Arbitration and Managed Care: Will Consumers Suffer if the Two are Combined?

Published in cooperation with the American Bar Association Section of Dispute Resolutio

Problematisation and regulation: bodies, risk, and recovery within the context of Neonatal Abstinence Syndrome

Background Neonatal Abstinence Syndrome (NAS) is an anticipated effect of maternal drug use during pregnancy. Yet it remains a contested area of policy and practice. In this paper, we contribute to ongoing debates about the way NAS is understood and responded to, through different treatment regimes, or logics of care. Our analysis examines the role of risk and recovery discourses, and the way in which the bodies of women and babies are conceptualised within these. Methods Qualitative interviews with 16 parents (9 mothers, 7 fathers) and four focus groups with 27 health and social care professionals based in Scotland. All the mothers were prescribed opioid replacement therapy and parents were interviewed after their baby was born. Data collection explored understandings about the causes and consequences of NAS and experiences of preparing for, and caring for, a baby with NAS. Data were analysed using a narrative and discursive approach. Results Parent and professional accounts simultaneously upheld and subverted logics of care which govern maternal drug use and the assessment and care of mother and baby. Despite acknowledging the unpredictability of NAS symptoms and the inability of the women who are opioid-dependent to prevent NAS, logics of care centred on ‘proving’ risk and recovery. Strategies appealed to the need for caution, intervening and control, and obscured alternative logics of care that focus on improving support for mother-infant dyads and the family as a whole. Conclusion Differing notions of risk and recovery that govern maternal drug use, child welfare and family life both compel and trouble all logics of care. The contentious nature of NAS reflects wider socio-political and moral agendas that ultimately have little to do with meeting the needs of mothers and babies. Fundamental changes in the principles, quality and delivery of care could improve outcomes for families affected by NAS

'Cost' calculations as a barrier to gaining information under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 from the Police in England and Wales

Previous research has identified the methodological value of using the Freedom of Information Act 2000 to gain access to information held by the police, as well as its limitations. Very little attention, however, has been paid to the ways in which the police calculate the cost of FOI compliance and utilise cost exemptions to deny access to information. In this article, we present our empirical findings from our FOI requests made to the police in England and Wales that demonstrates how cost calculations became a barrier to our request for information. In addition, the responses received show that there were significant differences between the calculated cost needed to retrieve the information, the reasons given for the refusal for access to information, as well as regional variations with FOI compliance. We argue that excessive cost calculations, given as a reason for not providing access to information by the police, is a 'metric' for institutional limitations in data recording and data management. Furthermore, in a time of 'austerity' we suggest that with increases in police funding cuts the calculated cost of FOI compliance will increase, thereby undermining police transparency and accountability. We therefore question claims that the FOIA is a 'powerful' tool that social researchers should use more often

Smoothing group-based trajectory models through B-splines

Purpose This paper investigates the use of B-spline smoothers as an alternative to polynomials in time when estimating trajectory shape in group-based trajectory models. The use of polynomials in these models can cause undesirable curve shapes, such as uplifts at the end of the trajectory, which may not be present in the data. Moreover, polynomial curves are global, meaning that a data point at one end of the trajectory can affect the shape of the curve at the end. Methods We use the UK Offenders Index 1963 birth cohort to investigate the use of B-splines. The models are fitted using Latent Gold, and two information criteria (BIC and ICL-BIC are used to estimate the number of knots of the B-spline, as well as the number of groups. A small simulation study is also presented. Results A three-group solution was chosen. It is shown that B-splines can provide a better fit to the observed data than cubic polynomials. The offending trajectory groups correspond to the classic groups of adolescent-limited, low-rate chronic and high-rate chronic which were proposed by Moffitt. However ,the shapes of the two chronic trajectory curves are more consistent with the life-course persistent nature of chronic offending than the traditional cubic polynomial curves. The simulation shows improved performance of the B-spline over cubic polynomials. Conclusions The use of B-splines is recommended when fitting group-based trajectory models. Some software products need further development to include such facilities, and we encourage this development

