This paper describes four studies on self-reported problems in 2,243 adolescent males and females, 12 to 17 years of age. In Study 1, principal-axis factoring of 102 items covering 11 problem domains revealed six factors comprising 49.5% of the variance. Study 2 used confirmatory factor analysis of a 64-item reduced set on a new sample of 408 adolescents. Goodness-of-fit indicators suggested that the six-factor model had excellent fit to the data. Study 3 used data from the 2,157 adolescents used in the first two studies. Coefficient alphas ranged from .83 to .92. Median test-retest reliability for the six factors was .86. There was a consistent structure of the correlation matrix across age and gender. Study 4 was a study of criterion validity, using an additional sample of 86 children with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Sensitivity and specificity were high, with an overall diagnostic efficiency of 83%. This new self-report scale, the Conners/Wells Adolescent Self-Report of Symptoms (CASS), may provide a useful component of a multimodal assessment of adolescent psychopathology.

PurposeTo review the current debates on partnership working and to examine whether a “fitness for purpose” test is an appropriate way of evaluating existing developments.Design/methodology/approachThe paper examines the conceptual frameworks within which the partnership discourse has been located, and reflects on whether this enables both practitioners and academics to make sense of the partnership literature and arrangements.FindingsThe paper argues that existing frameworks are limited and suggests that alternative models need to be considered.Practical implicationsThe paper invites the practitioner/academic community to reassess existing models in the light of experience and analysis.Originality/valueThe paper provides an alternative framework within which to situate partnership development and practice.

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Community colleges play a vital role in higher education, enrolling more than one in every three postsecondary students. While their market share has grown over the past 50 years, students' success rates remain low. Consequently, community college stakeholders are searching with mounting urgency for strategies that increase rates of success. We evaluate the effects of one such strategy, learning communities, from a randomized trial of over 1,500 students at a large urban college in the City University of New York (CUNY) system. We find that the program's positive effects on shortterm academic progress (credit accumulation) are maintained seven years after random assignment. We find some limited evidence that the program positively affected graduation rates, particularly for those students without remedial English needs, over this time period. While there is not clear evidence that the program improved economic outcomes, this article concludes by offering sobering reflections on trying to detect the effects of higher education interventions on future earnings.

Although there are significant weaknesses in the research justifying telepsychiatric assessments in children and adolescents, there are no data that suggest that this process contributes to negative outcomes. Details on the setting for telepsychiatry assessments and camera view have not been studied.

Partnerships to lead on urban regeneration initiatives in the UK claim to facilitate inter-agency working and local involvement. They are presented both as ways of ensuring the effective management of services within neighbourhoods and as potential``change agents'' in the way they bring together different (and sometimes competing) interest groups. Regeneration partnerships are, therefore, often the sites of unresolved conflict. This paper, which draws upon interviews with local regeneration managers and local community representatives in Manchester explores possible strategies for resolving such conflict. In particular it suggests that the use of supervision in the public and community sector needs reforming in order to provide externality for those involved.

Box of around 100 words required in instructions for authors to highlight the implications/usefulness (impact) of the paper for policy-makers and practitioners:This article describes informed practice-orientated and evidence-based approaches to managing austerity through effective collaborative working. Despite general policy assumptions that sharing scarce resources with partners will create new and efficient approaches, this research found that innovation could sometimes be enabled by collaboration and also, paradoxically, be undermined by it. In order to work well, collaborative working needs to be understood at a detailed practice level and actively and effectively managed to provide positive outcomes for new ways of working while avoiding the undermining elements that signal inertia or obstruction. words 3 COPING WITH AUSTERITY: INNOVATION VIA COLLABORATION OR RETREAT TO THE KNOWN?This article explores potential approaches to the management of public sector austerity through collaborative innovation. Practitioner-based insider research offers an insight into how collaborative innovation can work in the public sector, what undermines it and what impact the active management of a turbulent environment can make in creating divergent outcomes. A flexible action framework -modelling collaborative innovation -offers a practical means of understanding and supporting effective innovation through collaboration.

Post May 1997 the con ven tion al approaches to regen eration strategies in Britain have focu sed u pon establishing local partn erships between -n ot on ly service providers an d potential em ployers -but also local comm u n ity-based groups. Neighbou rhoods or 'localities' are n ow seen as the aren as within which coalitions of local in terest groups m eet to iden tify n eeds, to allocate resources an d to en gage with local com m u n ities. This paper will exam in e the assu m ptions behind su ch approaches an d will explore the sites of con ict an d the ways in which local m an agers attem pt to reconcile differing aspirations an d expectations. The paper draws u pon a series of in terviews with participan ts in regeneration in itiatives in Man chester, an d will su ggest that regen eration m an agers occupy a sign i can t place in arbitrating between differen t in terest groups. In particu lar, the role of m u lti-agency workin g will be explored an d the ways in which professionals (from a variety of occupations) seek to n egotiate comm on term s of reference an d u n derstan din g.