Trajectories of Adjustment in a Brazilian Sample of Street-Involved Youth

Trajectories of adjustment were examined in a sample of street-involved youth across a 1-year period. Participants (N = 113; M_age = 14.18 years; 80.5% male, 91% non-White) were recruited in three Brazilian cities. Interviews conducted at three time points included six measures of physical and psychological adjustment. Unconditional growth models revealed linear declines over time (i.e., improved adjustment) on three indicators: health symptoms, sexual risk behaviors, and negative affect. There were no linear changes in drug use, positive affect, or life satisfaction. Conditional growth models revealed few significant effects for age or gender, but ratings of stressful life events moderated longitudinal changes in health symptoms, drug use, and negative affect. Implications for practice, policy, and theory are discussed.     

Work–family conflict,relational turbulence mechanisms,conflict tactics and marital satisfaction*

ABSTRACT

This study examined how work–family conflict (WFC) is associated with mechanisms of relational turbulence, conflict tactics, and marital satisfaction. Six hundred and thirty-three married workers completed an online survey. Family interference with work and spouses’ work interfering with one’s family predicted greater relational uncertainty and interference from partners, whereas one’s own work interfering with family did not predict these mechanisms of turbulence. All three sources of relational uncertainty, and interference from partners, predicted increased avoidance and distributive tactic use. Facilitation from partners predicted increased use of integrative tactics. Finally, relational uncertainty, interference from partners, and distributive conflict tactics partially mediated the associations of WFC with marital satisfaction.     

Evaluation of soccer players under the Moneyball concept

ABSTRACT

The recruitment of athletes with limited resources is a global problem in professional sports. In US Major League Baseball, the experience of the Oakland Athletics’ general manager in the last decade turned his “Moneyball” model into a synonym of quantitative analysis in the transfer market of baseball players. His strategy focused on hiring players with outstanding technical skills but relatively low market value. This study adapted this model to the framework of a multiple criteria decision aid (MCDA), by selecting undervalued players who have complementary abilities. The novelty here refers to the joint use of four algorithms explored by the composition of probabilistic preferences (CPP) (i.e., ranking, classification, dynamic evaluation and regularity analysis) and their application to soccer player performance evaluation. The new model analysed the recent transfer of a left-back soccer player to Europe. The results indicated 12 opportunities for better investment, among 32 left and right-back players considered. Two years later, the value of the same player was considerably lower. He played only five matches in the 2018–2019 season, without scoring or providing any assists. On the other hand, the players better classified by the CPP-MB model presented higher performances and market values.     

Only a game? Player misery across game boundaries

ABSTRACT

Videogames often confront players with frustratingly difficult challenges, fearsome enemies, and tragic stories. As such, they can evoke feelings of failure, sadness, anger, and fear. Although these feelings are usually regarded as undesirable, many players seem to enjoy videogames which cause them. In this paper, I argue that player misery often originates from a fictional or lusory attitude which brackets game events from real-life, making the player’s emotions solely relevant within the game context. As they are part of the game themselves, these negative emotions can be enjoyed and easily relativized, since players can acknowledge that their cause is ‘only a game’. However, there are feelings of misery associated with the playing of videogames which are not caused by either the game’s fiction or challenge. In the last part of this paper, I describe a qualitatively different kind of player misery: one that is caused by elements that are not perceived as part of the game by the player, and is not bracketed from real life by a lusory or fictional attitude.     

Depression and Anxiety in the Postnatal Period: An Examination of Infants’ Home Language Environment,Vocalizations, and Expressive Language Abilities

This longitudinal study investigated the effects of maternal emotional health concerns, on infants’ home language environment, vocalization quantity, and expressive language skills. Mothers and their infants (at 6 and 12 months; 21 mothers with depression and or anxiety and 21 controls) provided day-long home-language recordings. Compared with controls, risk group recordings contained fewer mother–infant conversational turns and infant vocalizations, but daily number of adult word counts showed no group difference. Furthermore, conversational turns and infant vocalizations were stronger predictors of infants’ 18-month vocabulary size than depression and anxiety measures. However, anxiety levels moderated the effect of conversational turns on vocabulary size. These results suggest that variability in mothers’ emotional health influences infants’ language environment and later language ability.     

Strategies in assessing the need for updating evidence-based guidelines for six clinical topics: an exploration of two search methodologies

BACKGROUND: Because of the expense of updating practice guidelines, recent attention has focused on approaches that can reliably assess any updating required. Shekelle et al. (Journal of the American Medical Association 2001, 286, 1461-7) proposed using limited literature searches with expert involvement to reduce resources used in assessing whether a guideline needs updating. OBJECTIVES: This study compared Shekelle's method and the traditional systematic review method regarding comprehensiveness and effort. METHODS: Two research teams translated critical key questions on screening test treatments and outcomes to Medical Subjects Headings (MeSH) and search strategies. They refined Shekelle's method over three iterations, seeking greater efficiency. Using both methods independently, teams assessed the need to update six topics from the 1996 Guide to Clinical Preventive Services (US Preventive Services Task Force). Outcomes included completeness of study identification, importance of missed studies and effort involved. RESULTS: The revised review approach produced fewer citations than the traditional approach and saved time, identifying fewer eligible studies than the traditional approach. None of the studies missed was rated important by the experts consulted. CONCLUSIONS: The revised review approach provides an acceptable method for judging whether a guideline requires updating. Librarians were an integral part of the research process that streamlined the searches.     

How Much Time Do You Spend Online? Understanding and Improving the Accuracy of Self-Reported Measures of Internet Use

Given the importance of survey measures of online media use for communication research, it is crucial to assess and improve their quality, in particular because the increasingly fragmented and ubiquitous usage of internet complicates the accuracy of self-reported measures. This study contributes to the discussion regarding the accuracy of self-reported internet use by presenting relevant factors potentially affecting biases of self-reports and testing survey design strategies to improve accuracy. Combining automatic tracking data and survey data from the same participants (N = 690) confirmed low levels of accuracy and tendencies of over-reporting. The analysis revealed biases due to a range of factors associated with the intensity of (actual) internet usage, propensity to multitask, day of reference, and the usage of mobile devices. An anchoring technique could not be proved to reduce inaccuracies of reporting behavior. Several recommendations for research practice follow from these findings.     

Dutch Publishing Industry Seeks Startups Through the Renew the Book Competition

In order to find new ways of growing the market, the Dutch General Publishers Association developed an innovation-competition for startups worldwide to bring innovative thinking and ideas into the Dutch Publishing Industry. The competition is the first and only program dedicated to startups leveraging new and creative business ideas around all the elements of book publishing and has its second edition this year. The competition is for startups, who are active in areas such as publishing automation, book retail, data analytics, authoring, book content development, and audience engagement.     

试论新时期中学外语教师应具备的素质

教师素质是素质教育的基石 ,是创新教育的关键。只有充分认识到提高教师素质的紧迫性和重要性 ,不断提高教师的素质 ,更新教育观念 ,才能培养出高素质的教师 ,从而提高教学水平 ,促进教育事业的发展