Family profiles of maltreated children in Singapore: A latent class analysis

Children who enter the child protection system often have complex family problems and have experienced early adverse experiences. Using latent class analysis, this study aimed to identify family classes of child protection cases in Singapore, to ascertain the prevalence of these family classes, and to test the association of family class membership to subsequent recurrence of harm. A sample of 440 cases who entered the Child Protective Service in Singapore was analyzed based on eight familial factors on the household and caregiver levels. A four-class solution was found to demonstrate the best fit: (a) the large household group was intergenerational and majority lived with extended family members, (b) the harsh parenting group showed high levels of parenting problems and the caregiver justifying his abuse/neglect, (c) the high criminality group had high levels of caregiver substance abuse and caregiver arrest and incarceration history, and (d) the low disadvantage group rated low on all the familial factors. A Cox Regression revealed that in comparison to the low disadvantage group, the harsh parenting group was twice as likely to have recurrence of harm. There were also differences across family classes with regard to age at entry into child protection, gender composition and abuse types. The findings and practice implications are discussed.     

我国民营企业家族式管理改造的信用问题

我国民营企业普遍长不大，根本原因在于家族式管理阻碍了其发展。而要解决这一问题，就必须在民营企业中引入职业经理制度，把家族企业改造为现代企业，但这一改造方式存在很多障碍，最重要的原因在于民营企业主与职业经理之间信用的缺失。文章最后从重建信用的角度对问题的初步解决提出了对策。     

Reading development subtypes and their early characteristics

The present findings are drawn from the Jyv?skyl? Longitudinal Study of Dyslexia (JLD), in which approximately 100 children with familial risk of dyslexia and 100 control children have been followed from birth. In this paper we report data on the reading development of the JLD children and their classmates, a total of 1,750 children from four measurement points during the first two school years. In the total sample, we examined whether heterogeneous developmental paths can be identified based on profiles of word recognition and reading comprehension. Secondly, we studied what kind of early language and literacy skill profiles and reading experiences characterize the children with differing reading development in the follow-up sample. The mixture modeling procedure resulted in five subtypes: (1) poor readers, (2) slow decoders, (3) poor comprehenders, (4) average readers, and (5) good readers. The children with familial risk for dyslexia performed on average at a lower level in all reading tasks than both their classmates and the controls, and they were overrepresented in slow decoders subtype. Differences between the subtypes were found in the early language and literacy skill development, as well as in the reading experiences of the reading subtypes.