Some alternatives to Edgeworth

The Edgeworth expansion is well known as a means for obtaining approximate tail probabilities from information concerning the moments of the distribution. Recent saddlepoint and asymptotic methods lead to several alternative approximations. These alternatives are developed and compared by means of average relative error.     

Sources of occupational stress in the police

This paper describes an empirical study (n = 954) of occupational stress conducted in a large provincial English police force. Conceptual distinctions were made between stressors, i.e., potential external sources of adverse reactions; felt stress, i.e., self-perceived negative impact; and distress, i.e., self-reported symptoms of anxiety, depression, social dysfunction, and somatic disturbance. Findings indicates that overall exposure rates are highest for organizational and management stressors rather than routine operational duties. Differential rates of exposure, felt stress, and distress are reported for different ranks of officers. The paper confirms the nature of postulated sources of police stress from earlier studies and extends analysis to differentiate between exposure to stressors and experience of distress.     

Evaluating the impact of betrayal for children exposed in photographs

Elements of betrayal trauma theory (Freyd, 1996 ) are used to evaluate potential negative and positive consequences for children who serve as artistic models, particularly those who model for their artist parents. Several dimensions are considered in evaluating the likelihood of harm: nudity, motives of the artist, consent, external vulnerability, and objectification. Recommendations to artists include appointing an advocate for the child, discussing photographic sessions and allowing observers, and going beyond standard release procedures. Similarities to the domains of creative writing and research psychology are considered. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Traveling from Feminism to Mainstream Sociology and Back: One Woman's Tale of Tenure and the Politics of Backlash

Within disciplines, the 1980s were an especially heady intellectual time for feminist graduate students. Not only did second wave scholarship prove to be inspirational for dissertation projects, but new books and articles published by women of color, lesbian feminists, postcolonial theorists and poststructuralists posed serious challenges to the ethnocentric assumptions of white, middle-class and Western feminism. Yet, despite over a decade of social movement activism and the creation of feminist institutions and organizations, this generation of feminist scholars worked against a cultural backdrop marked by a dramatic move to the political right. My personal narrative begins in this historical moment charting my political and intellectual trajectory from graduate school to the present. My positioning as a queer feminist between the second and third waves of feminist scholarship carried with it a rewarding intellectual legacy as well as a number of painful contradictions.¹ Further, I argue that these contradictions arose as a consequence of the uneven diffusion and reception of feminist scholarship, particularly the politics of backlash, within institutions and academic departments across the country from the 1980s to the present.     

Approximations to noncentral distributions

Two methods for approximating the distribution of a noncentral random variable by a central distribution in the same family are presented. The first consists of relating a stochastic expansion of a random variable to a corresponding asymptotic expansion for its distribution function. The second approximates the cumulant generating function and is used to provide central χ² and gamma approximations to the noncentral χ² and gamma distributions.     

Pregnant with Possibility: Reflections on Embodiment, Access, and Inclusion in Field Research

Contributing to a body of theory that advocates for reflexivity and consideration of embodiment by social researchers, this article explores aspects of performing qualitative research—fieldwork and interviews—on intersections of the private family and the public state while visibly pregnant. Drawing on the author's personal experience of collecting data while pregnant, the paper shows how being pregnant facilitated access in the field, how it helped to reveal unspoken beliefs about normative and non-normative reproduction, and how pregnancy and parenthood provided a level of credibility with respondents. This article also considers the situated meanings of pregnancy in the context of academia.