Accommodation for Elderly People With Special Needs: 1971–1981

The first five years of the decade under review was marked by an expansion in the provision of public sector residential care for the elderly, spurred on by the government's guidelines for a growth in capital spending. After 1973 attention focused on ideas concerning welfare pluralism and the forms it might take. Any major restructuring would include two major factors: an examination by the state of priorities on provision of professional and technical skills, a clarification of the goals of those services on offer and an assessment of changes in the circumstances of clients and the character of services. A regulatory jole would require tapping in resources in the voluntary and private sectors and taking adequate care on responsibility and public accountability, monitoring procedures and evaluating results.     

The Relation between Observational Measures of Social Problem Solving and Familial Antisocial Behavior: Genetic and Environmental Influences

Deficits in social problem‐solving skills are often associated with antisocial behavior, particularly in children’s extrafamilial relationships. The current study was designed to examine this association in several new ways: the association was examined at two times in an adolescent sample within the context of the family; genetic models were used to estimate genetic and environmental effects on observational measures of problem solving and antisocial behavior and on the association between the two. The analyses were conducted as part of the Nonshared Environment in Adolescent Development project, consisting of 720 families at Time 1 (mean adolescent age: 14.5 years) and 440 families at Time 2 (mean adolescent age: 16.1 years). Genetic influence was found for antisocial behavior, but not for problem solving. The findings of shared environmental influences on these measures and their association are unusual in the behavioral genetic literature and are important in that respect.     

Breaking Barriers: The Experiences of Women in Male Dominated Informal Sector Occupations in Urban Ghana

Globally changing economic conditions have made it necessary for men and women to cross gender based occupational lines. While some research has been conducted on the men crossing occupational barriers in Ghana, not much is known about the women venturing into male dominated occupational sectors in the informal sector. Using the concepts of ‘tokenism and ‘heightened visibility’, this research investigated the experiences of women in male dominated informal sector occupations in Ghana. The research revealed that being numerically disadvantaged and being a woman does not necessarily lead to some of the challenges highlighted as facing other females in more formal occupational settings. On the contrary, this study has revealed how the numerical disadvantage combined with socio-cultural feminine attributes, contributes to the occupational development of women. This research recommends that future programmes aimed at female empowerment should not only focus on the academic (science; technology and mathematics) opportunities, but should also highlight the opportunities for female economic empowerment within male dominated sectors of the informal economy.     

Changes in the quality and regulation of social work education: Confronting the dilemmas of workforce planning and competing qualifications frameworks

The Modernising Social Services agenda seeks to raise the quality of service outcomes through regulation. Because attaining quality outcomes for service users is related to better training of providers, a parallel modernising agenda seeks to raise the quality of education and training through regulation. With the demise of the CCETSW, responsibility for regulating social work education is under debate. Workforce planning is a critical issue, as are trends towards separate qualifications, genericism, and specialism. Two agencies, the QAA (Quality Assurance Agency, responsible for higher education qualification frameworks) and the QCA (Qualifications and Curriculum Agency, responsible for work-based qualification frameworks) have established their separate qualifications frameworks, but have not worked out the transferability and equivalence of educational and work-based awards across the separate frameworks. Until consonance is established, a seamless ladder of progression from work-based social care awards to educationally based social work awards is not possible, thereby limiting workers' expertise and career opportunities. This paper argues that change must involve reconciling separate frameworks and resolving issues of transferability, specialism, and genericism. Social work education's partnerships between universities and employers provide lessons for bridging the divide between work-based and educational awards. Women, part-time workers, ethnic minorities, and people with a disability will benefit from accessible transparent frameworks.     

Genetic Contributions to Adolescents' Extrafamilial Social Interactions: Teachers, Best Friends, and Peers

The purpose of the present study was to investigate genetic and environmental contributions to individual differences in adolescents' social interactions outside the family. We investigated sibling resemblance for adolescents' reports of interactions with best friends and teachers, and parents' perceptions of adolescents' peer groups in 701 same-sex adolescent sibling pairs aged 10-18, using a twin, full sibling, and step sibling design. Our goals were to assess the magnitude of sibling resemblance, and to disentangle resemblance due to shared genetic heritage from that due to shared environmental experiences. Substantial genetic influence was found for parents' perceptions of adolescents' peer groups. Adolescents' reports of positive interactions with teachers and best friends also showed significant genetic influence. In contrast, individual differences in adolescents' reports of negative interactions with teachers and best friends showed no significant genetic influence. In addition, most environmental influences for social interactions with teachers, best friends, and peers were largely of the nonshared variety, suggesting that growing up in the same family does not make adolescents similar in their extrafamilial social interactions.     

Characteristics of Serial Title Changes and Recognition of New Serial Works: Theoretical and Practical Implications

The paper reports findings from a study to identify characteristics of serials with title changes and then make recommendations for recognizing new works for these serials. Findings show title changes occur due to underlying subject, function, corporate, geographic, frequency, or format changes, with 80.8% of the changes being subject or function changes. It is recommended that reasons for title changes be determined from clear statements in text or elsewhere, and that new works be recognized based upon the requirements of a definition of a work. With the FRBR definition, a new work would be recognized only for a significant subject or function change.     

Exponentiated power Lindley–Poisson distribution: Properties and applications

A new four-parameter distribution called the exponentiated power Lindley–Poisson distribution which is an extension of the power Lindley and Lindley–Poisson distributions is introduced. Statistical properties of the distribution including the shapes of the density and hazard functions, moments, entropy measures, and distribution of order statistics are given. Maximum likelihood estimation technique is used to estimate the parameters. A simulation study is conducted to examine the bias, mean square error of the maximum likelihood estimators, and width of the confidence interval for each parameter. Finally, applications to real data sets are presented to illustrate the usefulness of the proposed distribution.     

The Longitudinal Influence of Coparenting Conflict on Parental Negativity and Adolescent Maladjustment

This study addresses two limitations of coparenting research: first, little research on coparenting has been conducted with families of adolescents, and second, there is little understanding regarding the child and family contexts in which coparenting is most salient. The longitudinal relation of coparenting conflict to parenting and adolescent maladjustment across 3 years was investigated among 516 2-parent, 2-adolescent families. Coparenting conflict predicted as much or more unique variance in parenting and adolescent adjustment as did marital quality and disagreement together. After controlling for stability, coparenting conflict predicted mothers' and fathers' negativity and adolescent antisocial behavior (but not depression). Importantly, the influence of coparenting conflict in all cases varied as a function of family type, adolescent gender, or initial level of antisocial behavior, or all. The implications of these results for family processes in different relational and developmental contexts are discussed.