Benefits to Children Who Participate in Family Therapy with their Substance‐Using Mother

It is rare that family members other than the identified patient are followed over time in studies of therapy effectiveness. Family therapy is believed to be effective because it targets processes within the system that maintain symptoms. If these processes are changed, then all family members can benefit. Using a sample of 183 mother–child dyads from a study comparing family therapy for adult substance use versus an attention control, change in child's substance use (tobacco, alcohol, and marijuana) was estimated. Children who participated in family therapy with their mothers showed greater decreases in alcohol and tobacco use and were less likely to begin using compared to children whose mothers participated in the attention control condition.     

Regression‐type models for extremal dependence

We propose a vector generalized additive modeling framework for taking into account the effect of covariates on angular density functions in a multivariate extreme value context. The proposed methods are tailored for settings where the dependence between extreme values may change according to covariates. We devise a maximum penalized log‐likelihood estimator, discuss details of the estimation procedure, and derive its consistency and asymptotic normality. The simulation study suggests that the proposed methods perform well in a wealth of simulation scenarios by accurately recovering the true covariate‐adjusted angular density. Our empirical analysis reveals relevant dynamics of the dependence between extreme air temperatures in two alpine resorts during the winter season.     

How Does Performance Management Affect Workers? Beyond Human Resource Management and Its Critique

While performance management (PM) is pervasive across contemporary workplaces, extant research into how performance management affects workers is often indirect or scattered across disciplinary silos. This paper reviews and synthesizes this research, identifies key gaps and explores ‘recognition theory’ as a nascent framework that can further develop this important body of knowledge. The paper develops in three main stages. The first stage reviews ‘mainstream’ human resource management (HRM) research. While this research analyses workers’ reactions to performance management in some depth, its focus on serving organizational goals marginalizes extra‐organizational impacts. The second stage reviews more critical HRM research, which interprets performance management as a disciplinary, coercive or inequitable management device. While this literature adds an important focus on organizational power, there is scope to analyse further how PM affects workers’ well‐being. To develop this strand of PM research, the third stage turns to the emerging field of recognition theory independently developed by Axel Honneth and Christophe Dejours. The authors focus especially on recognition theory's exploration of how (in)adequate acknowledgement of workers’ contributions can significantly affect their well‐being at the level of self‐conception. Although recognition theory is inherently critical, the paper argues that it can advance both mainstream and critical performance management research, and also inform broader inquiry into recognition and identity at work.     

Doing Psychology,Doing Inequality: Rethinking the Role of Psychology in Creating and Maintaining Social Inequality*

The relationship between psychological disciplines and inequality has been a subject of great scholarly interest in the last several decades. Most works on the subject analyze macro features of psychological disciplines (mainly their evaluative tools, theoretical assumptions, and disciplinary power) and criticize them as biased against minorities. This paper re‐examines the relationship between psychology and inequality from a micro, face‐to‐face standpoint. Drawing on close observations of 33 placement committees in which professionals from various psychological fields (psychology, social work, school counseling, etc.) discuss children’s eligibility for special education services, it portrays the actual doing of psychology as an inconsistent and malleable endeavor. In contrast to the macro‐oriented research on the relationship between psychology and inequality, it shows that in actual face‐to‐face interactions, professionals use different types of folk concerns that often exchange formal evaluative criteria, theoretical assumptions or professional authority in final placement decisions. By revealing the different folk considerations professionals use to sort and analyze working‐ versus middle‐class parents, this project adds an essential layer to scholarly understanding of the relationship between psychological practice and inequality.     

More than Money: The Importance of Social Exchanges for Temporary Low-Skilled Migrant Workers’ Workplace Satisfaction

Research has focused on the happiness of immigrants, but the workplace satisfaction of temporary low-skilled migrant workers has rarely been explored. By utilizing survey data for two years, 2010 and 2013, along with interviews with migrant workers, we explored how economic or social factors could trigger diverse impacts on the satisfaction of temporary low-skilled migrant workers in different work environments. Results showed that economic factors triggered more notable impacts in 2010, while the importance of social factors increased with improvements in work environments in 2013. The results indicated that moving motive premises and social exchange theory effectively explain attitudes of temporary low-skilled migrant workers. Theoretical and practical contributions and suggestions of the results are also included.     

The plan of enrichment designs for dealing with high placebo response

To deal with high placebo response in clinical trials for psychiatric and other diseases, different enrichment designs, such as the sequential parallel design, two‐way enriched design, and sequential enriched design, have been proposed and implemented recently. Depending on the historical trial information and the trial sponsors' resources, detailed design elements are needed for determining which design to adopt. To assist in making more suitable decisions, we perform evaluations for selecting required design elements in terms of power optimization and sample size planning. We also discuss the implementation of the interim analysis related to its applicability.