“All Students are Brilliant”: A Confession of Injustice and a Call to Action

The two of us (AR and LAE), in our teaching, research, and work with teachers, advocate for responsive teaching—an approach that seeks out and builds on the productive “seeds of science” in what our students say and do and assumes that “all students…are brilliant.” This pedagogical approach requires a commitment to listening to and intellectually empathizing with students’ scientific ideas

Changing crime mix patterns of criminal careers:longitudinal latent variable approaches for modelling conviction data in England & Wales and the Netherlands

In criminal career research, there has been a great deal of attention paid to the frequency of offending over the life course. This neglects any changes in the patterns and types of offences being committed. However, it is crucial to explore these patterns of offending in detail and various types of crimes being committed, as this will enhance the understanding of criminal activity and the causes of offending behaviour. This is especially true for policy makers, so they can make better informed decisions when deciding how best to target their resources when it comes to tackling crime. This thesis aims to identify crime mix patterns (different offenders will commit different selection of offences) and how they develop over the life course from two official conviction datasets. The first is the England and Wales Offenders Index (OI). The cohort data of the OI contains the court convictions of offenders from 1963 to the end of 2008 in eight birth cohorts. The other dataset is from the Netherlands Criminal Career and Life-course study (CCLS) which contains data covering the criminal careers of those offenders who were convicted of a crime in the Netherlands in 1977, starting at age 12 and followed up till 2005. The study will provide a contrasting analysis of the two datasets using a Latent Markov Model approach similar to that published in Francis et al. (2010) where the idea of lifestyle specialisation and short-term crime typologies (crime mixes) over five-year age-periods was introduced for female offenders. This approach will jointly estimate the crime mix patterns and the transition probabilities (offenders move from one pattern to another). The study adds methodological innovation in criminology by the use of B-splines in group based trajectory models and in the modelling of Poisson counts in latent Markov models. The thesis also contributes to cross-national research. Not only is it important to be able to identify crime mix patterns in both datasets separately but being able to compare and contrast the results from each country will allow for the examination to check if offender’s crime mix patterns are the same across jurisdictions. These findings will be of great interest to both criminologists and policy makers. The analysis provides a cross- national understanding of progression in the types of crime mixes offenders are involved in, whether some crime mix patterns are more specialised than others in terms of their long term patterns and whether some crime patterns desist earlier than others. The results show that each dataset both have versatile and specialist crime mix offending groups but there are also important differences in the makeup of these groups, with regard to the type of offences. These results are discussed in further detail, along with the issues of how best to carry out analyses upon the two datasets. The additional problems encountered when comparing the two datasets and the strategies used to overcome them are explained. Finally, suggestions for future research are given along with encouragement of replicating the methodologies used in this study upon more recent datasets in other jurisdictions

An examination of psychological disorders, social anxiety, and perfectionism in high-achieving undergraduate students

There is a long-standing debate on whether high-achieving students experience a better or worse psychological well-being than their peers. This retrospective cohort study adds to the current literature by examining the differences in rates of psychological disorders, social anxiety, and perfectionism between high-achieving and typical undergraduate students. A convenience sample of 357 students was gathered from the University of Central Florida (UCF). Participants were asked to fill out a brief survey which included questions about demographics, grade point average (GPA), social anxiety, perfectionism, enrollment in The Burnett Honors College, inclusion in any childhood gifted programs, and diagnosis of psychological disorders. Two groups (a High-Achieving group and a Comparison group) were formed based on GPA scores and enrollment in The Burnett Honors College at UCF. Relative risk and chi-squared analyses were conducted to see if there was a significant relationship between group classification and the incidence of psychological disorders, self-injury, and social anxiety. T-tests were used to compare group means of social anxiety and perfectionism. A statistically significant relationship was found between group classification and the incidence of psychological disorders, self-injury, and social anxiety (p = .033, p = .028, and p \u3c .001). The High-Achieving group scored significantly higher on the SPAI-23 SP Subscale (p = .032), the SPAI-23 Difference Score (p \u3c .001), and the APS-R Standards Subscale (p \u3c 0.001). Altogether, the findings of this study indicate that High-Achieving undergraduate students experience a worse psychological well-being than their typical undergraduate student peers