Symbolic Interactionism and I

This is a story of my involvement with symbolic interactionism and its influence on my thinking. The process included the following phases or stages: (1) an early foundation from Florian Znaniecki, David Hume, and Adam Smith; (2) participation in “the second Chicago school,” especially with Blumer, Hughes, and colleagues; (3) contact with an expanded circle of symbolic interactionists, working on various theories and concepts in many contexts, often united by the Society for the Study of Symbolic Interaction; (4) attempts at understanding and conceptualizing the interweave of my own work in several areas with my personal experiences; (5) use and development of four basic concepts: social roles, sentiments, identities, and self‐concept.     

Students with disabilities participating in mainstream schools: policies that promote and limit teacher and therapist cooperation

This paper examines participatory arrangements for students with physical disabilities in mainstream education, cooperation between teachers and therapists to ensure that these arrangements are efficient and the organizational prerequisites for such cooperation. The study comprises data obtained from 14 'groups', with each group consisting of a student with physical disabilities aged 9-19 years, their main teacher and the relevant therapists from the local habilitation centre. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews, field observations and a review of relevant documents, including legislation. The results reveal a lack of cooperation between teacher and therapist which results in students with disabilities receiving suboptimal participatory arrangements in school. Differences in the perspectives of the teachers and therapists and in the way they act and perceive their responsibilities were anchored in institutional and societal documents and the distribution of resources. The implications for students with disabilities are discussed.     

Marginal Correlation in Longitudinal Binary Data Based on Generalized Linear Mixed Models

This work aims at investigating marginal correlation within and between longitudinal data sequences. Useful and intuitive approximate expressions are derived based on generalized linear mixed models. Data from four double-blind randomized clinical trials are used to estimate the intra-class coefficient of reliability for a binary response. Additionally, the correlation between such a binary response and a continuous response is derived to evaluate the criterion validity of the binary response variable and the established continuous response variable.     

Psychotropic drug classification based on sleep–wake behaviour of rats

Summary.  The aim of the paper is to present methodology for the classification of potential psychotropic drugs on the basis of their activity. We first sketch the background of this class of drugs and then zoom in on so-called pharmacoelectroencephalogram studies. These data pose some statistical challenges. For classification purposes, we propose a flexible hierarchical discriminant analysis tool, allowing us to take the specific nature of the drug class into account, as well as the features of the mixed models, in combination with fractional polynomials, fitted to the electroencephalogram data. The method is evaluated against the background of existing methods. The method's performance is studied by using a comprehensive analysis of a large electroencephalogram data set.     

Pseudo-likelihood inference for clustered binary data

The maximum likelihood procedure to estimate paraneters of a model has scveral attractive properties including the existence of the covariance matrix which yield asymptotic covariances: for a sample size N the asymptotics are in general of order 1/N. Here we give an asymptotic for the skewness of the distribution of the maximum likelihood estimator of a parameter; this is of order 1/ n2 and this expression is new. Applications relate to the parameters of (i) the Poisson, binomial, and normal density. (ii) the gamna density and (iii) the Beta debsity. Other application are being considered. The expression for the asymptotic skowness at one phase of the study tured out to be unusually complicated involving the asymptotic expressions for variance and bias. When these were identified a much simpler compact expression appeared which we now describe. The work is a much improved treatment of the subject described in Shenton and Bowman (Mariunm likelihood estimation in small samples, Griffin. 1977).     

Recommendations on the statistical analysis of the Comet assay

In 2010, the Statisticians in the Pharmaceutical Industry (PSI) Toxicology Special Interest Group met to discuss the design and analysis of the Comet assay. The Comet assay is one potential component of the package of safety studies required by regulatory bodies. As these studies usually involve a three-way nested experimental design and as the distribution of the measured response is usually either lognormal or lognormal plus a point mass at zero, the analysis is not straightforward. This has led to many different types of analysis being proposed in the literature, with several different methods applied within the pharmaceutical industry itself. This article summarises the PSI Toxicology Group's discussions and recommendations around these issues.