Trajectories of Depressive Symptoms and Suicidality Among Heterosexual and Sexual Minority Youth

Sexual minority youth report higher rates of depression and suicidality than do heterosexual youth. Little is known, however, about whether these disparities continue as youth transition into young adulthood. The primary goals of this study were to describe and compare trajectories of adolescent depressive symptoms and suicidality among sexual minority and heterosexual youth, examine differences in depressive symptoms and suicidality trajectories across sexual orientation subgroups, and determine whether there are gender differences in these longitudinal disparities. Four waves of data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health were analyzed using latent curve modeling (N = 12,379; 53 % female). Results showed that the rates of depressive symptoms and suicidality in early adolescence were higher among sexual minority youth than among heterosexual youth, and that these disparities persisted over time as participants transitioned into young adulthood. Consistent with previous cross-sectional studies, the observed longitudinal disparities were largest for females and for bisexually-identified youth. Sexual minority youth may benefit from childhood and early adolescent prevention and intervention programs.     

Book Reviews From Walden Pond to Jurassic Park: Activism,Culture, and American Studies. By Paul Lauter. New Americanists: A Series Edited by Donald E. Pease. Durham Duke UP, 2001

Women and Madness, by Phyllis Chesler. New York : Doubleday and Co. Pp. 360. $8.95.

The Diary of Anaïs Nin: Volume IV, 1944–1947, edited and prefaced by Gunther Stuhlmann. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. Pp. 235. $7.50.     

Public affairs in Australia: Evolving and enhancing corporate performance

This article is an attempt to provide a helicopter view of the influences and responses that have shaped the corporate public affairs function over four decades from non‐existence to an important and settled profession in Australia's major companies. It reflects the perceptions and experiences of an observer with a background in public administration, politics, academia, industry association leadership, and consulting to companies and industry organisations over that period. They are further informed by surveys and other studies conducted by the organisation supporting public affairs departments, the Australian Centre for Corporate Public Affairs (the Centre) since its inception in 1990. The article charts the emergence from two distinct, low level management silos—one supporting communications and the other, government affairs—to create an integrated strategic management function. The central story is of waves of innovation in concepts and practices, developed mainly overseas, being embraced with enthusiasm and becoming a dominant focus, before settling into the broad toolbox of public affairs. This occurred particularly in the period 1990–2005 during which the function took its shape. With such a broad and ambitious sweep, it is inevitable that bold generalisations begging exceptions must be made.     

Location‐Efficient Mortgages: Is the Rationale Sound?

Location efficient mortgage (LEM) programs are an increasingly popular approach to combating urban sprawl. LEMs allow families who want to live in densely populated, transit‐rich communities to obtain a larger mortgage with a smaller down payment than traditional underwriting guidelines allow. LEMs are premised on the proposition that homeowners in such “location‐efficient” areas can safely be allowed to breach underwriting guidelines designed to prevent mortgage default because they have lower than average automobile‐related transportation expenses and more income available for mortgage payments. This paper employs records of more than 8000 FHA‐insured mortgages matched with data on various measures of location efficiency to test this proposition. The results suggest that it does not hold and that LEMs—like other low‐down‐payment mortgage programs—will raise mortgage default rates. This cost must be weighed against any potential anti‐sprawl benefits LEMs may have. © 2001 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.     

Exact solutions to Bayesian and maximum likelihood problems in facial identification when population and error distributions are known

The reliability of traditional photogrammetric identification techniques using a small number of facial landmarks has recently come in for criticism. However, the transformation of parameters into a new face space in which the error distributions are orthogonal, yields a maximum likelihood solution to the problem of identifying a photographed face from a small, known, population which, in a simulated example, raises the success rate from 20% to 93%. A full transformation yielding simultaneously independent population and error distributions can be derived from raw population and error data using a straightforward computer procedure. Such a transformation facilitates computations for the situation where a single suspect is held in custody and the likelihood ratio of his being identical with a photograph is desired. It seems premature to condemn photogrammetry until the more efficient data-analysis approach outlined in this paper has been applied and tested.