Circle house residential treatment program

In summary, the Circle House Residential Treatment Program for abusive families did meet its goals of protection of the child without separation from the family. The program was also effective in making and executing permanent plans for children in a relatively short period of time, but at huge financial cost.Residential care tor abusive families may be feasible if planned for 12–18 families at a time, thus utilizing staff fully. Also, in the Circle House program the single-parent families were clearly able to utilize the program to deal with their child-care techniques. Because the program was primarily geared to improving child-rearing patterns, some fathers in two-parent families, who viewed themselves as only occasional disciplinarians, never really participated in the program. Some were successful in learning new techniques, others were not.Residential care may also be more feasible if utilized as a diagnostic and prognostic facility with enhanced opportunity for long-term relationships to be formed, rather than as a primarily treatment facility, with the expectation of improvement and “cure.” Treatment of abusive families then becomes long-term supportive care no matter how intense the initial intervention. Even with the multitude of services of Circle House at the beginning phase of diagnosis and treatment of a family, this does not reduce or remove the need for ongoing long-term services. The true results of present intervention will be measured in future generations.     

Response to Intervention in Middle Schools: Practices and Outcomes

Response to intervention (RTI) is advocated in elementary school as a system‐wide, multitiered model of academic and behavioral interventions. Middle schools have begun adopting RTI models based on these existing elementary models. This investigation into current middle school RTI practices describes technical aspects as well as some of cultural and contextual issues surrounding implementation. The study included multiple data collection procedures including surveys, discussion groups, phone interviews, and site visits. Although many schools reported substantial progress with implementation, they recognized rigorous implementation of RTI posed such on‐going challenges as changes in staffing, curricular realignments, very limited selections of screening and progress monitoring tools aligned with their curriculum, and scheduling of secondary and tertiary level interventions.     

Book Reviews

Open Access: Key Strategic, Technical and Economic Aspects Edited by Neil Jacobs Chandos Publishing, 2006. 250 pp. ISBN 1‐84334‐203‐0, £39.95, pbk ISBN 1‐84334‐204‐9, £57.00, hbk Selling Rights, 5th edn Lynette Owen Routledge, 2006. 384 pp. ISBN 978‐0‐415‐36280‐1, £75.00 hbk ISBN 978‐0‐415‐38652‐4, £29.95 pbk Bound by Law? Tales from the Public Domain by Keith Aoki, James Boyle and Jennifer Jenkins Duke Law School Center for the Study of the Public Domain, 2006. 76 pp. ISBN 0‐974‐15531‐4, $5.95, pbk. Freely available online at http://www.law.duke.edu/cspd Digital Preservation Marilyn Deegan Simon Tanner Facet Publishing, 2006, Digital Futures Series. 288 pp. ISBN 978‐1‐85604‐485‐1, £39.95, hbk.     

Prediction of maximum oxygen consumption from walking, jogging, or running

The purpose of this study was to develop a submaximal, 1.5-mile endurance test for college-aged students using walking, jogging, or running exercise. College students (N = 101: 52 men, 47 women), ages 18-26years, successfully completed the 1.5-mile test twice, and a maximal graded exercise test. Participants were instructed to achieve a "somewhat hard" exercise intensity (rating of perceived exertion = 13) and maintain a steady pace throughout each 1.5-mile test. Multiple linear regression generated the following prediction equation: VO2 max = 65.404 + 7.707 x gender (1 = male; 0 =female) - 0.159 x body mass (kg) - 0.843 x elapsed exercise time (min; walking, jogging orrunning). This equation shows acceptable validity (R = .86, SEE = 3.37 ml x kg(-1) min(-1)) similar to the accuracy of comparable field tests, and reliability (ICC = .93) is also comparable to similar models. The statistical shrinkage is minimal (R(press) = 0.85, SEE(press) = 3.51 ml x kg(-) x min(-1)); hence, it should provide comparable results when applied to other similar samples. A regression model (R =.90, and SEE = 2.87 ml x kg(-1) min(-1)) including exercise heart rate was also developed: VO2 max = 100.162 +/- 7.301 x gender(1 = male; 0 =female) - 0.164 x body mass (kg) - 1.273 x elapsed exercise time -0.156 x exercise heart rate, for those who have access to electronic heart rate monitors. This submaximal 1.5-mile test accurately predicts maximal oxygen uptake (VO2max) without measuring heart rate and is similar to the 1.5-mile run in that it allowsfor mass testing and requires only a flat, measured distance and a stopwatch. Further, it can accommodate a wide range of fitness levels (from walkers to runners).     

Exploring Views about LARCs Among Parenting Rural Latinx Teenagers,Their Mothers,and Providers: Implications for Sexuality Education and Care

While long-acting reversible contraception (LARC) reduces risk of repeat-births, use remains low among rural Latinx adolescent mothers. This qualitative study identified perspectives about factors that influence LARC use among this population. Participants were dyads of parenting Latinx adolescent daughters and their mothers (n?=?9 dyads) and nurses (n?=?17). Findings revealed themes specific to this vulnerable population including (a) distinct ways LARC characteristics fit into parenting teenagers’ lives, (b) supportive health care climate toward LARCs, and (c) factors that inhibit LARC uptake. The study has implications for sexuality education that seeks to reduce repeat-births among this population.     

Predictors of Criminal Justice Undergraduates’ Intentions to Pursue Graduate Education in Criminology or Criminal Justice

This study relies on data from 388 junior and senior criminal justice majors to examine predictors of intentions to pursue graduate education in criminology, criminal justice, or a closely related field. Logistic regression results demonstrate that women, students who receive greater encouragement to attend graduate school, students with a lower aversion to reading, writing, and statistics, and students who perceive greater diversity intolerance are more likely to report graduate school intentions. Although students’ race was not found to be significant in the overall model, split-sample models revealed that the significance of predictors varied by race and ethnicity. In discussing the findings, special attention is given to the need for primarily White institutions (PWIs) to partner with historically Black college and universities (HBCUs). We conclude by calling for departments to redouble their efforts to diversify their faculty and student bodies.     

Product review summarization through question retrieval and diversification

Product reviews have become an important resource for customers before they make purchase decisions. However, the abundance of reviews makes it difficult for customers to digest them and make informed choices. In our study, we aim to help customers who want to quickly capture the main idea of a lengthy product review before they read the details. In contrast with existing work on review analysis and document summarization, we aim to retrieve a set of real-world user questions to summarize a review. In this way, users would know what questions a given review can address and they may further read the review only if they have similar questions about the product. Specifically, we design a two-stage approach which consists of question selection and question diversification. For question selection phase, we first employ probabilistic retrieval models to locate candidate questions that are relevant to a given review. A Recurrent Neural Network Encoder–Decoder is utilized to measure the “answerability” of questions to a review. We then design a set function to re-rank the questions with the goal of rewarding diversity in the final question set. The set function satisfies submodularity and monotonicity, which results in an efficient greedy algorithm of submodular optimization. Evaluation on product reviews from two categories shows that the proposed approach is effective for discovering meaningful questions that are representative of individual reviews.