. The findings from this study provide valuable information on the implementation of curricular enrichment efforts in gerontology that can benefit social work and other health care disciplines.     

Personal probabilities of probabilities

By definition, the subjective probability distribution of a random event is revealed by the (‘rational’) subject's choice between bets — a view expressed by F. Ramsey, B. De Finetti, L. J. Savage and traceable to E. Borel and, it can be argued, to T. Bayes. Since hypotheses are not observable events, no bet can be made, and paid off, on a hypothesis. The subjective probability distribution of hypotheses (or of a parameter, as in the current ‘Bayesian’ statistical literature) is therefore a figure of speech, an ‘as if’, justifiable in the limit. Given a long sequence of previous observations, the subjective posterior probabilities of events still to be observed are derived by using a mathematical expression that would approximate the subjective probability distribution of hypotheses, if these could be bet on. This position was taken by most, but not all, respondents to a ‘Round Robin’ initiated by J. Marschak after M. H. De-Groot's talk on Stopping Rules presented at the UCLA Interdisciplinary Colloquium on Mathematics in Behavioral Sciences. Other participants: K. Borch, H. Chernoif, R. Dorfman, W. Edwards, T. S. Ferguson, G. Graves, K. Miyasawa, P. Randolph, L. J. Savage, R. Schlaifer, R. L. Winkler. Attention is also drawn to K. Borch's article in this issue.     

企业内部网络、创新能力与知识转移——基于礼物交换理论视角

在对知识流、礼物交换、关系网络等研究进展情况进行梳理的基础上,展开了基于关系网络的知识转移促进创新的研究,探讨了网络关系建立与维系的根本原因,主要基于礼物交换理论,运用社会网络中的礼物交换现象和机理来解析知识转移的作用.     

Predicting Turning Points Through the Integration of Multiple Models

A new method for forming composite turning-point (or other qualitative) forecasts is proposed. Rather than forming composite forecasts by the standard Bayesian approach with weights proportional to each model's posterior odds, weights are assigned to the individual models in proportion to the probability of each model's having the correct turning-point prediction. These probabilities are generated by logit models estimated with data on the models' past turning-point forecasts. An empirical application to gross national product/gross domestic product forecasting of 18 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development countries demonstrates the potential benefits of the procedure     

A note on millers's empirical weights for heteroscedastic linear regression

For heteroscedastic simple linear regression when the variances are proportional to a power of the mean of the response variable, Miller (1986) recommends the following procedure: do a weighted least squares regression with the weights (empirical weights) estimated by the inverse of the appropriate power of the response variable. The practical appeal of this approach is its simplicity.

In this article some of the consequences of this simple procedure are considered. Specifically, the effect of this procedure on the bias of the point estimators of the regression coefficients and on the coverage probabilities of their corresponding confidence intervals is examined. It is found that the performance of the process of employing empirical weights in a weighted least squares regression depends on : (1) the particular regression parameter (slope or intercept) of interest, (2) the appropriate power of the mean of the response variable involved, and (3) the amount of variation in the data about the true regression line.