Assessing programs designed to improve outcomes for children exposed to violence: Results from nine randomized controlled trials

Objectives

The study tests whether participation in interventions offered by a subset of sites from the National Safe Start Promising Approaches for Children Exposed to Violence initiative improved outcomes for children relative to controls.

Methods

The study pools data from the nine Safe Start sites that randomized families to intervention and control groups, using a within-site block randomization strategy based on child age at baseline. Caregiver-reported outcomes, assessed at baseline, 6 and 12 months, included caregiver personal problems, caregiver resource problems, parenting stress, child and caregiver victimization, child trauma symptoms, child behavior problems, and social-emotional competence.

Results

Results revealed no measurable intervention impact in intent-to-treat analyses at either 6- or 12-month post-baseline. In 6-month as-treated analyses, a medium to high intervention dose was associated with improvement on two measures of child social-emotional competence: cooperation and assertion. Overall, there is no reliable evidence of significant site-to-site effect variability, even in the two cases of significant intervention effect.

Conclusions

Since families in both the intervention and control groups received some degree of case management and both groups improved over time, it may be advantageous to explore the potential impacts of crisis and case management separately from mental health interventions. It may be that, on average, children in families whose basic needs are being attended to improve substantially on their own.     

On interest,credit and capital ∗

On interest, credit and capital Laurence Harris This article examines the category of interest payments within the problematic of historical materialism. It examines the interest payments which occur under the capitalist mode of production on the basis of credit from capitalists to capitalists, from capitalists to workers, and from workers to capitalists. On the subject of capitalist to capitalist interest payments, the article examines the views of Marx on interest-bearing capital and demonstrates that Marx did consider this interest rate to be subject to determinate and analysable laws. These interest payments are transfers of surplus value as such. On the subject of worker to capitalist interest payments it is demonstrated that these are payments out of wage revenue which are appropriated as profit on merchants' capital rather than as profit on interest-bearing capital. Finally, capitalist to worker interest payments are identical with payments of wage revenue and, therefore, are for capitalists equivalent to the advance of variable capital. These results are established on the basis of the law of value and after considering the concept of value of labour power. In conclusion, the construction of data employed in empirical work is criticised.     

Promoting Social and Emotional Learning in Middle School: Intervention Effects of Facing History and Ourselves

Journal of Youth and Adolescence - There are fewer evidence-based social and emotional learning programs for middle school students compared to younger grades. This randomized controlled trial...     

Machiavelli,marketing and management: ends and means in public affairs

• Niccolo Machiavelli is introduced and used as a guide to some of the key issues facing modern business and government. Machiavelli's morality and philosophy is explored and reflected upon. Insights into the realities of power and decision making are used to reflect on the emergence of the modern public affairs industry. Key lessons are suggested for success.

Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Performing Aboriginal Rights in 1951: From Australia's Top End to Southeast

In 1951, performers from Daly River and Tiwi Islands Aboriginal communities staged a corroboree strike. The musicians and dancers had routinely entertained visiting cruise ships in the Darwin Botanic Gardens, but now joined dockside workers to protest the jailing and exiling of two Aboriginal agitators Lawrence Wurrpen (Urban) and Fred (Nadpur) Waters. In Melbourne, the Australian Aborigines' League expressed solidarity with the Darwin strikes and protested the exclusion of Aboriginal voices from the Jubilee of Australian Federation. The League's leaders Doug Nicholls and Bill Onus produced a new work of musical theatre featuring east coast Aboriginal performers Fred Foster, Margaret Tucker, Georgia Lee, Harold Blair, and others in ‘Out of the Dark — An Aboriginal Moomba’. In this paper we examine political uses of performance in Australia's assimilation era, and show how Aboriginal agitators used music and dance to connect struggles for rights across Australia, and to keep cultural identity alive. In doing so we show how performance operated both as work and as assertion of cultural sovereignty.     

Does Fairness Matter More to Some than to Others? The Moderating Role of Workplace Status on The Relationship Between Procedural Fairness Perceptions and Job Satisfaction

Three field studies explored the relations among status, procedural fairness, and job satisfaction in the workplace. Study 1 revealed that status differences moderated the relationship between procedural fairness and job satisfaction such that there was a stronger relationship between procedural fairness and job satisfaction for individuals with higher perceived status than for those with lower perceived status. Study 2 examined a possible underlying psychological mechanism for the moderating effect of perceived status—the importance of procedural fairness deservingness—and found that higher levels of perceived status were associated with a greater sense of deservingness for procedural fairness. Extending the results of the first two studies, Study 3 found that procedural fairness deservingness mediated the moderating effect of status on the relationship between procedural fairness and job satisfaction. This research contributes to theories of fairness by further illuminating the role of status in affecting reactions to procedural fairness. This research also contributes to our understanding of status in organizations and shows that perceived status can lead to an increased sense of deservingness.