Mobilisation strategies of individual and institutional actors in Brussels’ artistic and cultural scenes

Though sharing a common territory, the cultural spaces of Brussels are divided according to a complex structure where Francophone and Flemish Communities play a dominant role. These two language-based communities set separate cultural policies and programming for their residents in Brussels. Within this fragmented structure, local socio-cultural actors have mobilised promoting cross-Community collaboration towards a shared vision for the Brussels-Capital Region (ex. Cultural Plan for Brussels). Further, individual artists themselves have developed strategies to participate in Community-defined cultural programming and to gain recognition for their talent as local (Bruxellois) artists regardless of their ethnic, linguistic or migrant background. This article explores how socio-cultural actors and artists have mobilised to reframe ‘culture’ in Brussels, and to gain access to cultural venues particularly in the case of migrant and migrant-origin artists whose engagement and recognition in Brussels’ cultural scenes have been little studied.     

Videogame Assisted Emotional Regulation Training: An ACT with RAGE-Control Case Illustration

This paper describes the treatment of an adolescent girl (age 16) who received the ACT with RAGE-Control intervention during her treatment in an urban inpatient psychiatry unit. ACT with RAGE-Control utilizes five traditional Cognitive Behavioral techniques combined with an active biofeedback videogame designed to strengthen a patient’s self-regulatory capacities while facing simulated stress in a virtual environment. The treatment is delivered as daily individual psychotherapy sessions over five consecutive days of an inpatient psychiatric admission. The following case illustrates the theory and techniques of the ACT with RAGE-Control intervention.     

Assessing the Reliability of the Gambling Functional Assessment: Revised

Dixon and Johnson (Anal Gambl Behav 1: 44–49, 2007) proposed the Gambling Functional Assessment as a tool to identify the consequences maintaining the respondent’s gambling behavior, but subsequent studies on its psychometric properties suggested that it could use improvement. The present study investigated the internal consistency of the Gambling Functional Assessment—Revised using the responses of 1,060 undergraduate students. Temporal reliability was assessed by a second administration of the measure four (n = 87) or twelve (n = 98) weeks after the first administration. Temporal reliability was also compared to the South Oaks Gambling Screen (Lesieur and Blume in Am J Psychiatry 144: 1184–1188, 1987), which was also administered at both time points. Internal consistency measures were good to excellent, even when potential non-gamblers were excluded from the analyses. Temporal stability was also very good, with the possible exception of the consequence of “escape” at 12 weeks. The Gambling Functional Assessment—Revised represents a potentially useful tool for researchers and therapists interested in why respondents are gambling.     

Private equity regulation: a comparative analysis

This article examines the existing contractual arrangements and industry standards in private equity. It shows that investors are, in principle, capable of structuring their particular investments according to their own preferences, there are a range of governance problems and risks that could be potentially hazardous for some classes of investors. We examine the circumstances where existing industry codes and legal tools can be used to address the problems that arise in relation to private equity and buyout activity.     

Control‐based imputation for sensitivity analyses in informative censoring for recurrent event data

In clinical trials, missing data commonly arise through nonadherence to the randomized treatment or to study procedure. For trials in which recurrent event endpoints are of interests, conventional analyses using the proportional intensity model or the count model assume that the data are missing at random, which cannot be tested using the observed data alone. Thus, sensitivity analyses are recommended. We implement the control‐based multiple imputation as sensitivity analyses for the recurrent event data. We model the recurrent event using a piecewise exponential proportional intensity model with frailty and sample the parameters from the posterior distribution. We impute the number of events after dropped out and correct the variance estimation using a bootstrap procedure. We apply the method to an application of sitagliptin study.     

Latent Class Analysis of Gambling Activities in a Sample of Young Swiss Men: Association with Gambling Problems,Substance Use Outcomes,Personality Traits and Coping Strategies

The study aimed to identify different patterns of gambling activities (PGAs) and to investigate how PGAs differed in gambling problems, substance use outcomes, personality traits and coping strategies. A representative sample of 4989 young Swiss males completed a questionnaire assessing seven distinct gambling activities, gambling problems, substance use outcomes, personality traits and coping strategies. PGAs were identified using latent class analysis (LCA). Differences between PGAs in gambling and substance use outcomes, personality traits and coping strategies were tested. LCA identified six different PGAs. With regard to gambling and substance use outcomes, the three most problematic PGAs were extensive gamblers, followed by private gamblers, and electronic lottery and casino gamblers, respectively. By contrast, the three least detrimental PGAs were rare or non-gamblers, lottery only gamblers and casino gamblers. With regard to personality traits, compared with rare or non-gamblers, private and casino gamblers reported higher levels of sensation seeking. Electronic lottery and casino gamblers, private gamblers and extensive gamblers had higher levels of aggression-hostility. Extensive and casino gamblers reported higher levels of sociability, whereas casino gamblers reported lower levels of anxiety–neuroticism. Extensive gamblers used more maladaptive and less adaptive coping strategies than other groups. Results suggest that gambling is not a homogeneous activity since different types of gamblers exist according to the PGA they are engaged in. Extensive gamblers, electronic and casino gamblers and private gamblers may have the most problematic PGAs. Personality traits and coping skills may predispose individuals to PGAs associated with more or less negative outcomes.     

Do Volunteers Volunteer to do More at Work? The Relationship Between Volunteering,Engagement, and OCBs

VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations - Many non-profit organizations rely on volunteers to further their mission, but volunteer rates linger at only 25% of the...     

Documenting Pornography Use in America: A Comparative Analysis of Methodological Approaches

Estimates of pornography use in the United States range widely. We explore the reasons for the variation in such estimates among U.S. adults using data from four different recent nationally representative samples—each of which asked a different type of question about pornography use. We attribute the notable variation in estimates to differences in question wording and answer options, and assert that a survey question asking respondents about their most recent use of pornography minimizes recall bias and is better poised to assess the overall prevalence of pornography in a population than is the more common approach of asking respondents about their historical general-use pattern. When we privileged the most-recent-use approach, survey data from 2014 reveal that 46% of men and 16% of women between the ages of 18 and 39 intentionally viewed pornography in a given week. These numbers are notably higher than most previous population estimates employing different types of questions. The results have ramifications for methods of surveying sensitive self-reported behaviors and for contextualizing scholars’ claims as well as popular conversations about the reach and implications of pornography use in the United States.     

The influence of FDA advisory information and black box warnings on individual use of prescription antidepressants

We examine how use of antidepressant medications is influenced by Food and Drug Administration (FDA) warnings about the increased risk of suicidality associated with pediatric antidepressant use. With individual-level data on antidepressant use from the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey, we consider whether consumer responses to FDA warnings differ among targeted (children) and non-targeted (adult) age-groups. Because the warning labels specifically mentioned new users, we examine separately the effects of the warnings on initiations of antidepressant therapy and on continued use of antidepressants. We find evidence consistent with reduced initiation of antidepressant use among the intended population of children, and that usage among children with more highly educated parents responded earlier to FDA information. However, we also find spillover effects of reduced initiation among the non-targeted population of adults. Overall, our results indicate that the FDA warning may have led consumers to perceive risks beyond those specifically mentioned.