An attempt to detect “pregnancy susceptibility” in indigent adolescent girls

Programs for widespread dissemination of birth control information and devices among adolescents are subject to strong resistance from many groups and may be ineffective anyway. An alternative approach to reducing the alarming frequency of unplanned pregnancy among unmarried adolescents might be group or individual counseling for those most susceptible, to unplanned pregnancies. Accurate identification would be necessary to implement this alternative. Developed in this paper is an inferential strategy for identifying in well-defined groups unmarried adolescents who seem susceptible. When carefully evaluated, an inferential strategy, based, on several concepts from Bayesian inference theory, appears remarkably accurate as a means of identification. Besides specific predicReceived her M. A. in education and Ph.D. in psychology at University of Houston. Main interest was adult development. Deceased in 1971.Received his M.D. from Baylor Pediatric internship and residency at University of Michigan Hospital. Main interest is adult development.Received his Ph.D. in psychology at Ohio State University. Main interest is probability (decision) theory.Received her Ph.D. in educational psychology at University of Texas in Austin. Main interest is adult development.Received from M.D. Johns Hopkins, School of Medicine. Main interest is obstetrics and gynecology.Received her M.A. in English at Southern Methodist University. Main interest is research communications.     

The changing association between prenatal participation in WIC and birth outcomes in New York City.

We analyze the relationship between prenatal WIC participation and birth outcomes in New York City from 1988-2001. The analysis is unique for several reasons. First, we have over 800,000 births to women on Medicaid, the largest sample ever used to analyze prenatal participation in WIC. Second, we focus on measures of fetal growth distinct from preterm birth, since there is little clinical support for a link between nutritional supplementation and premature delivery. Third, we restrict the primary analysis to women on Medicaid who have no previous live births and who initiate prenatal care within the first four months of pregnancy. Our goal is to lessen heterogeneity between WIC and non-WIC participants by limiting the sample to highly motivated women who have no experience with WIC from a previous pregnancy. Fourth, we analyze a large sub-sample of twin deliveries. Multifetal pregnancies increase the risk of anemia and fetal growth retardation and thus may benefit more than singletons from nutritional supplementation. We find no relationship between prenatal WIC participation and measures of fetal growth among singletons. We find a modest pattern of association between WIC and fetal growth among U.S.-born Black twins. Our findings suggest that prenatal participation in WIC has had a minimal effect on adverse birth outcomes in New York City.     

Financial Reporting by Australian Nonprofit Organisations: Dilemmas Posed by Government Funders

Nonprofit organisations comprise a growing and important sector of the Australian economy. This sector is being used by governments to an increasing extent for the delivery of services. The most common manner in which nonprofit organisations are funded by government is through the provision of grants, contracts or service agreements. Nonprofits discharge their accountability for these funds through reporting guidelines issued by the government funders. This article examines the financial accountability requirements of government funders, in one jurisdiction in Australia to support the central argument that the emphasis on ‘upward and external’ accountabilities serve as a functional and control tool on the sector. This emphasis detracts from the development of the ‘downward and internal’ mechanisms of accountability which are the essential building blocks for the strategic development of the capacity of the sector to respond to calls for greater accountability.     

Popular music, popular politics: Unbwogable and the idioms of freedom in Kenyan popular music

This article details how Gidi Gidi Maji Maji's popular songUnbwogable moved to occupy centre-stage in the political arenaof Kenya's December 2002 general election. The first part ofthe article deals with the politics of the song's production,its entry into the public domain and the politics of interpretationthat influenced the patterns of its consumption. The secondpart is a nuanced reading of the text — the lyrics —dramatizing the shared experiences, memories and socio-economicimmobility that distilled into the Kenyan people's common voiceof defiance and determination to institute change. The thirdpart emphasizes the contingency of events that culminated inthe National Rainbow Coalition (NARC) appropriating Unbwogable,thus completing its movement from popular song to national popularculture event and, ultimately, to political discourse. Afterthe elections this discourse of resistance and invincibilitywas rewritten to include victory and it is precisely in thisclose association with the state that the slogan has run thedanger of being colonized by a privileged few at the expenseof the majority. The article concludes by underlining the elasticityof idiom.     

Do government subsidies increase the private supply of public goods?

Public Choice - We study three different models in which public goods are supplied by private contributions. In one of these models, tax-financed government subsidies to private contributions will...     

Sex in transition, 1900–1980

Changes in the proportion of college-aged males and females participating in coital relationships are analyzed through a review of 35 studies conducted between 1903 and 1980. Two major trends are apparent: there has been a major increase in the proportion of young people reporting intercourse, and the proportion of females reporting coital involvement has increased more rapidly than the proportion of males, although the initial base for males is greater. Prior to 1970, about twice as many college men as women reported having had intercourse; since 1970, the proportions of men and women reporting coital involvement are nearly equal. These changes are seen as supportive of major shifts in the standards governing sexual behavior from the double standard to the single standard of permissiveness with affection [Reiss, I. F. (1967).The Social Context of Premarital Sexual Permissiveness, Rinehart and Winston, New York] to the current standard of intercourse being appropriate in love relationships (without the requirement of progression toward marriage) and permissible in causal relationships without exploitation.     

Reducing Maltreated Children's Reluctance to Answer Hypothetical Oath-Taking Competency Questions

Before allowing child witnesses to testify, courts routinely require children to describe what would happen to them if they lied. However, young children often refuse to reason hypothetically if they view the premises as implausible or undesirable, and might be more willing to discuss the consequences of lying if they are asked about another child rather than themselves. On the other hand, children might view themselves as invulnerable to punishment, and therefore believe that whereas other children will be punished for lying, they will not be. In this study, 64 maltreated 5- and 6-year-old children were asked to describe the consequences of lying to three professionals (a judge, a social worker, and a doctor). Participants in the self condition were asked what would happen to them if they lied, whereas participants in the other condition were asked to describe what would happen to a story child if he or she lied. Asking children about other children increased responsiveness, and did not reveal perceptions of invulnerability. The results suggest that young children's understanding that they will be punished for lying may make them reluctant to discuss the consequences of lying, leading to underestimation of their oath-taking competency.     

Designing tools for ‘joined up’ homelessness prevention: Insights from one case study

Homelessness is a complex social problem with significant health and economic consequences. Prevention-based responses seek to reduce the number of people who go on to experience homelessness, but effective homelessness prevention is challenging to implement and can require service integration across mainstream referral organisations and specialist homelessness service agencies. The ‘At-Risk Screening Tool’ was piloted over August 2018 to March 2019 to enable such mainstream and specialist organisations to coordinate their screening and referral process in the context of homelessness prevention. The tool was used by mainstream referral agencies to assess a client's risk of homelessness, and a tailored referral pathway to a specialist homelessness agency was produced based on this assessment. This article discusses the evaluation of the pilot, exploring three key insights around service integration in a community service context. These insights emphasise the importance of embedding an awareness of staff needs and organisational constraints into the design and application of similar tools.