The ties that bind II: Reunification for siblings in out-of-home care using a statistical technique for examining non-independent observations

Reunifying abused or neglected children: Decision-making and outcomes

“…These findings are consistent with those of prior research on reunification, which has found that children are likely to remain in care longer if they have been neglected (Courtney, Piliavin, & Wright, 1997;Harris & Courtney, 2003;Webster, Shlonsky, Shaw, & Brookhart, 2005) or have learning disabilities (Berridge & Cleaver, 1987;Davis, Landsverk, & Newton, 1997). Regular contact with birth parents was a predictor of return, although the contact in itself is less likely to be predictive than other factors associated with contact, such as the quality of parent-child relationships.…”

Sibling Foster Care, Placement Stability, and Well-Being: A Theoretical and Conceptual Framework

“…For example, measures of a child's problematic behavior will in part be correlated with the behavior of their siblings or the attitudes and behaviors of their caregivers and other household members. This measurement problem results in nonindependent, cluster-correlated data (Webster, Shlonsky, Shaw, & Brookhart, 2005), which can violate the statistical assumption of independence, limiting the validity of findings connected with traditional linear modeling strategies. Research that examines sibling specific processes in kinship and nonrelative foster home settings are largely absent from familyfocused child welfare research, and no comprehensive framework currently exists to orient researchers, practitioners, and policy makers to the contextual processes intersecting sibling foster care, placement stability, and family well-being.…”

Single Types of Family Violence Victimization and Externalizing Behaviors Among Children and Adolescents

“…The majority of families in the study (n0733; 64.47%) included multiple children, and this was taken into account. Outcomes experienced by children within the same family are not statistically independent of one another due to a shared family environment (Webster et al 2005), and the clustering of children within families needed to be addressed. Without correcting for the clustered or nested nature of the sample, estimates of variances would be artificially reduced, increasing the likelihood that coefficient estimates would be significant for no other reason than the nonindependence of sample units (Guo 2005;Woolridge 2002).…”