运动的激情与真正的成就——写在2008北京奥运会之前

来自运动(尤其是最高层次的运动)的许多经验都可以被运用于其他领域,而且在团队运动中最宜于研究成功的必要条件和过程.以团队运动为原型进行研究,得到了普遍性的结论,即内部竞争、"民主"自制、自我激励等都可以提高成就水平.其中,最具普遍性的是对自我满足行为的自我激励--对于所有创造性成就而言,自发的真正的动机是必不可少的条件,依赖于真实的个人动机(即本征动机)的"本征成功"也随之体现着积极的、创造性的个性."本征成功"是源于本征动机而取得的成功,它是真正个人的成功,或者说,是真正或严格意义上的"本征行为"(个人真实的行动),其中表达的是深思熟虑的自我激励、自我投入、自愿完成的个人成就和行为."本征行为"是创造性生命和自由社会的重要表现,自发从事的活动和真正的成就是人类自我理解的基本构成.不仅作为理性认知的存在,而且作为创造性存在、作为不断自我教化的社会和文化存在,人类都是真正实现着的存在.     

European Physicians and Botanists, Indigenous Herbal Medicine in the Dutch East Indies, and Colonial Networks of Mediation

During the nineteenth and the early twentieth century, European physicians and botanists working in the Dutch East Indies displayed an eager interest in Indonesian indigenous herbal medicine or jamu, the investigation of which required them to establish contacts with local informers and mediators who could make indigenous medicine understandable to researchers. In the Dutch East Indies, these mediators were Indo-European women who had built up a medical lore with both European and Indigenous elements. The diminishing trust in the standard therapeutic measures created a window of opportunity for the investigation of Indonesian indigenous herbal medicine. The way medical knowledge circulated in the Dutch East Indies, the intermediaries who aided this circulation and the factors which impeded or facilitated it, and the ways in which European physicians and botanists legitimized indigenous herbal medicine are analyzed.     

“Nothing goes as planned”: Practitioners reflect on matching children and foster families

Matching children with foster carers is an important step in every nonkinship family foster care placement. Although guidelines for matching are provided in several studies, the case‐specific context of the decision can influence the practitioners' ability to adhere to these guidelines. Therefore, this study answers the following question: “How does the case‐specific context influence the practitioners' decision‐making process regarding matching in family foster care?” Using a qualitative design, 20 semistructured interviews were conducted with practitioners matching children with foster families. Three themes emerged representing different layers of practitioners' everyday decision‐making: matching as planned, matching being tailored, and matching being compromised. The results show that exceptions are part of practitioners' daily work, either due to the belief that it might benefit those involved or because of obstacles presented during the decision‐making process. When the decision is compromised, matching practitioners lower their standards, while at the same time safeguarding the quality of the match. This proves that matching in practice is more than choosing a family, and guidelines are needed to determine what “good‐enough” matching should entail.     

The ASA survey of graduate programs: Some problems with unproblematic responses

The most remarkable finding of the American Sociological Association’s first survey of graduate departments in sociology was the striking similarity among programs in terms of course requirements, the number of credits, thesis requirements, and other formal procedures that lead to the M.A. and Ph.D. Moreover, when asked to identify problems with their graduate programs, respondents were much more likely to mention the quality of students and the shrinking of budgets than the content or organization of their programs. The authors suggest that the apparent absence of problems may in itself be a matter of concern for the discipline.     

Periodic integration: further results on model selection and forecasting

This paper considers model selection and forecasting issues in two closely related models for nonstationary periodic autoregressive time series [PAR]. Periodically integrated seasonal time series [PIAR] need a periodic differencing filter to remove the stochastic trend. On the other hand, when the nonperiodic first order differencing filter can be applied, one can have a periodic model with a nonseasonal unit root [PARI]. In this paper, we discuss and evaluate two testing strategies to select between these two models. Furthermore, we compare the relative forecasting performance of each model using Monte Carlo simulations and some U.K. macroeconomic seasonal time series. One result is that forecasting with PARI models while the data generating process is a PIAR process seems to be worse thanvice versa.