The ‘right time’ – negotiating the timing of interviews with vulnerable young people

Participant retention is a key factor in determining the success of longitudinal research. Challenges in re-locating and retaining participants over the long term are major issues for researchers working with young people who face adversity and experience frequent changes in circumstances. This article reports on a study of vulnerable young people and their transition into adulthood. Rather than the more conventional schedule-based approach to locating and re-interviewing young people, a relational process, the ‘right time’ framework, was used to facilitate young people's involvement in the study. Embedded in the ‘right time’ framework is recognition of the diverse and fluctuating circumstances that shape young people's availability for interviews. Several case examples are considered which amplify the way that the ‘right time’ framework allowed the research to navigate around these circumstances. The case examples highlight the value young people attached to being involved in the research, the influence on the ‘right time’ of wider relational tensions for young people and the need to negotiate researcher status as a different sort of adult. The ‘right time’ framework contributed to a high retention rate in the study generating a more representative sample and enhancing the subsequent data analysis by providing valuable insights into the lives of these vulnerable young people.     

为国家教育妇女：加纳的教育改革与性别问题

1986改革中,加纳政府根据结构调整方案(SAP)和2020计划,关注教育中存在性别的不平等现象,努力解决女生在科学、数学和技术课程(SMT)的学业成绩、入学率等问题,并建立女子教育联合会.问题的解决要依靠真正普及免费的义务教育以及将妇女教育延伸到职业和高等教育机构.     

Entering a New Peer Group in Ethnically and Linguistically Diverse Childcare Classrooms

This short‐term longitudinal study examined changes over time in social competence with peers as a function of child and classroom characteristics. One hundred and seventy ethnically diverse low‐income children, all new to their peer groups, entered childcare classrooms with heterogeneous entry policies and ethnic/racial compositions. We observed them with their teachers and peers at entry and again six months later. Observers rated aggressive, anxious/withdrawn, and prosocial behavior with peers and observed complexity of peer play. Children who lacked peers with a shared ethnic heritage and children who spoke a different language at home than the language most often used in the classrooms appeared to be struggling with peer interaction six months after entry into the peer group. Children who had a peer who shared their ethnic heritage and entered the most ethnically diverse classrooms increased their complex peer play more than other children.     

Group therapists' countertransference reactions to multiple deaths from aids

Group therapists for those with HIV Related Diseases are becoming the “professional” survivors of this world-wide epidemic. From their experiences we may learn a great deal more about the effects of multiple deaths on mental health care professionals. As therapists they are constantly eliciting and listening to the fears, hopes, agonies and terrors of those with this disease. They become the bereaved. Witnesses to the deaths of many of their group members, they struggle with a wide range of emotional responses while at the same time assisting surviving group members in their struggle to live with these deaths. Mourning reactions and countertransference phenomena are in abundance as these therapists grapple with these group processes. This article identifies and examines these therapists' responses by focusing on clinical illustrations drawn from their bi-weekly supervision sessions.     

Art therapy as a modality for crisis intervention: Children express reactions to violence in their community

Ten days after the Symbionese Liberation Army's shoot out in Los Angeles in 1974, the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Department of Family Child Psychiatry, Thalians Community Mental Health Center, sent a crisis team of three psychotherapists to a school in the black community. The psychotherapists used an art therapy approach with a third grade classroom of 21 black children. The team's procedure helped the children ventilate their reactions to a frightening event which occurred in their neighborhood. This paper describes the art therapy techniques which were utilized, the children's vivid pictorial and verbal expressions accompanied by the psychological aspects of their responses.     

The efficacy of using judgmental versus quantitative forecasting methods in practice

In an era where forecasts drive entire supply chains forecasting is seen as an increasingly critical organizational capability. However, business forecasting continues to rely on judgmental methods despite large advancements in information technology and quantitative method capability, prompting calls for research to help understand the reasons behind this practice. Our study is designed to contribute to this knowledge by profiling differences between firms identified as primary users of either judgmental or quantitative forecasting methods. Relying on survey data from 240 firms we statistically analyzed differences between these categories of users based on a range of organizational and forecasting issues. Our study finds large differences in forecast error rates between the two groups, with users of quantitative methods significantly outperforming users of judgmental methods. The former are found to be equally prevalent regardless of industry, firm size, and product positioning strategy, documenting the benefits of quantitative method use in a variety of settings. By contrast, the latter are found to have significantly lower access to quantifiable data and to use information and technology to a lesser degree.